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Hayao Miyazaki not fond of "American" movies

Ashby

Ashby

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,631
https://kotaku.com/hayao-miyazaki-seems-to-hate-lord-of-the-rings-indiana-1833458496

On LotR:
Lord of the Rings is like that. If it's the enemy, there's killing without separation between civilians and soldiers. That falls within collateral damage. How many people are being killed in attacks in Afghanistan? The Lord of the Rings is a movie that has no problem doing that [not separating civilians from enemies, apparently]. If you read the original work, you'll understand, but in reality, the ones who were being killed are Asians and Africans. Those who don't know that, yet say they love fantasy are idiots.
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On Indiana Jones:
Even in the Indiana Jones movies, there is a white guy who, 'bang,' shoots people, right? Japanese people who go along and enjoy with that are unbelievably embarrassing. You are the ones that, 'bang,' get shot. Watching [those movies] without any self-awareness is unbelievable. There's no pride, no historical perspective. You don't know how you are viewed by a country like America.
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His LotR criticisms stand out to me because how American even are those movies? As said in the article he seems to be grouping all of the West together under the banner of "American" which is not all that cool for various reasons.
 
Wein Cruz

Wein Cruz

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Oct 27, 2017
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Walter.png
 
SaberVS7

SaberVS7

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Oct 25, 2017
5,237
...Yeah... I don't think he has any idea what he's talking about here.

Much like basically anything he talks about.

Sorrynotsorry.
 

Deleted member 8860

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Oct 26, 2017
6,525
He's not wrong on the principles, even if the exact details are debatable.

Ashby said:
https://kotaku.com/hayao-miyazaki-seems-to-hate-lord-of-the-rings-indiana-1833458496

On LotR:

On Indiana Jones:

His LotR criticisms stand out to me because how American even are those movies? As said in the article he seems to be grouping all of the West together under the banner of "American" which is not all that cool for various reasons.
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Tolkien's books are rooted in British colonialist and imperialist thought. The movies were funded by Americans and made for American audiences. Sure, the US, UK, and NZ are separate countries, but grouping western imperialism together isn't "uncool".

(FWIW, I still love FotR.)
 
samoyed

samoyed

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
15,191
He's not wrong. He's coming from the point of view of anti-war environmental pacifism. The closest Tolkien gets to him is that they both romanticize the countryside and preserved nature (Miyazaki with his Iron Town, Tolkien with industrialized Isengard)
 
smurfx

smurfx

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Oct 25, 2017
10,578
sounds like he really hates america. wonder how he really felt about working with disney.
 
Stryder

Stryder

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Oct 27, 2017
1,530
US
Is this the same guy that said "Anime was a mistake"?

Why are people still listening to him. His soul died when he saw his son's first film (which he hated) and he hasn't been the same since.
 
Sweeney Swift

Sweeney Swift

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Oct 25, 2017
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#IStandWithTaylor
His arguments for why they suck are obviously the big issue, but the Hobbit films and the most recent Indy completely sucked, so I'm still giving him partial-credit on that one
 
Lunar Wolf

Lunar Wolf

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Nov 6, 2017
16,237
Los Angeles
Mushroomer25 said:
"Old Man Hates Things Not From His Culture" doesn't seem like news to me.
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SaberVS7 said:
...Yeah... I don't think he has any idea what he's talking about here.

Much like basically anything he talks about.

Sorrynotsorry.
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so1337 said:
Old man yells at cloud.psd

Edit: Damn you Mushroomer25
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Wein Cruz said:
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I mean he's right. These aren't new criticisms.

Look at how many of the evil men are minorities or are slapped with traditionally ethnic descriptions and how many of the good men are lily-white.

Then look at the Indiana Jones movies where the protagonist is a white man shooting tons of minorities. It should be a little uncomfortable when you're that minority that he's shooting at and because of the history behind such sequences but people don't bat eyes at that.
 

BigJeffery

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
2,338
Ashby said:
His LotR criticisms stand out to me because how American even are those movies? As said in the article he seems to be grouping all of the West together under the banner of "American" which is not all that cool for various reasons.
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In terms of like nationality of the people involved in making it, not particularly high afaik.
In terms of sensibilities, about as American as it gets.
 
