Godzilla Minus One: Small VFX Team's Big Success
It only took 70 years, but Godzilla has finally gone home with the gold. Godzilla Minus One made history at the 96th Academy Awards, securing the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, a first-time win for the Godzilla franchise. Given how important Godzilla has been to nearly a century of international film, it’s a long-overdue accolade that couldn’t have gone to a more deserving entry. Godzilla Minus One isn’t just a great movie, but a prime showcase of director Takashi Yamazaki’s strong artistic vision and proof that Godzilla’s ability to change with the times is unparalleled among film characters.
But there is another lesson that Hollywood should take away from Godzilla Minus One‘s landmark achievement. 
How did a movie with a small VFX team of 35 artists and a frugal budget of $15 million outperform the entire Hollywood blockbuster apparatus? Part of the answer lies in the film leaning into a distinctly ’90s way of depicting CG effects, more so than resources or manpower. I would contend that the issue ultimately comes down to attitude and how Hollywood has spent the past couple of decades denigrating the entire field of visual effects artistry.
Attitude Shift in Hollywood
What was once a brand-new field of exciting technology that was supposed to expand what was possible within the medium by a wide margin has instead spent much of the 21st century being treated like a laborious obligation that many filmmakers and audiences wish would go away. Even though it’s now virtually impossible to find a studio movie that doesn’t implement VFX to some extent, you’d be surprised how much invisible effects work is used in mid-budget dramas and action films. Many promo tours for even gargantuan blockbusters like Star Wars: The Force Awakens or Top Gun: Maverick spend much of their time touting their reliance on practical effects and making bold claims about how everything was done for real on camera.
Overlooked Value of VFX
Those claims are, of course, not the whole story, blending in-camera and digital effects. VFX work is the most prevalent method for most movies, and the fetishization of practical effects is largely a marketing tactic to appeal to jaded filmgoers who are overly hostile to CGI, even when they often can’t tell when CGI is actually being implemented. 
Artistic Vision of Takashi Yamazaki
More substantively, this attitude of thinking of VFX as lesser has bled into the next generation of filmmakers, even incredibly talented ones. Robert Eggers, the acclaimed director of The Witch and The Lighthouse, said in an interview with Polygon that he “whips himself every night” for using CGI in his 2022 film The Northman, even though the finished product features almost 400 VFX shots. The trades have also bought into the false mythology of VFX Lite movies, such as The Hollywood Reporter describing Dune Part One as putting the focus on physical production with far less CG saturation than most of its recent genre brethren, even though the film, which also won an Oscar for its visual effects, contains 1700 visual effects shots.
Yamazaki's Approach to VFX
With how much Hollywood seems to hate but can’t help but use CGI, it’s remarkable to hear how different of an attitude Godzilla Minus One director Takashi Yamazaki takes towards his Oscar-winning VFX team. In an interview with IGN about the black and white version of Godzilla Minus One, Yamazaki had this to say about working on the movies VFX: “I was right there the whole time, on-site, on the same floor. I could just go to someone’s monitor, approve things, give them direction, and get another feedback loop in the time that perhaps people have to send dailies or wait for notes to show up. I had a clear goal, more perhaps than other directors because of my VFX background.”
Designing with Purpose
That last part is particularly important. Beyond writing and directing, Yamazaki has worked for many years as a visual effects supervisor, often directly contributing to the VFX teams on his projects. He shares this trait with fellow Godzilla director Gareth Edwards, who also created some of 2023’s best visuals with his Oscar-nominated film The Creator. That’s not to say that you have to be an effects artist to know how to implement them but approaching the CG sequences as integral components of your film that require care and craft, and not thinking of them as a Band-Aid that can be slathered all over whatever doesn’t work in post-production, is a key reason why Godzilla Minus One looks as good as it does. Purposefully designing shots in pre-production with attention to how the VFX will be blended with the rest of the shot later on leads to far better results in the final edit. When directors and executives don’t know what they want before they shoot the movie, it causes problems later on because the assets they have don’t blend effectively, leading to ridiculously expensive but garish-looking final products. 
Visual Masterpiece
Some easy lessons can quickly be taken away from how incredible Godzilla looks in all of his big scenes. A focus on naturalistic lighting without any fancy grading and a consistent color palette helps sell the computer-generated elements as part of the same frame. Because they don’t have to contrast with other eye-drawing visual components, Yamazaki also pays attention to how weight and scale would affect Godzilla’s movement. He’s always portrayed as lumbering and even kind of stiff, creating a sense of verisimilitude because a creature of that size would move in that manner. Godzilla feels authentic because the production and creature design, the cinematography, lighting, framing, coloring, and the visual effects are all working in tandem to create the illusion that Godzilla is a living, breathing creature. It’s a stunning effect that more than earns the awards it’s been given. What’s especially frustrating about seeing how many people who make and watch films lambasting CGI is how ahistorical it is. Digital effects have been a part of movies since Michael Crichton’s 1973 film Westworld. Yes, really. And they were also used in the original Star Wars trilogy. There was a time when landmark films like 1991’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day and 1993’s Jurassic Park stunned critics and audiences with groundbreaking achievements in CGI that used the very techniques we’ve discussed to make digitally animated robots and dinosaurs that felt as real as the human actors they interacted with.
Moving Forward with CGI
Remarkable motion capture work on Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, or Caesar in the new Planet of the Apes films, and even James Cameron’s development of all-new technology to bring his Avatar sequels to life, are all part of a storied history of talented filmmakers who approached VFX with curiosity and excitement rather than trepidation and loathing. Now this obviously isn’t the full extent of the problem, and none of this means that Hollywood should try to replicate Godzilla Minus One‘s exact circumstances. Since the Japanese film industry is different from America’s Hollywood, taking that approach would likely just result in smaller VFX teams working more hours for less money.
Godzilla Minus One was a special case, but it also stands as an exemplar of what can be achieved with a distinctive, consistent vision and an appreciation for what digital effects can add to a film. Perhaps if more directors emulated Yamazaki’s attitude towards VFX, we could finally get back to being wowed by what they can do.
