Today, the Academy revealed this year’s Oscar nominations—a crop of a lot of snubs, a lot of surprises, and a lot of people who worked on Oppenheimer. But presenters Zazie Beetz and Jack Quaid forgot to mention the most important category among all the others they rattled off: Best Reaction to Finding Out You’re Nominated for an Oscar.
In their defense, you can’t award a winner for that one until after the nominations are out. But there’s already a clear taker of the title this year—a team so stoked by their nomination alone, we can only imagine how they’d react to winning the actual award.
When Godzilla Minus One received a nomination for Best Visual Effects, its animators found out right alongside everyone else. Artist Koji Matsunaga posted an incredible video of the team at Japanese production company Shirogumi, which worked on the film, as they react to the announcement live. Please watch it with sound on—the sound of genuine happiness is all too rare these days:
In the clip, the team sits around a conference table watching the livestream, joined by a pack of very cute toy Godzilla monsters. They have their streamers at the ready—what they would have done with those had they not won, we dare not wonder. As soon as Godzilla Minus One pops up, so does everyone seated, unleashing cheers, fist pumps, and, yes, a bevy of streamers.
It’s a delightful response to a delightful, well-deserved nod. Godzilla Minus One was a late-breaking contender, hitting North American theaters early last month. But the film, which reimagines the original Godzilla from 1954, instantly caught on like wildfire. Thanks to strong word of mouth, its run has been extended repeatedly; there’s even a black-and-white version of the film coming to theaters on Jan. 26. And not only has it become the highest-grossing live-action Japanese film ever in the U.S., but Godzilla Minus One is a hit with critics, too; it’s sitting at 96-percent “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes.
A huge part of the monster movie-meets-historical drama’s success is how well-rendered Gojira-san himself is—a living, breathing creature animated by a team of just 35 people. There’s something to be said about Japanese working conditions, to be sure—that’s a lot of work for very few people. But all those big Hollywood studios could stand to learn something from how much more believably animated a damn dinosaur is than anything in, say, Marvel’s $200-million Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
No matter what happens on March 10, the Godzilla Minus One team has already won big in their hearts—and ours. But if you’re interested in some of their competitors in the Best Reaction category, you can check out this lovely thread. I’d wager that the folks who worked on surprise Animated Feature nominee Robot Dreams are an easy runner-up here.
