Avatar vs. Princess Mononoke: Why Miyazaki Did It Better

When it comes to pop culture trends, I consider myself a cautious follower. I like to wait a little to see if a trend will last long enough to be worth my time, but I eventually hop on the bandwagon, which makes me an objectively uncool person: not cool enough to be a trendsetter and not cool enough to ignore trends altogether.

But when it comes to film, I’m especially lazy. By the time I got around to Stranger Things, almost everyone I knew had already seen it. I watched Game of Thrones long after the final season was released and then only through a heavily censored, abbreviated series of YouTube videos. And by the time I watched Squid Game I already knew half the plot from the memes alone. (Incidentally, memes are my primary motivation for watching most shows.)

Regarding James Cameron’s Avatar, my laziness is a little more understandable since I was eight years old when it was released and I still hadn’t recovered from the shark scene in Finding Nemo. As I got older, I felt a little out of touch for not only never watching the movies but knowing literally nothing about them. The recent theatrical re-release was my opportunity to remedy that cultural deficiency. I streamed the first movie at home and watched the second movie in theaters in the new year, which proved to be a good choice since the visual appeal of The Way of Water might have been its only redeeming quality.

But I liked the first movie. In and of itself, without any commentary or external interpretation, I thought it was a good story, well-told and thoughtfully designed. Coincidentally, I had rewatched Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke just a few days before, so the first thing I noticed about Avatar was its striking similarity to Princess Mononoke. Both films deal with the struggle between industry and the preservation of nature, and even share the same central plot point: the impending destruction of a sacred forest by humans mining for a valuable substance (unobtainium in Avatar and iron in Princess Mononoke). There are even parallels between characters, such as Neytiri and San and their fierce protection of the forest, or Jake Sully and Ashitaka’s common role as middleman between the humans and the forest. Even the Tree of Souls in Avatar is reminiscent of the lake of the Forest Spirit in Princess Mononoke, and of course the central message of spirituality and harmony amongst all living things is shared between the two films. Still, there are important differences between the films. Above all, while Cameron and Miyazaki portrayed the same struggle and portrayed it in a similar way, they responded to the struggle very differently.

James Cameron presented the struggle in black and white. He wanted to make a point, and he wanted to make it as clearly as possible. To that end, he did not shy away from extremism or hyperbole in his storytelling: the humans were either selfish, sadistic beings who only cared about becoming filthy rich or they were entirely on the side of the Na’vi and the preservation of the forest. There was no spectrum, no nuance, no subtlety. Cameron had a single message and delivered it as clearly as he could.

Hayao Miyazaki, on the other hand, took a more nuanced approach. Indeed, it is Miyazaki’s talent for nuance that makes his films so timeless. I watched Avatar once and understood everything Cameron wanted to say; I’ve watched Princess Mononoke several times and still feel like I have a lot to learn from it. Interestingly, Princess Mononoke is perhaps the least subtle of Miyazaki’s films. He is known for being a pacifist and a nature lover, but Princess Mononoke is the only one of his films I’ve seen that declared this outright. Still, his beliefs are beautifully woven into all his work and have become the hallmark of Studio Ghibli. Through the beautiful, colorful animation and the peaceful music of Joe Hisaishi, Studio Ghibli transports you to a meadow, a forest spring, or a mountaintop. It never ceases to amaze me that I am able to feel the wind in The Wind Rises or the heat of Tokyo in summer in Whisper of the Heart. Miyazaki has mastered his art so completely that the plot, even the dialogue, become almost secondary; we feel the poignancy of the story, the emotions of the characters, and, above all, the spiritual vision of the director, in the artistic portrayal of the commonplace. Miyazaki takes us to a place that we recognize and reminds us of its importance. He takes us to a sunset, to a flower coming up from a crack in the pavement, to a young girl’s daily commute, to a little boy’s love for airplanes. Miyazaki often deals with painful subjects—all the more painful because we can relate to them—but at the heart of every one of his films is the same message: life, in all its forms, is incredibly beautiful and should never be taken for granted. If any artist is qualified to preach on the harmony between living things or the inherent spirituality of the universe, it’s Miyazaki. Miyazaki demonstrates not only the idea of harmony, but the practice of it, and that is precisely why his portrayal of the struggle between civilization and nature is far more compelling than James Cameron’s.

