Godzilla Minus One is one of the most talked about movies of 2023. This new Japanese kaiju movie won a Special Effects Oscar this year, becoming the first Japanese film to win in this category. But what is impressive is that Godzilla Minus One was made with a significantly small budget, but managed to impress with its authenticity and artistry. At the same time, The Acolyte is one of the most talked about shows today, a series that has been capturing the attention of fans around the world, but not necessarily because it is good. We know that The Acolyte had a big budget, which is what we are going to talk about.
Namely, we know that The Acolyte has been criticized – among other things – because of its visuals, with some fans stating that it looked cheap and that such a budget simply shouldn’t merit such low quality, which is interesting when compared to the above-mentioned movie.
As far as The Acolyte is concerned, we can confirm that the series has a reported total budget of $180 million, which is absolutely mindblowing for a streaming miniseries, but it seems to be the state of things. Also, the budget for each individual episode was roughly $22.5 million, which is mindblowing, especially when we see the end result, i.e., the comments on how the show is subpar in terms of its visuals and technical aspects.
On the other hand, we have Godzilla Minus One, whose production budget was around $10 million, and the movie was a visual spectacle that won an Oscar. How did they do it? Well, in a recent interview he gave with famous video game artist Hideo Kojima, the movie’s director, Takashi Yamazaki, revealed the following:
Yamazaki: There is also a cafeteria, so the environment itself is nice. How many people are there in total at Kojima Productions?
Kojima: The number has increased quite a bit, and now there are about 250 people. I think it should be limited to 150 people.
Yamazaki: Is that really all you can check?
Kojima: I have been saying for some time that I wanted to limit the number of people to 150, and one day director George Miller told me, “Hideo is right. A shepherd can only lead up to 150 sheep and cattle.”
Yamazaki: The VFX part of Godzilla Minus One is a team of 35 people.
Kojima: I think that’s the best.
Yamazaki: When it comes to continuously checking in real time, that’s the best I can do.
Kojima: Hollywood seems to have a misunderstanding, but Mr. Yamazaki’s team was able to make Godzilla Minus One because the production cost was less than 1.5 billion yen. This is a quality that cannot be achieved through outsourcing. When I first saw Godzilla Minus One, I thought it would win the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects.
Yamazaki: That’s amazing. Foresight.
Kojima: Previous Godzilla movies were shot by special effects people, so the worldview wasn’t aimed at overseas audiences. That was fine though. This time, both the production of the drama and the virtual family are worldwide, and the setting will be popular. Regarding the image creation, Mr. Yamazaki also liked Hollywood movies, so the angle of view was not that of special effects. You can usually tell when you see it. So I think it’s only natural that it won an Academy Award. With this opportunity, many temptations will come from Hollywood.
Source: dot.
As you can see, when it came to Godzilla, it was more than just money. It was dedication, it was hard work, and it was a band of people, a group of enthusiasts, who gave it their all to deliver a magnificent piece of art. It was truly something special and that is what The Acolyte is lacking.
Despite all the messages and the lack of quality, The Acolyte is just another corporate brand product. We won’t say that it is soulless, far from it, but it’s one of many. It was a large team with many dedicated workers, but it was never just a small group of enthusiasts. Disney put a lot of money into The Acolyte and it gave Headland the chance to tell her story, but the end product is really not that special. It is just one story of many, which is sad because Godzilla Minus One is also a brand product, one of many movies about the titular monster.
The point is that… Godzilla Minus One is a masterpiece made with basically no money at all and it turned out to be magnificent. The Acolyte was made with so much money that they could’ve made almost 20 Godzilla movies and it is far from perfect. Maybe it’s time Hollywood cut its costs by changing the way how movies and series are made. They have a perfect model to base their strategy on, and we’d definitely want more works like Godzilla Minus One, so it’s definitely worth considering. And we hope that we will be writing an article about this sooner rather than later, so be sure to keep following us!
