12/18/03

Mononoke vs. LOTR

In response to something written on the Nausicaa Mailing List:

 

I'm not a big fan of "Princess Mononoke," but Tolkien's so-called complexity is mainly surface dressing: a lot of made-up history, some invented languages, so on and so forth. On an emotional level though, he's pretty much straightforward--the good guys are good, the bad guys bad (painfully bad--only Saruman is sketched with any detail, while Sauron is a big ball of gas), save for Gollum, his one successfully complex character. More like the exception that proves the rule.

 

Miyazaki's features may not have the sweep of Tolkien (except for his "Nausicaa" manga), but I think he achieves a level of emotional complexity in both films and manga that goes beyond Tolkien.  The question is not even worth considering seriously.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Comparing Princess Mononoke to Lord of the Rings... Interesting.. Very interesting.. Don't exactly see the connection, but interesting... Then again its so way past my bedtime reading this...

Anonymous said...

The connection? Both are epics, both highly regarded. Only one has silly, sexless elves traipsing all over while the other is the product of a real imagination.

Anyway, as I said, it's in reply to something posted in the mailing list I mentioned.

Anonymous said...

Ok, don't get mad at me but what do you think of the LOTR trilogy by any chance? Saw the midnight screening of Return of the King a couple of days ago.. I like it best of all the three... :)

Anonymous said...

Haven't seen ROTK but I have read the books, think they're overrated, have seen Jackson's Dead Alive and Bad Taste, which have more effrontery and humor, have seen Heavenly Creatures, which has more sexuality, and I think the LOTR movies need a lot of those same qualities--effrontery, humor, sexuality. Too bad Jackson just followed the books.