At the Oscars this past Sunday, one winner likely embarrassed many of Hollywood’s largest motion picture studios.
That winner, the Japanese-produced “Godzilla: Minus One,” went home with the award for “Best Visual Effects,” despite boasting a much, much, much smaller budget than its more well-known competition.
Toho Studios made the film for a measly $15 million per IMDB.
Thanks to its incredible VFX work and focus on family values, the film resonated with American audiences despite being Japanese.
To win the award for best VFX, “Godzilla: Minus One” beat out four mostly-mega-budget films produced by some of Hollywood’s biggest studios.
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Take “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” for example.
The Tom Cruise-led action movie, produced by Paramount Pictures, had a whopping $291 million budget, almost 20 times the size of Toho Studios’ kaiju film.
Perhaps even more impressive was the fact that “Godzilla: Minus One” managed to top a space-faring Marvel movie — “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” (one of the few major studio blockbusters that actually garnered good reviews in 2023).
Have you seen “Godzilla: Minus One”?
Disney backed the film with a hefty $250 million. Apparently, that still wasn’t enough to top Godzilla.
But it wasn’t just action movie blockbusters “Godzilla: Minus One” embarrassed.
It was also Oscar-bait biopics.
Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” starring Joaquin Phoenix was also up for the award.
But, despite boasting a $200 million budget, the film also failed to top the quality of the $15 million VFX from “Godzilla: Minus One.”
But wait, it gets more embarrassing for Hollywood.
The only other movie that seemed deserving of the “Best Visual Effects” award was The Creator, another film made with a comparatively small budget — $80 million — when stacked against the competition.
What both “Godzilla: Minus One” and, to a lesser degree, “The Creator” show is that Hollywood doesn’t know how to manage its money.
Or perhaps those incredibly bloated $250 million-and-up budgets are simply schemes to get producers and studio heads paid more than they should.
Regardless of the reasons, if Hollywood isn’t going to provide top-of-the-industry storytelling to audiences, those audiences aren’t just going to accept whatever is shoveled into their laps.
They’ll look for the best movies, no matter where they come from.
That’s no doubt why “Godzilla: Minus One” — despite being entirely in Japanese — succeeded so well in North America, to the surprise of many.
Even if they have to read subtitles, audiences want to watch good cinema.
And, it appears that the best is not coming from Hollywood.
