Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Hayao Miyazaki might consider his single greatest work to be not one of his films, but rather the manga epic Nausicaä, which he labored to complete between 1982 and 1994. In this movie adaptation, made early in the process, genetically engineered weapons have burned civilization to the ground, leaving behind the seeds of a new global ecology that has made humans aliens on their own planet. Nausicaä’s eponymous princess—both soldier and scientist—seeks to reconcile the last remnants of her still-warring species with the monstrous biological order overtaking Earth. The film is a sweeping epic of war and adventure, and one of the best science fiction films made anywhere during the 1980s.