Oscars 2024: Marvel and Mission: Impossible beaten by Gozdilla!

Quite a symbol: Hollywood blockbusters and their colossal budgets have been eaten up by the little surprise Japanese film at the end of the year 2023…

Beyond the triumph of Christopher Nolan or that of Emma Stone, it is possibly the most significant statuette of Oscars 2024 : the voters decided to offer the Oscar for Best Special Effects to Godzilla: Minus Oneto the nose and beard of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning or some Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 !

An unexpected success for the small Japanese film, which becomes the first from its country to win this prize and also the first Godzilla of history to be thus sacred. With this statuette, it is the know-how of the production of Toho studios and of the director Takashi Yamazaki who were praised, since Godzilla: Minus One was only produced with a budget of 15 million dollars, far from the 200 million of Marvel blockbusters or Impossible mission.

On the stage of the Dolby Theater, Yamazaki recalled the “ shock » felt when watching the first film Star Wars more than 40 years ago and how that launched him into cinema. “The possibility of getting on that stage seemed out of reach then. But here we are! Like Rocky Balboa, you welcome me into this ring as one of your own.”

Yamazaki did not employ any generative artificial intelligence technology to develop the visual effects for his film, collaborating with production house Shirogumi as part of a team alongside 35 artists, while Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 employed 400 artists (within a much stricter schedule, it should be noted).

Above all, Yamazaki was alongside his team on site daily and was crowned last night with his team as the film's visual effects supervisor. The last time a filmmaker won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects was Stanley Kubrick in 1969 for 2001: A Space Odyssey. There are now two of them.