Godzilla Plus The Boy Plus The Heron Stomp The Oscars For Japan
Sure we could talk about 'Oppenheimer' getting 7 wins or Stone over Gladstone, but that’s for everyone else
It had been a tight race all awards season for Best Animated Feature between Sony Pictures Animation’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Studio Ghibli’s The Boy and the Heron. Spider-Verse had earned the Critics Choice and Annie, while Boy and the Heron got the Golden Globe and the BAFTA. Of these five major awards, it was up to the 96th Academy Awards to break the tie, and that was decided on Sunday night, and it was The Boy and the Heron that came out victorious.
This gave the Japanese studio its second Best Animated Feature win, as well as legendary and unretired director Hayao Miyazaki his second (competitive) win for directing it. The first was Spirited Away, which won in the second year of the award’s existence for the 2003 show. It was also back when Disney was distributing the English dubs of Ghibli films, making The Boy and the Heron’s win the first since they partnered with GKids, whose previous non-Ghibli nominees include The Breadwinner, My Life as a Zucchini and Wolfwalkers. The film’s dub cast included Robert Pattinson, Karen Fukuhara, Gemma Chan, Christian Bale, Mark Hamill, Florence Pugh, Willem Dafoe, Dave Bautista, Barbara Goodson, and Dan Stevens.
It also means Miyazaki and his studio are still the only ones to win the category with 2D-animated films as it approaches a quarter century of existing. Unfortunately neither he nor producer Toshio Suzuki were in attendance to accept the award. There were some who started believing this was Miyazaki holding to his laurels, having protested the 2003 Oscars for the War in Iraq, this time for the genocide in Palestine. But this is not confirmed. They were otherwise victorious over Nimona, Elemental, and Robot Dreams as well. Watch Chris Hemsworth and Anya Taylor-Joy present the award and accept on the crew’s behalf below.
Meanwhile, Godzilla Minus One skreeonked its way into the Dolby Theatre and took home Best Visual Effects for the first Oscar in franchise history, spanning 70 years. It’s also Japan’s first win in the category. Made for only approximately $15 million, it beat out four big-budget Hollywood blockbusters: The Creator, Napoleon, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. It’s the first victory in decades for a non-American studio film in the category. The franchise’s 37th film was written and directed by Takashi Yamazaki, who also led the film’s visual effects team, which also featured Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi and Tatsuji Nojima. Minus One tells the story of Godzilla’s initial emergence in ravaged postwar Japan. Produced by Togo, the film stars Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando and Kuranosuke Sasaki.
During the acceptance speech, where the team brought figurines of the giant nuclear lizard Yamazaki recounted that his filmmaking aspirations came from seeing Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a kid when they were originally released in Japan. “So far from Hollywood, even the possibility of standing on this stage seemed out of reach,” Yamazaki said, becoming emotional. “The moment we were nominated, we felt like Rocky Balboa welcomed into the ring as equals by our biggest rivals, which was already a miracle. But, here we stand!”
Sources: Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, CartoonBrew