Sorry, Spider-Man – The Boy And The Heron Deserved The Oscar Upset

Hayao Miyazaki's "The Boy and the Heron" has won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Like when his film "Spirited Away" took home the Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2003, Miyazaki himself wasn't there to accept the award in person tonight (the first time, he was protesting the Iraq War, and WOW did history vindicate him).

This was a bit of an upset: "The Boy and the Heron" is rightfully acclaimed, but it had a worthy challenger in "Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse," which won Best Animated Feature at the 51st Annie Awards this February (the Annies are focused exclusively on animation). Christopher Miller, one of the writers and producers of "Across the Spider-Verse," took his Oscars defeat in good humor, posting on X/Twitter: "Well, if you're gonna lose, might as well lose to the GOAT [greatest of all time]."

We here at /Film are big fans of "Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse" (read our review from back in May 2023). But that said, the Academy made the right call picking "The Boy and the Heron." It may not be as formally experimental as "Spider-Verse," with this film largely hewing to a somewhat familiar "Ghibli aesthetic," but it is a more personal movie and has more on its mind than "Spider-Man" does. 

Hayao Miyazaki is our greatest living animator. He doesn't have to be your favorite for you to admit the titanic impact of his work. He's also 83 years old, and as he's kept working through his twilight years, critics have been quick to pin down his movies as a sign of his retirement; his one-time planned final curtain, 1997's "Princess Mononoke," now feels akin to Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" — a coup de grace that essentially served as the beginning of a new chapter for a beloved filmmaker.

All that said, "The Boy and the Heron" is very much about Miyazaki feeling his mortality and how the works he's made will live on after he's gone. The film's protagonist, Mahito, travels to a fantasy world built by his granduncle, "The Architect." The Architect knows he can't keep holding his world up together for much longer and asks Mahito to take his place, but the boy chooses instead to find his own path.

"The Boy and the Heron" has an incredible voice cast for the English dub, but it's a Japanese story to its core and an unmistakably Miyazaki movie. The film's true title (changed for international release) is "How Do You Live?", which is more attuned to the themes Miyazaki explores.

"The Boy and the Heron" achieving this honor is not just proof of Miyazaki's genius spreading across the globe (even if I imagine he himself is indifferent), it's a call for the Oscars to continue getting more and more global in what films they honor. With the increasingly international makeup of the voting body, expect more cool Oscar surprises like this in the years to come.