Princess Mononoke is streaming on HBO Max in the US, and on Netflix in the UK and Australia, and it remains one of the most fully realized fantasy epics Studio Ghibli ever produced. Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, the film follows Ashitaka, a young prince cursed by a demonized boar god, as he travels west searching for a cure and stumbles into a war between industrial expansion and the forest itself.
The film refuses to give either side a clean villain. Lady Eboshi is trying to clear the forest to fuel her iron works and protect the outcasts who depend on her town for survival, while San, a young woman raised by wolves, is fighting to stop her. Ashitaka is caught trying to find a way for both to survive without destroying each other.
When Miramax picked up the film for its 1999 US theatrical release, the studio wanted to trim it down for American audiences. Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki settled the matter by sending over a katana with a note attached that said no cuts. The full version is the one that reached American theaters, and it is the version streaming today.
It holds a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, a number that has barely moved in the decades since release, and the reason is craft as much as ambition. The hand-drawn forest spirits and the battle sequences carry a physical weight most animation avoids, and the moral argument is built into the images rather than the speeches.
If you have never seen it, this is one of the very few genuinely essential entries in the Ghibli catalog, and the one to start with if you want Miyazaki at his angriest and most expansive. If you have, it rewards a rewatch for how carefully it withholds judgment on Eboshi.
