Godzilla Minus One was a game-changer for kaiju fans. Although they’ve remained consistently popular in Japan, Toho’s Godzilla movies were never exactly juggernauts in America — particularly compared to the supersize box office of their Hollywood equivalents in Legendary’s Monsterverse. Minus One changed all that, starting strong at the Japanese box office before making a slow, but steady ascent abroad amid good reviews and huge hype from fans.
In the end, Godzilla Minus One made a total of $116 million worldwide, $57 million of that in the US — and that’s before the franchise received the ultimate validation of the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects, the first such win for a Godzilla movie. Not bad for a $10-$12 million picture made with an in-house effects team of 35, a fraction of the hundreds of people that usually work on large-scale productions like this one. And indeed, one of the most impressive things about Godzilla Minus One is the sheer scope it manages to achieve with relatively limited resources, combining multiple styles of blockbuster filmmaking into one thrilling, stirring story.
