2024 was a big year for movies. The apes overtook the silver screen with a new entry in the beloved remake franchise, the Wicked Witch of The West found her groove flying above the land of Oz, a robot lost in the wilderness, and Paul Atreides became a legend in his own right. Amongst the many feature-length films that hit the big screen, it was a difficult decision to not just choose a winner, but narrowing down the heavy hitters that had an impact on the was no easy task. Luckily, there is one movie that we decided to stick to, that roared in movie theaters, that you might be surprised by when all is said and done.
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And the winner for the 2024 ComicBook’s Golden Issue Award for Best Movie is…
Godzilla Minus One!
To start, yes, Godzilla Minus One released in both Japan and North America last year in theaters but the film’s release window meant that it was not eligible for our previous year’s selection. On top of this, both Godzilla Minus One/Minus Color and the home video release had us making the decision to hold off until 2024 to truly give the king of the monsters the spotlight it so rightly deserved. Keeping this in mind, we have more than a few reasons why this lizard king-focused film was the one to stand above all.
One of the barometers for an exceptional “creature feature” is the idea that the human characters could tell an excellent story even if a giant monster wasn’t threatening their existence. Godzilla Minus One is able to accomplish this and then some both with its main characters and its exceptional setting. Following in the footsteps of the first Godzilla movie that started it all, Minus One focuses on the story of a Japan attempting to come back from World War 2. Devastated by a human war, a kaiju conflict is the last thing that this fictional Japan needed but it makes for an environment that helped to make the greatest Godzilla movie of all time.
Pilot Kōichi Shikishima makes for the perfect protagonist in this film, formerly expected to die for his country as a “kamikaze pilot” but finding himself unable to pull the trigger on sacrificing his own life to strike at the enemy. While he is able to escape the war with his life, he struggles with both the knowledge that Godzilla exists but also the fact that his family has died during the war’s bombings and everyone who survived shows him nothing but scorn. In a chance encounter, Shikishima finds himself caring for both a woman and a child, needing to discover how to live in the face of societal collapse and a kaiju attack.
On top of the film’s story, the special effects are in a league of their own, rivaling movies that have production budget’s tens of times higher. It should come as no surprise that Godzilla Minus One became the first kaiju-featured film of the franchise to win an Academy Award, taking home the gold for Best Visual Effects at this year’s event. Honestly, it was a movie that most likely deserved to win far more and certainly earned its place as our movie of the year. With a sequel already confirmed which will see director Takashi Yamazaki returning to continue his universe, now is one of the best times in the history of cinema to be a Godzilla fan.
The nominees for the 2024 ComicBook’s Golden Issue Award for Best Movie are…
- Dune: Part Two
- Godzilla: Minus One – WINNER
- Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
- Wicked: Part 1
- The Wild Robot
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Images courtesy of Sony Pictures and Amazon MGM Studios -
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