TheShampion

TheShampion

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,214
Hayao Miyazaki has made being a grump about everything his brand.

I like to think that the character Fujimoto in Ponyo is Miyazaki poking fun at himself (he has said in interviews that he wants the world to start over, much like Fujimoto).

I'm honestly more of Isao Takahata fan when it comes to Ghibli, but I can't help to love Miyazaki.
 
Bronx-Man

Bronx-Man

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Oct 25, 2017
15,351
Eh, it just sounds like he's not a fan of movies with imperialist messages/iconography. Nothing unreasonable about that.
 

MeaningOfKarma

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Oct 30, 2017
707
User Banned (2 Weeks): Derogatory language, bad faith misrepresentation of arguments, previous severe infractions
Hayao Miyazaki: "I don't like how there is structurual racism/imperialism in these two works and I take this seriously"

Rustled nerds of Resetera: "shut up you old nip"

Stay classy folks
 
lurksalot

lurksalot

Avenger
Oct 30, 2017
180
Weird, I really like a lot of the movies he mentioned while also liking some of his movies, except for that one about the pig bi-plane pilot.
 

ISOM

Banned
Nov 6, 2017
2,684
American movies aren't just that though. There's every genre out there if he actually cared to look. I would accept his criticism more or the premise of this thread if he talked about movies that didn't have this imperialistic premise in addition to the ones he doesn't like.
 
mael

mael

Avenger
Nov 3, 2017
16,764
Can't say he's wrong...
Anglo-Saxon imperialist media is not exactly kind to the oppressed populations.
 
TissueBox

TissueBox

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Oct 25, 2017
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Lmao he refers to the 'Hollywood' condition in general, and his sentiment is not a deranged one, it is in fact plentifully true, or at least told from a place that's true.

Self-absorbed excess is reflected to the very core of the blockbuster mold. ;p

AWYIS!
 
Meg Cherry

Meg Cherry

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,268
Seattle, WA
The Gunslinger said:
I mean he's right. These aren't new criticisms.

Look at how many of the evil men are minorities or are slapped with traditionally ethnic descriptions and how many of the good men are lily-white.

Then look at the Indiana Jones movies where the protagonist is a white man shooting tons of minorities. It should be a little uncomfortable when you're that minority that he's shooting at and because of the history behind such sequences but people don't bat eyes at that.
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I respect his criticisms, but considering Miyazaki's history of hot 'old man yells at cloud' takes like this - I feel like this has more to do with him than the media he's talking about. He's a traditionalist.
 
Richiek

Richiek

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Nov 2, 2017
12,063
He's not wrong about Indiana Jones. A white guy grave robbing artifacts from non western countries would not fly today. Also let's not forget it's heavily implied he had a relationship with Marion when she was underage.
 
El Bombastico

El Bombastico

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Oct 25, 2017
36,034
He's spot on, sadly. The only good humans in LotR are white Nordics. Southrons and Easterlings are all to a man servants of what is basically Satan (and don't give me that shit about what Tolkien said in a letter to someone. its wasn't in the books, it doesn't count). And that it WITHOUT getting into the disturbing racial aspects of the orcs...
 
samoyed

samoyed

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Oct 26, 2017
15,191
A big difference between Princess Mononoke and LOTR is the role of society in the narratives. In Mononoke there's multiple competing societies (Ainu, Iron Town, forest denizens) with different and conflicting interests. There's corruption (figuratively) in Iron Town and corruption (literally) in the forest, and the resolution is the excising of these corrupting influences as well as the establishment of harmony between the societies.

LOTR, due to the mythopoetic nature of it, is about Good triumphing over Evil. There's also elves, but they're kind of neutral (well they weren't neutral in the films but they were non-interventionist in the books). There's individual evil and corruption, like Saruman and Denethor, but nothing like rights or society for orcs and goblins despite being ostensibly sentient. They're slaughtered without mercy, they have no motives except for conquest, no agency except to be killed by the Good Guys. Peace arrives at the defeat of evil and the return of the King (to a prior status quo of enlightened mystic kings).

The book is more complex than this but the film wasn't.
 
Dracil

Dracil

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Oct 30, 2017
2,437
So he's basically just doing the standard ERA-style criticize Japanese media/culture from a Western lens and flipping it around.
 
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