Fernonoke: The Lost Opportunity
I watched Princess Mononoke yesterday. First time in a very long time I watched the English dubbed version. The Lady of Iron Town is part good and part evil and therefore very un-Hollywood. She is good to her lepers and former brothel girls but determined to kill the Forest Spirit and cut down all the trees in the name of progress. She is complicated, a study in grays. Even at the end of the film.
Even Princess Mononoke, the titled character, is flawed. All humans are bad, in her eyes, even the one that wants to help her. The only character in the whole movie with out major character flews is cursed with the mark of a demon and (like the forest) is slowly being eaten alive by evil that others have done.
So why am I bringing up this 1997 overlooked masterpiece at this late date. Because I followed Mononoke by watching Ferngully something I have always meant to do. I have always connected these two movies in my head for very obvious reasons.
Princess Mononoke and Ferngully: The Last Rainforest are thematically the same movie. One is told by a Hollywood insider working under the constraints of the Hollywood animation system and the other by a Japanese Master filmmaker in complete control of his vision.
Let me start out by saying that I am well aware that this is an unfair comparison, apples and oranges. Let me also say that I respect the Kroyers, Bill, who I bump into around the industry, and Sue, who I teach with at a couple of schools. I even like Ferngully in its own right when not watched so close to Miyazaki. I approve of the spoon-fed environmental message that Ferngully tells in its own limited way. But a movie like Ferngully, like most Hollywood product, must suffer in comparison to a film like Mononoke.
These two are worlds apart even if they have the same message. The 1992 Ferngully is a Hollywood product with all that that means. Committee created, prerequisite Disney like songs, focus group driven, Robin Williams as a rapping bat, comic relief characters to the right and left, black and white morality, a villain that is pure evil and a female hero that is all good, a confused human who doesn`t know what he is doing but learns by the last reel and a sugar coated happy ending aimed right at a grade school demographic.
A product that is designed to sell but does not take chances, a Hollywood product for American kids with all the corporate Happy Meal tie-ins lined up before it going into the theaters.
That is what distributor demands and that is what the smart director better deliver. And Bill is smart. He damn well knew going in what kind of movie he would be allowed to make. He is a pro, he knows what sells. He knows that he can only be himself in short self produced animations. As he has proved in the past.
The overall American viewpoint is naively simplistic. The idea of a bad character doing anything good or a good character doing something bad it foreign to our pop culture and our one dimensional politics. (Clinton had sex with someone he was not married to therefore all his policies are no good. Throw him and them out!) We do not like to see shades of gray in the people who rule us or the movies that entertain us. If you are part bad, you are all bad. It is the American way.
In a Hollywood animated movie the bad guy could never be allowed any noble traits. It will confuse the suits. It is always all good or all bad in a Hollywood movie, no room for complications or more then one dimension in our characters. Thank you very much. The lack of formula in Anime in general and Miyazaki in specific is what makes for popularity in the dimensionally starved young American viewing public. There is an American market for thought provoking film.
Animated movies for sophisticated adults. What a concept! Mononoke is dream like with dark and evil nightmare elements. The characters have dimension. The message is not spoon fed with all the lose ends nicely tied up. There is not one simple answer. The viewer is left to think about the film after leaving the theater.
Even Walt Disney scared us and made us cry with his Snow White. Why are Walt`s intellectual children so afraid to serve up anything but eye candy and formula? Or more rightly, why are the people in charge of what Walt`s intellectual children get to make so afraid of making animated films with real meaning? Why won`t Hollywood filmmakers (live action or animation) make films that make us think?
Even Princess Mononoke, the titled character, is flawed. All humans are bad, in her eyes, even the one that wants to help her. The only character in the whole movie with out major character flews is cursed with the mark of a demon and (like the forest) is slowly being eaten alive by evil that others have done.
So why am I bringing up this 1997 overlooked masterpiece at this late date. Because I followed Mononoke by watching Ferngully something I have always meant to do. I have always connected these two movies in my head for very obvious reasons.
Princess Mononoke and Ferngully: The Last Rainforest are thematically the same movie. One is told by a Hollywood insider working under the constraints of the Hollywood animation system and the other by a Japanese Master filmmaker in complete control of his vision.
Let me start out by saying that I am well aware that this is an unfair comparison, apples and oranges. Let me also say that I respect the Kroyers, Bill, who I bump into around the industry, and Sue, who I teach with at a couple of schools. I even like Ferngully in its own right when not watched so close to Miyazaki. I approve of the spoon-fed environmental message that Ferngully tells in its own limited way. But a movie like Ferngully, like most Hollywood product, must suffer in comparison to a film like Mononoke.
These two are worlds apart even if they have the same message. The 1992 Ferngully is a Hollywood product with all that that means. Committee created, prerequisite Disney like songs, focus group driven, Robin Williams as a rapping bat, comic relief characters to the right and left, black and white morality, a villain that is pure evil and a female hero that is all good, a confused human who doesn`t know what he is doing but learns by the last reel and a sugar coated happy ending aimed right at a grade school demographic.
A product that is designed to sell but does not take chances, a Hollywood product for American kids with all the corporate Happy Meal tie-ins lined up before it going into the theaters.
That is what distributor demands and that is what the smart director better deliver. And Bill is smart. He damn well knew going in what kind of movie he would be allowed to make. He is a pro, he knows what sells. He knows that he can only be himself in short self produced animations. As he has proved in the past.
The overall American viewpoint is naively simplistic. The idea of a bad character doing anything good or a good character doing something bad it foreign to our pop culture and our one dimensional politics. (Clinton had sex with someone he was not married to therefore all his policies are no good. Throw him and them out!) We do not like to see shades of gray in the people who rule us or the movies that entertain us. If you are part bad, you are all bad. It is the American way.
In a Hollywood animated movie the bad guy could never be allowed any noble traits. It will confuse the suits. It is always all good or all bad in a Hollywood movie, no room for complications or more then one dimension in our characters. Thank you very much. The lack of formula in Anime in general and Miyazaki in specific is what makes for popularity in the dimensionally starved young American viewing public. There is an American market for thought provoking film.
Animated movies for sophisticated adults. What a concept! Mononoke is dream like with dark and evil nightmare elements. The characters have dimension. The message is not spoon fed with all the lose ends nicely tied up. There is not one simple answer. The viewer is left to think about the film after leaving the theater.
Even Walt Disney scared us and made us cry with his Snow White. Why are Walt`s intellectual children so afraid to serve up anything but eye candy and formula? Or more rightly, why are the people in charge of what Walt`s intellectual children get to make so afraid of making animated films with real meaning? Why won`t Hollywood filmmakers (live action or animation) make films that make us think?
posted by Larry Loc @ 8:22 AM
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