It is obvious even to the casual viewer that Miyazaki romanticizes everyday life in all his films. He is best known for his idealization of the natural world, but it is important to note that he does not purport that untouched nature has a monopoly on virtue or beauty. As easily as he draws out the beauty of an open meadow or a mountain forest, he draws out the beauty of a sunrise over Tokyo, of a twinkling city, of a train or a subway, and of an airplane gracefully floating on the wings of the wind. Nowhere does he draw a hard line between nature and civilization, nowhere does he say, “city bad, country good,” nowhere does he dismiss the machine as inherently evil. He speaks, rather, of a deeper, more spiritual struggle, and of a vital harmony of existence that is threatened not by industry nor by greed nor by any quantifiable force, but by a failure to love the everyday life. Princess Mononoke deals with that struggle more directly, perhaps, than any of his other films. While the film clearly criticizes the blind industrialization of pristine nature, it has a deeper message threaded throughout and paints the central struggle in a more accurate, nuanced light rather than in black and white.

The film begins with the attack on Prince Ashitaka’s village by the demon-possessed boar, Nago. In defense of his village, Ashitaka kills the boar, which then disintegrates to reveal an iron ball at its heart. Ashitaka is struck by the boar, leaving a wound that infects his right arm. The village elder explains that the boar was a great forest spirit from the west who was killed by the iron ball (signifying the destruction of the forest by the iron industry), and that he became a demon because he allowed “the curse” to consume him. Prince Ashitaka’s arm is now infected with this curse, which will eventually spread to the rest of his body and kill him. The village elder tells him that he must travel to the land of the west and find a way to lift the curse by doing what no beast or human has been able to do: “to see with eyes unclouded by hate.”

Ashitaka’s travels eventually take him to Iron Town, a small, impoverished industrial town just outside a sprawling, mountainside forest. The villagers are hard-working and far from wealthy, but they are friendly and happy. They are led by the fearless Lady Eboshi, who they unanimously adore. In the character of Lady Eboshi and the plight of Iron Town, Miyazaki sets his film apart from the black and white of Avatar and most other portrayals of the struggle between industry and nature. Lady Eboshi is fearless and even ruthless at times, but her primary allegiance is to the needs of the people and especially of society’s outcasts. Under her leadership, several former brothel workers are given jobs in the factory, and a leper colony is set to work making rifles. “You must not take your revenge on Lady Eboshi,” they tell Ashitaka, “She's the only one who saw us as human beings.”

But by day, Lady Eboshi leads a group of men to kill the forest spirits, to clear away the trees and to mine for iron. With the rifle the lepers made, she shoots the apes that come to plant new trees every night and complains to Ashitaka that they are preventing her from making the forest a thriving industrial area. She seeks to kill the Great Forest Spirit in the heart of the forest, believing that this will reduce its inhabitants to “dumb beasts” and allow her to take over completely.

Because of her war against the forest, Lady Eboshi is hunted by Princess Mononoke, a human girl raised by the wolf spirits of the forest. Note that the girl’s name is San, while Princess Mononoke is her title; mononoke is a Japanese word for spirits that can possess humans and inflict suffering. While the film never directly discusses it, this title may have been bestowed by the wolves to signify that San was possessed by the wolf spirit (a child of the wolves) to make war on the humans. And, indeed, San has one, all-consuming passion: protect the forest from the humans at all costs. Ashitaka is immediately drawn to her—her mystery, her passion, her spiritualism—perhaps because she reminds him of his own people’s communion with nature. But when San attacks Lady Eboshi with a knife, Ashitaka steps between them and says: “There’s a demon inside of you; it's inside both of you.”

Ashitaka, throughout the film, acts as a mediator between Iron Town and the forest. He sees the value in both communities, he understands the needs of each, but he never takes a definite side. He does not lose sight of the injunction of his village elder: “To see with eyes unclouded by hate.” It is difficult to say if it was a revelation that took place somewhere along his journey or if he knew it all along, but by the end of the film, Ashitaka makes it clear that the curse that afflicts the land of the west, that infects his arm and drove the boar to madness, is hatred. No one is immune to that curse: not the wolves, not the humans, not Princess Mononoke, and not Lady Eboshi. Even Ashitaka is infected, though he does not let it consume him.

