(Photo by Dimension Films/courtesy Everett Collection)
All Hayao Miyazaki Movies Ranked
Beyond the awards, beyond the box office, how do you know the films of Hayao Miyazaki are beloved and universal the world over? Scroll through his filmography on Rotten Tomatoes and you’ll find nary a Rotten rating. In fact, there isn’t even anything below 80%! It’s a sign of how far-reaching and influential his works are, made alongside his band of mad, merry animators at Studio Ghibli, whose tales of empathy, kindness, and bravery touch far beyond the borders of Japan.
Though Miyazaki is synonymous with Studio Ghibli, here we’re focusing only on his efforts as a feature film director, which started in earnest even before Ghibli was formed. 1979’s Castle of Cagliostro was a calling card that a talent had broken through the ranks of TV (where he had worked for two decades as an animator), adapting the long-running Lupin the 3rd charater into a rousing, action-packed heist adventure. By the time Miyazaki’s next feature came out, 1984’s Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Studio Ghibli was up and running to deliver everything the film required, elements that would become Miyazaki’s trademarks: a female-centric story, fleets of airborne transportation, plenty of lush flora and cute fauna, and an ecological bent exploring man’s frequently destructive relationship with nature.
What followed was a veritable hit parade of classics: Castle in the Sky, the closest Miyazaki ever got to working in Spielberg mode; Kiki’s Delivery Service, a sweet and charming coming-of-age witch story; Porco Rosso, a deeply romantic tale of cursed pigs and dogfights over the Adriatic; and Princess Mononoke, the violent action epic of the war between the natural world and human technological progress. It all reached its arguable cultural zenith with Spirited Away, the Alice in Wonderland-esque tale of a young girl lost in a world of spirits, which won the Best Animated Feature Oscar and topped our list of 140 Essential Animated Movies ever.
Miyazaki has spent the last two decades oscillating between retirement and returning to Studio Ghibli every time the pull of delivering another animated masterpiece became too strong (it’s appreciated!), giving the world the likes of Howl’s Moving Castle, Ponyo, and The Wind Rises. He’s currently back in not-retired mode, working since 2016 on The Boy and the Heron, an adaptation of the 1937 children’s novel How Do You Live?. Now, we rank all of his movies by Tomatometer! —Alex Vo
98%
96%
96%
94%
94%
91%
88%
88%
96%
95%
96%
91%
