Comments on Animation of Sky City

1. Confusion of Civilization

—— Analysis of Sky City

There is a myth in ancient Greece: there was a giant who was the son of the earth. Mother earth gave him infinite strength, and no one could beat him. But once, his opponent lured him into the air to fight, and the giant whose feet left the earth could no longer get strength from his mother, and was finally defeated and killed. Without the embrace of Mother Earth, even a giant with great courage will become vulnerable. The ancestors of ancient Greece may not have expected that the human civilization, which was still like a baby in their time, would grow into a giant modern society today. However, they prophesied to leave this advice to future generations through myth, but after being forgotten by human beings for thousands of years, an oriental listened to it with his heart in this noisy world and interpreted it to the world in his unique way, which is more powerful than fairy tales-this is animated movie master, famous Japanese director Miyazaki Hayao and his works.

Plot setting

Looking at all Miyazaki Hayao's animated films, it is not difficult to find that "flying" is its eternal theme. In this film, he even moved the stage to a "castle in the air"-Lapda, the city of the sky. This is an aerial city with the flying stone of anti-gravity device as the suspension power. Miyazaki Hayao, who is full of strong social consciousness and humanistic care, tries to insinuate the existing disadvantages of human civilization by asking the root cause of the loss of civilization, and probes into the philosophical proposition of how civilization can survive and develop. All this is manifested through the rise and fall of Lapda, a fictional city of the sky.

In the film, Laputa City appeared as a deserted city. People can only imagine its prosperity through huge flying stones, countless robots and mountains of treasures. Obviously, Miyazaki Hayao has no intention to introduce the process of the emergence and development of Laputa civilization to the audience. He only strongly shocked and impacted the hearts of every audience with the ultimate destruction of this once extremely prosperous civilization, thus questioning all sentient beings in modern society and finally thinking about the realistic problem of where human civilization should develop.

Of course, Miyazaki Hayao won't superficially attribute the civilization of Laputa, a city in the sky, to the enlightenment of alien civilization or the gift of mysterious power like some so-called science fiction films. He showed the evolution of this mysterious civilization to the audience simply and orderly with several groups of paintings in the opening credits that the audience usually didn't pay much attention to:

The goddess of the wind smiled and looked down at the earth, and she gently blew a burst of breeze, which dispersed the clouds and the ignorance of Laputa people's hearts. So, on the boundless grassland, Lapdaren set up the first crude windmill. Then the windmill evolved, with towering towers as the trunk and countless gears and levers as the limbs. Then, Lapdaren's mining machine kept digging deep underground. On the ground, the green grassland disappeared and was replaced by huge factories and chimneys that kept emitting smoke. At the same time, Laputa people have not stopped marching into the sky. From a single simple airship to a flying fleet equipped with advanced power source; From an "aircraft carrier" that can be slowly lifted off by countless propellers to an air city that can be suspended in the clouds with only a large propeller at the bottom; Until Lapda, the sky city equipped with anti-gravity devices and flying stones. And these earth-shaking changes, in the eyes of the goddess of the wind, are only insignificant moments. Next, accompanied by dark clouds and lightning, a huge aircraft floated down from the sky city. From there, people came out in droves and threw themselves into the embrace of the earth. The goddess of the wind still pays attention to all this with a smile and still caresses the earth with soft wind. In the last picture, on the vast green grassland, a simple windmill appeared again, and next to it stood a little girl with a bamboo basket-Hida. The gentle wind slowly tugged at the windmill and gently danced Hida's dress. Everything is like a quiet, peaceful and natural copperplate. Open this beautiful title page, and the ups and downs of the story will begin immediately. The suspense left to the audience in the title is also slowly solved.

The whole film tells the adventures of the heroine Hida and Bath, as well as the pirates, the army, Musca and other three forces looking for Laputa, the city of the sky. In the plot, the realistic and historical Laputa civilization are taken as two clues, and the interweaving of the two is used to promote the evolution of the plot. Let's jump out of the sequence of the plot of the film and re-examine the ins and outs of the story according to the flow of time.

