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Godzilla Minus One Is Officially The First Movie In The Franchise To Win An Oscar

Godzilla Minus One atomic breath Toho International
By Ryan Scott/

It may have taken a full seven decades, but Godzilla is finally an Academy Award winner. Indeed, "Godzilla Minus One" was not only the first movie to be nominated for an Oscar in the franchise's long, storied history, but it also became the first one to win an award on Hollywood's biggest night. The win caps off a truly amazing run for a movie that kind of came out of nowhere to become a genuine breakout mainstream success story. More on that in a moment.

Director Takashi Yamazaki's "Godzilla Minus One" took home the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Yamazaki was nominated for his work on the film's VFX alongside the rest of his team including Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi, and Tatsuji Nojima. "The possibility of standing on this stage seemed out of reach," Yamazaki said in his emotional acceptance speech, before concluding with, "We did it, thank you."

Yamazaki and his team pulled off something that no other "Godzilla" movie has ever managed to do. Dating back to the original 1954 classic that started it all, no film in the franchise has ever made enough noise with the Academy to garner a nomination, let alone a win. Yes, it's tough to imagine a movie like "Godzilla vs. Kong" being nominated for Best Picture, for example, but be it for visual effects or other technical categories, it's truly hard to believe that this is the first time the King of the Monsters got his day in the sun.

It's hard to think of a more deserving movie. This isn't an example of the Academy righting a wrong and handing out a long overdue award to the wrong film — a truly outstanding movie won an award it very much deserved to win. As I've argued several times before, this might be the best argument ever for "Godzilla as legitimate cinema."

70 years later, Godzilla is finally an Oscar winner

Godzilla Minus One boat chase Toho International

Toho's latest entry in the long-running monster movie franchise was nominated alongside Hollywood blockbusters including "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3," "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning," "Napoleon," and "The Creator." The difference with Yamazaki's movie is that a relatively small team of devoted artists handled all of the movie's very impressive effects. By contrast, the average Marvel movie has dozens if not hundreds of VFX artists working to bring the film to life.

 

Aside from the smaller team, much has been made of the fact that "Godzilla Minus One" was produced for a fraction of what many other blockbusters cost. The budget was said to be in the $15 million range. For anyone who has seen the movie, this is undoubtedly a surprising thing to hear. Granted, the way movies are made in Japan changes things a great deal, but regardless of the circumstances, Yamazaki and his team managed to do an awful lot with relatively little.

What they did was create a truly arresting version of Godzilla in one of the franchise's best films, one that went on to become a breakthrough box office smash, making more than $100 million worldwide. That includes a record-breaking sum in North America, where the film made tens of millions more than anyone expected it to make. This Oscar win puts a punctuation mark on the movie's impressive run.

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