Monday, July 13, 2009

Princess Mononoke



Given all the hype surrounding Princess M., I really expected to like this film, especially after my movie marathon delivered some unbelievable, unwatchable shit. I tried to like it. Truly, I'm not lying. Unfortunately, the producers were having diarrhea when they did this film, therefore making it extremely difficult to like, especially since their primary conceit seems to have been: "let's just fucking confuse everyone as much as we can." The primary way they accomplished this was by having almost every character switch back and forth from protagonist to antagonist every other scene. The wolves are the good guys. No, wait, they're threatening to kill the hero. That's bad. Oh wait, they're trying to save the forest. Nope, they're just small-minded fuckheads and so on and so on. Worse than the mythic figures like wolves and pigs, were the humans: ah, the people of Iron Town are attacked by wolves! Oh wait, they're destroying the environment, I hate those guys! But wait a minute, they're not as bad as these imperial soldiers, so we sympathize again, only now they're shooting at the Princess of the forest, damn they're bad, but wait...WHAT THE FUCK? And so on and so on.

I truly praise their desire to present complex cast of characters and avoid the black-and-white mentality of so much fantasy, but this quickly devolved into simple inconsistency. Eventually I just gave up, opened a bottle of beer and decided to hate everybody in the film, after which it became kind of bitter fun to watch them spill one anothers blood across the screen. The artwork is gorgeous, and it really feels like they worked hard to make it look great. The soundtrack is kind of passable, but doesn't seem to impress.

The whole point of this movie is that the environment is cool and we shouldn't just burn plastic in our big-ass cars while polluting air by spraying cans out the window. While that's not a bad message for a movie to tell, especially in the last decade, Princess Mononoke does it really heavy and seems like it wants to make you feel bad for human progress.

Graphics 9/10
Sound 8/10
Storyline 8/10
Characters 8.5/10
Overall 8.5/10

2 comments:

kluxorious said...

that went better than expected. I gave it an 8.

however I do like the story. I'm just a sucker when it comes to saving the earth from polution shit.

Sapphire Pyro said...

having almost every character switch back and forth from protagonist to antagonist every other scene. . . . present complex cast of characters and avoid the black-and-white mentality of so much fantasy
== imo, it's not that it wasn't being consistent, it just shows that both sides could be right or wrong; righteous or evil; saints or bastards; and so on.

Hehe~ I love this movie a lot. It's the only anime movie that I've seen for more than 3 times *highly avoids rewatching unless I haven't seen it for an extremely long time*