Godzilla Minus One Becomes First Godzilla Film Ever Nominated for an Oscar

Chalk up another city destroyed, and another major accomplishment for the King of the Monsters: For the first time in his 70-year history, Godzilla can claim to be an Academy Award nominee. As part of the newly announced nominations for the 2024 Oscars ceremony, the critically acclaimed Godzilla Minus One has been given a nod that no other Godzilla film has ever received, with a nomination in the Best Visual Effects category. The listed nominees for the film are Takashi Yamakazi, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi, and Tatsuji Nojima. It will be up against some difficult competition in the category, in the form of The Creator, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Napoleon and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

Regardless, this is a pretty big moment for the Godzilla fandom, accustomed as they are to the series receiving popular adulation over the decades but little critical evaluation, other than belated admiration for the 1954 original from director Ishirō Honda. It is perhaps fitting that Godzilla Minus One take up the torch for the series’ prestige going forward, considering that of all the many Gojira sequels, it feels the most like a direct continuation of Honda’s film, taking place in a devastated postwar Japan where the appearance of Godzilla forces the population to come together in the spirit of neighborly camaraderie. The film has been universally acclaimed, and places extremely highly in our own ranking of the entire Godzilla film series to date.

It’s also a significant moment for the Best Visual Effects category, in the sense that Godzilla Minus One is a decidedly atypical selection. For one, its $15 million budget is far, far below the cost of all the other films involved, with Guardians, Mission: Impossible and Napoleon all costing in the neighborhood of $200 million to make, and only The Creator being below $100 million. Godzilla Minus One looks positively dainty in comparison, reportedly employing only 35 artists for its more than 600 VFX shots. A win for the film would establish new precedent in terms of what kinds of films are seen as generally eligible to win the award.

To be sure, the film has been a major box office success around the world at this point, and winning the series’ first Oscar would only cement that. It has already set a number of records for the series, becoming the highest-grossing Japanese Godzilla film, as well as the highest-grossing live action Japanese film in North America. Will the King of the Monsters now run roughshod over the Academy Awards as well? We sincerely hope so.