A long time ago, Laputa people had a high degree of wisdom and civilization after a long historical development. They extracted the crystals of flying stones from the minerals buried deep in the earth and built Lapda, the city of the sky. Seven hundred years ago, Laputa people left the city of the sky and returned to the earth, and lived a quiet life in every corner of the earth. Time flies. As the present Princess Laputa, Hida inherited the flying stone handed down by the royal family from her mother, and at the same time, she remembered the spell that could awaken the magic of the flying stone. Although the Hida clan has long been indifferent to the prosperity of the distant world, Musca, the descendant of another clan of Lapda royal family, is ambitious. He has been trying to return to the city of the sky and use it to rule the world. In these 7 years, human civilization on the earth is also developing rapidly. With the mature development of flight technology, human beings are constantly looking for the legendary city of the sky. Some people have witnessed this mysterious city with their own eyes, and Baru's father is one of them. One day, a Laputa robot descended from the sky, which confirmed the existence of the city of the sky and strengthened the belief that human beings were looking for it. Especially the cutting-edge intelligence embodied in robots is beyond the reach of humans on the ground. As a result, the government dispatched a large number of troops, and also sent a mysterious KGB-like organization led by Musca to look for Laputa, the city of the sky. At the same time, a group of pirates who covet Laputa's treasure are also on the move. In the end, in order not to let Musca's ambition succeed, Hida and Bath read the curse of destruction together, and all traces of Laputa civilization, such as science and technology, wealth and weapons in the city of the sky, were reduced to ashes, leaving only a big tree carrying the remains of Laputa city and disappearing into the sky forever.

The track of thinking

After sorting out the time sequence of the whole film, it is not difficult to find that Miyazaki Hayao's thinking mainly focuses on two time points.

Seven hundred years ago, Miyazaki Hayao asked this question: Why did Laputa people give up their prosperity and return to the earth?

From the film, we can see that the buildings in the sky city are old only because of their age, and there is no sign of human invasion or destruction by natural disasters. The endless treasure was well sealed in the warehouse, and there was no sign of looting at all. Hundreds of powerful robots sleep in eggshell-like devices, with no scars that they have ever fought. It can be seen that the reason why Laputa people left the sky city was not the attack of other civilizations or internal wars, nor the invasion of natural factors, nor the exhaustion of their own wealth or energy. In other words, Laputa people were not forced to leave their homes at all, so there is only one possibility left: they voluntarily chose to give up everything and return to the earth. From this, we will further think: why did Laputa people willingly abandon the city of the sky and live a primitive, simple but calm and comfortable life?

It's obviously because Laputa people are aware of the hidden crisis under the surface prosperity. As Hida finally said to Musca-no matter how terrible weapons and robots are, the tree of life of Laputa civilization cannot survive without the soil of the earth.

Perhaps, when Laputa people finally made their castles float in the sky and the roots of big trees drift from the soil, they were still complacent about their own efforts to reverse Gankun, intoxicated with Yu Feixiang's happiness in the clouds, and complacent about their control of nature and overlooking the earth. However, when the sky city flies higher and higher, and their own civilization is more and more developed, they finally realize that their civilization can only survive and develop under the protection of the trees that represent nature, and it is nature that gives Laputa civilization vitality. As a result, they resolutely gave up those things that modern human beings dreamed of, shed the flashy coat of Laputa civilization, and let it re-enter the arms of Mother Nature in the most authentic state like a newborn baby.

On the surface, this return seems to mean the retrogression or extinction of a civilization, but in essence, it is a sign of the progress of civilization. Because it shows that Lapda civilization has further deepened its understanding of the world and the relationship between man and nature, it also proves that Lapda civilization itself has reached a higher level of civilization. Furthermore, we can say that Laputa civilization was sublimated by Laputa people's collective return to the earth and nature 7 years ago.

At the second point in time, when Sida and Bath read the curse of destruction together, what Laputa had sealed in the city of the sky, which was widely used in modern society to judge whether a civilization was advanced or not, eventually disappeared into the sky like ashes. And that seemingly indestructible black hemisphere also collapsed and disintegrated so quickly. At this time, Miyazaki Hayao raised another question: What is so powerful and terrible?

On the surface, it seems to be a mantra of Hida, but in fact it is endless greed, desire and ambition-this is the real culprit in destroying the city of the sky, and it is also the fundamental reason leading to the demise of a civilization.

If civilization is compared to the human body, then greed is not a virus that destroys its physiological function, but a demon that directly manipulates its spirit and thoughts. It will bring the body of civilization-science and technology, wealth and weapons-into full play in the evil direction and use it to destroy everything until self-destruction.

When the city in the sky is already under the control of Musca, an aspirant, and when all life on the earth shudders under the muzzle of the Skyfire weapon system, the destruction of Laputa civilization is a foregone conclusion. Such an advanced and developed civilization can't get rid of the fate of being controlled by greed, and finally even have to make a final resistance with self-destruction. Such an outcome is really regrettable, deplorable and pathetic.