Princess Mononoke and the forest inhabitants were dedicated to the idea of harmony that the forest represented and believed that by hating the humans they were defending the Forest Spirit. Ashitaka was dedicated to the practice of harmony, to the love of the honest worker and the virtuous life, industrial or natural, beast or human. He recognized that returning hate for hate was self-defeating, that hatred was a cancer that took root and spread in every living thing if allowed to. Because of this, Ashitaka was closer than anyone to the Great Forest Spirit, and Ashitaka alone understood that the Great Forest Spirit could never be killed. “He’s life itself.”

Through Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki was able to portray the devastating impact industry can have on the natural world, while still recognizing how inextricably the livelihoods of everyday, honest people are bound to industry. The popular theme of human stupidity and greed as the motivating factors behind excessive industry was only a subplot. Through the character of Ashitaka, Miyazaki demonstrated that the idea of harmony must begin with the practice of harmony, in our relations with humans as well as our relations with nature. What Miyazaki has worked tirelessly to teach us in all his films is simply that life is worth living, for its everyday beauty, for its spiritual fruits, as accessible to the factory worker as to the nomad. And it is life and the love of it that we are seeking to defend. Nature is only an example of it.

But even as we recognize the necessity of the iron industry to the survival of the townsfolk, we cannot help grieving for the great stretches of forest being burned to the ground. In our own world, we see the necessity of industry to survival in the present system, but there is a part of us that wishes that system would collapse, that society would cease to obsess over forward-movement and would return to a closer kinship with the earth. As Miyazaki himself said: “Modern life is so thin and shallow and fake. I look forward to when developers go bankrupt, Japan gets poorer, and wild grasses take over.”

These sentiments are not new. Think of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings or C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy and Chronicles of Narnia, or even Charles Dickens or Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, all of which touch on the struggle between industrialization and the preservation of nature. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis especially—perhaps because of their personal experiences with war—mourned the death of sanctity in the modern world and personally maintained a kind of reverent awe toward the natural world that is reflected in their creative work. Humanity has always struggled to reconcile its innovative impulse with its desire for a simple life. We cannot survive without moving, growing, and changing, and yet we are envious of the timeless beauty of nature: the repeating seasons, the steady trajectories of the moon and stars, the immutable laws of physics. Oh, that we were as steady as the earth! That we were beautiful for our constancy rather than our variability! But innovation is a human necessity—this is an indisputable fact. Miyazaki recognized this fact, albeit reluctantly, but rejected the idea that innovation necessitates the loss of appreciation for constancy and simple beauty. That is precisely the issue we take with innovation and industrialization: that it mechanizes the human soul and puts it to death. And this is perfectly true in the greater part of society. Society always adopts the most tangible interpretation of the system; thus, the farther the system strays from the natural world, the farther society strays from an appreciation of simplicity and constancy. The issue idealists have with industrialization is not so much its physical attack on nature as its spiritual attack on the human soul. “If the system makes people fake and materialistic,” they say, “I would rather the whole thing collapse.”

Ultimately, however, the individual has no control over the system or over society. We only have control over ourselves, and we can choose to keep the soul alive in any environment, through a practice of harmony and an appreciation of beauty in the commonplace. We can walk through a forest and appreciate its serenity and life, but just as easily we can walk along a city street and admire the twinkling lights and bustling crowds. In The Wind Rises, Miyazaki presents a system obsessed with designing military aircraft in contrast with an individual engineer preoccupied with the beauty and grace of a single plane. There is a balance between human innovation and appreciation of beauty and sameness, but it occurs on the individual level before the social. Miyazaki’s message is directed at the individual where Cameron’s and others’ is directed at society, and that is exactly why we find Miyazaki’s message far more compelling. Before we can change the world, we must change ourselves. For where does the true sanctity lie, if not in the human heart and its attitude to the world?