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Avatar is in a way Dances With Wolves, Pocahontas and Princess Mononoke, but I would say it is more Princess Mononoke.
Here's why: A hero journeys to a world where he is caught in a war between the animals who live in the surrounding forests, and the human invaders who are mining and destroying the animals and their forests. Both stories have a hero and a princess who fall in love, gigantic animals, a mining town with a ruthless leader who is indifferent to the forests and animals. In both stories, human invaders are destroying the forests in order to dig for the precious mineral (iron ore & unobtainium) under them. Both stories are structured on the same theme - man versus nature. Kodama (child) forest spirits became woodsprites in Avatar. The great Forest Spirit changed to Eiywa. There are similar scenes in both movies. One is when Ashitaka follows Eboshi into her garden in the middle of a mining town. In Avatar, when Jake is first linked to his Avatar, he runs into a garden where he meets Grace. In the climax of Princess Mononoke, when the destruction of the forest occurs, San, the princess sees Ashitaka on the human side. She tells him to leave and never come back. The same scene occurs in Avatar when Home Tree is burning up in flames. Neyteri also feels betrayed by Jake and tells him to leave and never come back. These scenes are no mere coincidences. They are carefully planed. Even similarly, both movies share the message of: "don't fuck nature or it will doom us." The little difference is that Avatar is satisfying and Princess Mononoke is not. Avatar's author sided with nature while Princess Mononoke's author is neutral. The author did not make the humans in Princess Mononoke look evil even though their actions are evil. Greed is evil. Humans are greedy, and we are evil. To make it satisfying, I would have done it differently. I would have created another woman leader in the mining town opposite of the evil Lady Eboshi. She will be her second-in-command --and-- they always disagree and fight. Her goal is constantly reminding the evil woman that humans should live in peace with the forests or suffer the consequence. This woman and Lady Eboshi would fight and show their people two different paths. Then at the end, have the wolf mother bites off the evil woman's head and make the other lady the new leader who will lead the people in the right direction. To me this would have been a much satisfying ending. (Spoiler Alert) All the creator did is have the wolf mother bites off Lady Eboshi's (the evil woman) hand and justified atonement. That does not atone for her sin and wickedness. She has killed countless animals and burned many forests. Her sentence is death. She deserves death for atonement. The message is to tell the world that if you do that, your greed will destroy us all. The rest of the world do not wish to live under your greed and suffer the consequence. If you do not change, then you need to be eliminated from the face of the earth. There is no room for people like you who destroy the earth. In Princess Mononoke, when Lady Eboshi shoots off the head of the Forest Spirit, its body turns into a black ooze that kills everything it touches including the forests. The black ooze is a symbol of pollution; the pollution that we, humans, are creating everyday for our mother earth. We are destroying the earth everyday, slowly, one tiny bit at a time. The message I got from both films is when man continuously pollute the earth, we are heading towards our own doom - we will destroy ourselves. It will be our apocalypse - the end of the world. The message is very powerful. A warning not to fuck nature. Nature is our mother. We are her children. You're not supposed to fuck your mother. That's sick! |
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