Quote:
Originally Posted by lubczyk
What is the central message of the movie besides "War is horrible?" Please, I must have missed it. It feels like a type of movie that is praised for it's pacifist message even if that message is only skin-deep and superficial.
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I've already explained what I think it's about
here.
Of course, you're welcome to disagree entirely and think that I'm a load of bollocks. That's what differences in creative opinion are all about, and I don't mind having a robust debate over interpretations. I'd merely like to point out that seeing
The Sky Crawlers as nothing more than a "war-is-hell" movie will of course lead one to judge it a failure, for the very same reasons you've pointed out.
Expecting
The Sky Crawlers to be a war movie is not very different from expecting
Ghost in the Shell to be a manual on advanced cybernetics (which was what Masamune Shirow originally intended it to be, but Oshii happily went ahead and reinterpreted it to suit his own inflated ego).
The Sky Crawlers might be philosophical, but its message is more about existential angst — Oshii's favourite theme — rather than "war and peace".