By: Brayden Yin

This week, the movie Princess Mononoke will be 25 years old. In 1997, Miramax was a subsidiary of Disney, and they gained the rights from Studio Ghibli, the creators of Princess Mononoke, to release the movie in the United States.

Neil Gaiman, a British fantasy author, received a call in 1997 from the then-head of Miramax, Harvey Weinstein. Gaiman had been asked to write the English script for the movie, and Weinstein wanted to bring the writer to Los Angeles to watch the movie. Gaiman told BBC Culture that “I had zero plans to do it …. But the moment that changed everything for me was the scene where you’re looking at this large pebble. And then a raindrop hits it. And then another raindrop hits it. And then another raindrop hits it. And now it’s raining and the surface is slippery and wet. And I’m like, ‘I have never seen anything like this. This is real filmmaking. This is David Lean-level filmmaking. This is Akira Kurosawa-level filmmaking. This is the real deal.’” That was the moment when Neil Gaiman decided to write the English script for the movie.

Hayao Miyazaki is considered an exceptional filmmaker. Princess Mononoke may have marked the end of the era when Miyazaki created light-hearted movies for children. In the 1980s, he was famous for creating family-friendly films like My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki’s Delivery Service. However, in the 90s, he began to swerve away from this trend. He hated the idea that people thought Studio Ghibli only made gentle movies about the beauty of nature. He was also going through a tough time emotionally during which he began to think of the world as cursed. He was a believer in “power to the people,” but when the Soviet Union was toppled and ethnic conflicts arose in Europe, the filmmaker’s heartfelt political beliefs felt tainted.

Japan, Miyazaki’s home country, was also going through a crisis. What was called Japan’s “bubble period,” an economic boom during the late 1980s, came to a grinding halt. Japan then plunged into what seemed like an endless decline. The country was hit by the Kobe earthquake in 1995, the worst quake since 1922. The disaster killed 6,000 people, destroying tens of thousands of homes. Three months later, a terrorist cult attacked the Tokyo Metro with sarin gas. Miyazaki was now living in a broken and confused country, in which many Japanese began to experience what they called “spiritual emptiness.” The animator began to think that he shouldn’t make light-hearted, entertaining movies for children anymore, and those thoughts led to the creation of Princess Mononoke.

Mononoke is starkly different from Studio Ghibli’s previous movies. It includes scenes of graphic violence, and a dark mood pervades the film. Still, Princess Mononoke is one of Miyazaki’s greatest works, and it beautifully expresses the time period when Miyazaki created it.