Princess Mononoke
Stream on HBO Max
Runtime: 2 Hours 14 Minutes
Rated PG-13
The harmony between humans, beasts, and gods has passed, creating unrest. When his village is attacked by a monster that used to be a god, Prince Ashitaka, ends up with an infected wound that will eventually kill him. He is instructed to visit a forest god to be healed. During his travels he finds humans ravaging the lands, forest spirits, and meets a feral princess named Mononoke.
Themes:
Harmony, balance, gods, demons, sacrifice, deforesting, rifles, war, iron, forest spirits, being neutral, the environment, spirits, love, animals, nature, greed, peace, and fighting for what you believe in.
Language:
B*stard - 2 D*mn - 4 Religious Exclamations - 2
Stuff to be aware of: (there are spoilers below)
Religion - There are forest gods in this world. They are represented by massive animals like a boar and a deer.
Scary - At the beginning of the movie, a monster attacks a village. The monster looks like thousands of squiggly roots that all move like maggots. There is a huge boar it is controlling. The boar gets shot with arrows and dies. It bleeds and talks in a deep creepy voice. The boar then quickly deteriorates showing muscle and then bone. It ends with a giant boar skeleton with blood around it.
Little forest spirits, which are kind of cute, turn their heads in weird ways. It could be creepy at first. Later, there are tree-planting spirits that are dark and crawl on all fours. Their eyes glow red. They look kind of like apes and they tell someone that they want to eat a dying human. Later they are seen again and resemble apps even more.
Sexual - A boy crosses a river with his clothes on his head. He is seen in medieval-style underwear. A man says, “from brothel girl to emperor.” Some of the little forest spirits when seen from the back have what looks like little butts.
There is a woman who talks about how handsome a man is. There are ladies that ogle over a handsome guy.
Brothel girls are mentioned multiple times. One entire town’s workforce is brothel girls. They appear to wear robes with no undergarments so they are often showing cleavage.
Violence - One character gets his arm burned and wounded. There is a scene in which a battle is going on and a man loses both his arms to an arrow. His arms are seen stuck to a tree. You can see the muscle and bone, but not much blood. A man gets his head severed from his body by an arrow. The headless body is seen on the horse with some blood coming from the top. There is talk of a man slitting people’s throats. These type of scenes happen multiple times in the movie.
A giant wolf bites several people and then gets shot. The wold squirts blood and falls down a cliff.
A man gets shot through the chest and bleeds. His blood pools on the ground while he tries to open a gate. Later, he is in water and his blood floats up through the water.
Many people are seen dead during a battle. During the big battle at the end, fighters are seen getting their heads and arms shot off. There are also a bunch of dead boars. Some of the boars are killed by explosives. There is a giant boar and wolves that are very badly wounded and bleeding heavily. It is pretty gross and gorey. One boar pukes blood and becomes a demon with all the little bloody tentacles. The giant boar is in the end of the movie a lot and continues to look disgusting. He looks pretty gross and only his eyes can be seen with all the bloody tentacles. Two of the characters get their lives taken by the forest god and they get covered in a nasty tar-looking substance.
The forest god is shot in the neck and its head falls to the ground. Slime-looking stuff comes out of him and attacks people and creates a huge being with hands and long arms to find its head. There is a wolf that gets its head chopped off and the head then bites a woman’s arm off.
Weird - The boy who has the infected wound on his arm finds out that whenever he tries to use that arm it swells up in odd ways and moves around like slime. A girl tries to suck a huge bullet out of a wolf’s bloody wound and spits blood on the ground. She is seen with blood all over her face.
There is a deer god that has a human face. It looks odd. This is the same being that gets its head shot off in the violence section above.
A girl chews up food and spits it into a boy’s mouth.
Other - There are lepers in a few scenes, but their wounds are all covered with bandages.
Overall:
Seeing It With Your Family
There is more violence and gore in this one than most Studio Ghibli movies. It earns its PG-13 rating with a few curse words mixed in as well. I believe there is a message in this movie about treating animals and the planet well, but it is wrapped in a war-like gory bow.
What I Thought
This one is considered a classic Studio Ghibli movie, but I get a bit bored watching it. Not my favorite Studio Ghibli movie and it has some gross art, but it does have a good message about living at peace with the earth.