The most important aspect for me in the book is the element of whimsy, and that seems in tact.
I can’t really blame them for filling out a story a bit; the original book is literally ten sentences long, and has a pretty scant amount of definitive narrative to get up in arms about.
The backstory is open; even the specifics are left pretty open. The way I remember it, Max goes, and the Wild Things are kind of scary, but then he scares them back, and they like him, and they all party. EJsGirl remembers it as something more dire: the wild things are going to eat Max, but he conquers them with his skillz. My girlfriend is of the opinion that the wild things just wanted to be Max’s friends from the start, and Max was being a jerk for scaring them and conquering them. But all three of us love the book, disagreements aside.
It’s open-ended, narrative-wise; what lasts and what matters is that sense of magic and whimsy and imagination that pervades the whole thing. Things appear, disappear, move in and out; we’re seeing a kid’s imagination at work. And that whimsical sense seems to come across quite well in the trailer (and in much of Jonze’s work); I know it hit a chord when I watched it, and made me feel nostalgic. I can’t wait for this movie now, and I also can’t wait to go home and pick up the book and re-read it.
Just watched the trailer - it looks unbelievably stupid. The story is very simple, a boy misbehaves, is sent to his room, he has a dream, and when he wakes up, his mom has shown her love for him by leaving him dinner “and it was still hot.”)
That’s it. God in heaven, why do movie-makers have to fuck everything up? Why not write a real, original screenplay instead of trying to take a children’s book which can be read in under 2 minutes?
I have to admit that I really don’t see the point of turning WtWta into a movie. It’s a beautiful, perfect story, but as a feature-length movie? Really?
The trailer does look neat, but I have the same qualms as astorian. I could really do without the kid being angsty that his mom is doing Mark Ruffalo.
True- and it’s that love that makes us horrified at this prospect. Isn’t there a rather scary line about how they’ll eat him up, they love him so? And they do try to keep him on the island…
I thought the monsters initially did need to be tamed because they were rolling their terrible eyes and all that. And THEN they were nice to him. So nice that…well, yeah, it got creepy.
That’s exactly the point - in throwing everything at us, we don’t need any dialogue to tell that they are changing the tone of the book substantially.
The whole point of the book (and why it’s so relatable to kids) is that most children will sometimes do bad things for no reason whatsoever, and then feel they’re being unfairly punished and imagine a world with no consequences, as Max does. To provide some kind of motivation or pathos for the bad behavior, as the movie clearly appears to do, subverts the universal appeal, and elegant simplicity of Sendak’s book.
It’s a simple little story with wildly imaginative visuals that any kid can relate to. BTW, does the bolded descrition remind you of anything? Hollywood doesn’t have the best track record adapting young children’s books. Granted, Jonze does the “wildly imaginative visuals” pretty well, but considering his screenwriting partner is Dave freaking Eggers (who is also releasing a tie-in novel in parallel with the movie), I’m expecting the pathos to be piled up higher than the tippy top of Max’s bedroom forest.
Upon review, this point just struck me, so I wanted to reiterate it - Dave Eggers, a renowned literary figure, is writing a novelization of the movie - said movie based on a picture book less than 50 pages and a few hundred words long.
Am I the only one struck by the absurdity of this?
Has anybody seen this trailer yet? You can watch it here. I think it looks fantastic. Now we just have to hope all the stories about problems with production have been resolved. I’m also a little nervous about taking a short kids book and stretching it out to a feature.
Isn’t there a rather scary line about how they’ll eat him up, they love him so? And they do try to keep him on the island…