Even without Musca, with the continuous improvement of flight technology, human beings will eventually find Laputa, the city of the sky, and driven by greed, they will use what is sealed in it to further "rule" nature and even kill each other. At that time, Laputa's civilization is doomed, and human civilization is bound to be buried in its own hands.

To sum up, we can see that in this film, Miyazaki Hayao's thinking is divided into two levels: in the first level, Miyazaki Hayao thinks that the relationship between civilization and nature is just like the relationship between trees and soil. If it is not rooted in the soil of the earth, even the towering trees can't survive. Similarly, a civilization that tries to break away from, control and override nature cannot survive. Only by "rooting in thick soil, bathing in the breeze, spending the winter with seeds and singing with birds" can the tree of civilization flourish and be evergreen all the year round. In the second level, Miyazaki Hayao thinks that if nature will give vitality to civilization, then greed will seize the vitality of civilization until it is completely destroyed.

It is particularly noteworthy that the above two levels of thinking are not a parallel relationship, but intertwined in the film, and ultimately contributed a profound insight and a bitter medicine to the development of human civilization-only a civilization that is integrated with nature and can resist the erosion of greed can continue to progress and last forever. It should be said that it is this humanistic thinking combined with the realistic destiny of human beings that forms the eternal charm of Miyazaki Hayao's animated films.

Unsolved Problems

If we make a further in-depth analysis of the gains and losses and the rise and fall of Laputa civilization along Miyazaki Hayao's train of thought, we will find that there are still two suspense left in the film for all the audience to think about:

First, as mentioned above, the return behavior of Laputa people is a sign of the progress of Laputa civilization. But this is a kind of progress on the cognitive and spiritual level, and the progress made by Laputa people is at the expense of reality and material level. Is it possible to find a road to progress that can achieve both spiritual and practical material levels? The pursuit of highly developed material civilization and the pursuit of a natural state of existence must be "you can't have your cake and eat it"? Can man-made technology be perfectly integrated with the original nature?

Laputa people lead a comfortable and quiet life after returning to the earth, but at the same time they must endure heavy and hard work. We can't help but wonder, with the intelligence of Lapdaren, can we transform several robots to "get rid of waste and filth in the morning, bring the moon lotus home" and "pick chrysanthemums under the hedge and see the South Mountain leisurely" by ourselves? Secondly, Laputa civilization was destroyed, but the chief culprit of "greed" did not disappear with the collapse of Sky City. On the contrary, it is grinning like a winner, and the next thing it's claws may be our human civilization. Miyazaki Hayao reflects his inner worries about the future of human civilization by alluding to the real world in his films. The civilization of Laputa, the city of the sky, itself can be said to be the epitome of many once brilliant but now extinct civilizations in human history. Seeing the city floating in the sky, people will easily think of the hanging gardens in Babylon, the Mir that has turned into a meteor and the International Space Station that is being built by mankind ... It is not difficult for careful viewers to find that the giant air battleship appearing in the film is based on the "Zeppelin" airship that Germany used to air raid Britain in World War I; The paunchy general in the army had the Nazi Iron Cross of the Third Reich hanging on his chest. Laputa's "skyfire" under the control of Musca is no different from the mushroom cloud when Hiroshima atomic bomb exploded. And after being controlled by Musca, the hemisphere hung high on the earth with outstretched weapons, isn't it just a symbol of the sword of Damocles, a weapon of mass destruction that has been hanging over human heads since the beginning of the Cold War between East and West?

The powerlessness, helplessness and helplessness of Laputa civilization in the face of greed, desire and ambition have given us a sobering warning, but all this in the real world seems to show that human beings are still stubbornly repeating the mistakes of Laputa civilization step by step. So can human beings get lost and stop at the brink? Is it possible for human beings to explore another brand-new development path by their own efforts to avoid the recurrence of tragedy?

Miyazaki Hayao didn't give the answers to the above questions that determine the rise and fall of human civilization. Maybe he can't give an answer, because these questions must gather the wisdom of all mankind to think. In this film, Miyazaki Hayao perfectly combines the natural entertainment of animated films with the ideological content that shines with wisdom through clear and vivid characters, suspenseful and gripping storylines, and imaginative imagination, which deeply touches countless audiences and is inevitable at the same time.