The Harrison Ford movies Hayao Miyazaki deems “unbelievably embarrassing”
Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki is royalty in the worlds of animation and manga.
The creator of seminal classics like Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Princess Mononoke has been called the Godfather of Japanese animation, and his work has inspired countless creators working in cinema today. For example, luminaries like James Cameron, Guillermo Del Toro, Wes Anderson, Bong Joon-ho and Steven Spielberg have all cited him as an influence – although this might be a bit of a sore spot for one of them, given Miyazaki’s scathing opinion on his iconic Harrison Ford-starring franchise.
In 2019, an old interview with Miyazaki resurfaced on the blogs Hachima Kikou and Yaraon, and he had some very interesting things to say about two enormous bastions of Western culture. In a vitriolic takedown of Hollywood filmmaking translated from his native Japanese, Miyazaki said, “Americans shoot things and they blow up and the like, so as you’d expect, they make movies like that. If someone is the enemy, it’s okay to kill endless numbers of them.”
Miyazaki was obviously trying to make a point about the glorification of violence in cinema, which has been a hot-button topic on and off over the years. However, he then used a classic piece of literature and its movie adaptation to delve deeper into his point. “Lord of the Rings is like that,” he commented. “If it’s the enemy, there’s killing without separation between civilians and soldiers. That falls within collateral damage.”
Miyazaki had no time for anyone who tried to say that Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth stories were pure fantasy and had no thematic basis in the real world. He argued}: “How many people are being killed in attacks in Afghanistan? The Lord of the Rings is a movie that has no problem doing that. 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.”
These were pretty strong words to throw at a beloved piece of literature and its fans – but then Miyazaki decided to aim at a different target as well. He raged: “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.”
Miyazaki’s point here seems to be the inherent irony in Japanese audiences watching a white character mowing down “foreigners” in battle, even though Jones doesn’t actually tangle with any Japanese soldiers in the movies. Miyazaki declared: “You are the ones that, ‘bang,’ get shot. Watching 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.”
In truth, the Indiana Jones movies have been accused of being culturally insensitive by several critics over the years, and Jones does indeed tangle with many foreign enemies whose depictions could be seen as questionable. This seems to be what Miyazaki is getting at with his critique of the franchise, and he is imploring viewers from his own culture to watch the films with a critical eye and question the thinking behind American depictions of foreign lands and people. He clearly believes we all have a cultural responsibility when consuming media, and Indiana Jones isn’t an unimpeachable text.
