Two animated movies that I love that are currently available on Netflix that I think all nature lovers should see are:
1: Nausicaa of the valley of the wind: rated PG, contains brief fighting and suffering animals. Nausicaa of the valley of the wind takes place in a post apocalyptic world where a toxic jungle spreads caused by the pollution of earlier humans. There are also giant insects that guard the jungle, and only princess Nausicaa has the power to calm them when a human causes a ruckus in their jungle.
2: Princess Mononoke: rated PG 13, contains bloody battles and suffering animals. Princess Mononoke is about what humans are doing to nature and to the animals and gods that live in the forest. A young prince named Ashitaka saves his village from the horrible demon god, but at a price, his arm is cursed and will kill him slowly. Ashitaka goes west to search for a cure but stumbles into bitter conflict between the polluting irontown and the gods and animals of the forest. it is now up to Ashitaka to bring peace.
Remark: While being a very violent movie, it has amazing and beautiful backdrops and is a all out favorite of mine.
In addition to your suggestions, both Avatar and Fern Gully come to mind, as well as the Dr Seuss adaptation of The Lorax…
Avatar not so much for the story, but for the ecology presented, which had a lot of thought put into it, and a surprising amount of research papers written about that specific aspect of the film.
Fern Gully and The Lorax are lot more basic in their approaches.
To a certain degree Wall-E as well, although the Eve & Satan parallels may distort the environmental side a bit.
I haven’t seen it, but The Man Who Planted Trees seems like it’s exactly the sort of thing you’re looking for.
I believe a short of The Giving Tree was made a while back too.
As an aside, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is one of my favorite movies for a number of reasons, not least of which is the beautiful Moebius (Jean Giraud ) inspired art that Studio Ghibli used. As a further aside, the word Ghibli (also the name of a great 1960s and early 1970s and terrible 1990s re-release Maserati sports car) has an environmental origin; it refers to a “hot and dusty wind descending from the interior highlands of Libya toward the Mediterranean Sea”.
Wonderful suggestions! Can’t believe i haven’t seen Nausicaa.
A Question: can you point me toward the research papers written on the ecology of Avatar/Pandora?
Many thanks!!
I love trying to identify as many things as I can whenever I rewatch Finding Nemo and Finding Dory, the latter especially because most of the film takes place in California
and the short film Piper is the most adorable thing ever while also being heavily nature focused
If you look on Google Scholar you’ll come up with a number of papers written about ecology and ecological thinking as it pertains to Avatar.
They’re a mix of ecology, indigenous issues, etc papers, so you have to look over the abstracts to sift out the ones that are in line with your specific interests.
It’s not really full-fledged movies, but especially since you mentioned the Ghibli movies, you should check out Travel Oregon’s tourism commercials. They are really well done and emphasize the natural aspects of the state. Check out the first one here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doVV1a7XgyQ. And check out the Travel Oregon website here: https://traveloregon.com/only-slightly-exaggerated/
This is a series more than a movie, but have a look at Moyashimon: Tales of Agriculture.
In addition to the ones mentioned, I remember really liking “Dot and the Kangaroo” when I was very little.
It’s not as polished as many of the other titles here (some of that is a product of the available tech when it was made). I just watched some clips on YouTube, and I don’t know if I’d still enjoy it today without the nostalgia (it seems very amateurish in some respects, even by the standards of the time, and it’s clearly aimed at a pre-K audience) but I appreciate what it was trying to do, by introducing various animated wildlife over real video footage of Australia.
You could probably also make a case for the Disney animated versions of “The Jungle Book”, “The Lion King”, “Tarzan”, and “The Rescuers Down Under”. Nature isn’t the main focus of those, but there are definitely multiple featured scenes with beautiful settings in them (especially the flight scene with Marahuté).
I would add to this bug focused films like “A Bug’s Life” and “Antz”.
I highly recommend, as two of my favorite films “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind” and “Princess Mononoke” (already mentioned, but worth to give them even more credit).
Also the youtube channels Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell, Animalogic, Deep Look, MinuteEarth and Brave Wilderness are really interesting.
I’ve watched Deep Look and Minute Earth before.
I’ll have to check out the others.
Have you seen the new Zefrank video on Nuibrachs?
But I think we’re getting off topic, because the OP specifically mentioned “animated movies”, and these channels are either not always animated, or not movie length.
Wow! thanks for the history! I chose these two movies because they are some of my favorites and I think they go a lot deeper than other movies, Again this is just my opinion and I respect yours.
Sorry everyone for the terrible writing job, I rushed it a bit.
@leifloftis Welcome to the community! Thank you and @earthknight for the movie suggestions! We are definitely going to check them out. :-):-):-):-) So excited!
I’m not sure any movie depicts nature better than Princess Mononoke. I love Nausicaa as well, but that synth score dates it a bit…
Sorry I didn’t really explain that I meant that the movies were meant to be relevant for the modern world and how us humans are effecting it.
I recommend Madagascar 2- Escape to Africa. This one is not a movie, but episodes: Wild Kratts from the PBS channel.
Ah!
Well, unfortunately most of what’s coming to my mind are things that tvtropes calls the “Gaia’s Vengeance” themed stuff, a lot of which tends to be pretty dumb.
I’d recommend the anime Mushishi, just in general. While the episodes deal with imaginary organisms that sort of balance between magical and biological, each episode deals with human interactions with them, and the consequences that can happen.
Many japanese anime series have a strong shinto influence so the relationship between man and nature is an important theme. Hotarubi no Mori (Into the forest of fireflies) might be another suggestion.
Many thanks!!