I watched Where the Wild Things Are in the same weekend as the Box, even though the two are very different genres, both are adapted from very short stories (children’s or not). It’s good to compare how the two different approaches where the source material was too short to fill the entire length of a movie. In the Box Richard Kelly pretty much wrap up the original plot in about 20 mins and for the rest of the movie is all his imagination and has no trace of the original plot or the moral of the story. In Where the Wild Things Are, Spike Jonze filled in the details while retain the moral lesson and atmosphere of the original story.

The original story had at most, 9 sentences, and was about a wild child named Max threw a tantrum, then got sent to his room by his mom. Being angry, he soon enter the world of the Wild Things via his imagination, rule the monsters and dance with them in a “wild rumpus”, then he get back home when he was feeling homesick. It was such a simple story about a child’s feeling and parents’ love. Jonze was able to expand the story while remain in the spirit of the story. However, his take of the story is much darker and deeper to the point that a child is not going to truly understand this film. He focused on the negative feelings a child would feel – something that doesn’t get shown on screen that often. The isolation, the loneliness, the jealousy, the frustration, the anger are all there. It also manifested the different personalities of the monsters. In the book, the monsters are just the monsters, they didn’t even have names. Here, they have names and unique personalities.

These monsters were brought to life by an excellent class of actors who gave their voices to them. They also have wonderful costumes that are refreshingly real because they are animatronic instead of CG. Australia provided locations that makes the world of the monsters come alive. From the ocean to forest to mountain to desert, the out of this world look of the locations really makes you believe this world of monsters. Despite their look, the monsters are not meant to be scary or as comic relief (well, aside from the two owls – Bob and Terry! Their knock knock joke is awesome!). Their personalities came through the thick costumes like they are real people.

The movie isn’t a feel good warm children’s movie, I don’t really think it’s intended for children. There is a sense of sadness that filled the movie. Jonze really did capture a side of children that people ignored. He also did a great job by retaining the simplicity of the story while expanding it into a full length movie, a job that might seems easy but is not.

Related posts:

1. Monsters vs Aliens
2. The Last Airbender
3. Coraline
4. Watchmen
5. The Box

Tagged: Movies