Princess Mononoke

[AniNate]

I think this is my favorite Miyazaki film. Spirited Away was too random and meandering for my tastes but here the flights of fancy are all in service of a thoroughly engaging meditation on the human/wilderness relationship, combining the classic Hollywood "hero's journey" narrative with the more intimate, meditative tone of the director's work.

 

A

[A Marvel Fanboy]

animation classic

[Lordmandeep]

When  you watch this film you just see how it influenced animation worldwide. 

[A Marvel Fanboy]

I think Nausicaä of the Valley of the Winds is as good as this one.

 

Lovely characters, grand epic scale, artistically animation work.

Edited March 8, 2014 by firedeep

[mattmav45]

Time to be "that guy."

I'm not as enamoured with this as many seem to be. Not a bad flick, but you can do much better in the Ghibli realm. Specifically, Nausicaa tackled a similar story, but was able to develop the characters in a much more satisfying manner.

[Spidey Freak]

...with themes not going much beyond 'live at one with nature, kumbaya'. really quite similar to avatar, but without the caricatures and shitty dialogue.

 

Yeah no. Despite all of her faults, it was clear as day that Lady Eboshi was the true herald of the future with the violent and unsophisticated forest gods rapidly falling into irrelevancy and oblivion, a fate even Moro accepted for herself and her kind, because they couldn't keep in step with the march of progress. The explicit theme is of balance between the two worlds of course, but that equally underlines the importance of industrialization as much it does of conservation, if not more so given the attention Miyazaki offers to Eboshi and her empowerment of society's disenfranchised. It's really quite similar to Avatar only in the way Gravity is "really quite similar" to Armageddon.

 

Time to be "that guy."

I'm not as enamoured with this as many seem to be. Not a bad flick, but you can do much better in the Ghibli realm. Specifically, Nausicaa tackled a similar story, but was able to develop the characters in a much more satisfying manner.

 

Really? That's surprising because the reason I've avoided watching Nausicaa for so long is because I've constantly been hearing that it is a more simplistic view of the conflict between nature and industrialization/capitalism than Mononoke, which made me think Nausicaa would be disappointing and one of my least favourite Ghiblis, especially as Mononoke is one of my favourite films. Not just among my favorite Ghibli films or favorite animated films but favorite films.

 

Your post has definitely aroused my curiosity for Nausicaa though. Think I should really give it a watch now.

Edited March 19, 2015 by Spidey Freak

[Murgatroyd]

Really? That's surprising because the reason I've avoided watching Nausicaa for so long is because I've constantly been hearing that it is a more simplistic view of the conflict between nature and industrialization/capitalism than Mononoke, which made me think Nausicaa would be disappointing and one of my least favourite Ghiblis, especially as Mononoke is one of my favourite films. Not just among my favorite Ghibli films or favorite animated films but favorite films.

 

Your post has definitely aroused my curiosity for Nausicaa though. Think I should really give it a watch now.

 

What you really want is the Nausicaa manga. The movie basically takes the first volume, and tacks on an ending. That one volume, taken alone, is fairly simplistic. The real complexity comes in the remaining six.

[Ozymandias]

Just watched this again for the first time since the early 2000s.  Yeah, its still great and I usually don't give 2 shits about animation flicks.

[cannastop]

Absolute masterpiece: One of the best films ever. A

Edited May 14, 2017 by cannastop

[cannastop]

On 3/8/2014 at 9:19 AM, Lordmandeep said:

When  you watch this film you just see how it influenced animation worldwide. 

I'm actually not too sure about that. Who took the lessons of this movie to heart?