The Night Max Wore His Wolf Suit
Normally, I’d be instantly skeptical of any movie claiming to be based on “one of the most beloved books of all time.” But in the case of Spike Jonze’s long-delayed adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, I’d say that’s a description that’s more than earned. Certainly, in my home, Maurice Sendak’s scary and wondrous journey through the wilds of a child’s imagination was a favorite, read before bedtime more or less on repeat for years. Even after I started reading on my own, I remember asking my mother to read it to me. I don’t know how many times she did, but it had to have been in the hundreds — she even made up her own words for the wordless pages. I remember a lot of my childhood through the books that I read, or in my youngest years the books that were read to me, and this is one of my earliest, fondest memories.
And it seems like Jonze’s movie, which was scripted by the sensitive indie world’s hero of clever earnestness, Dave Eggers, is targeted not towards the same imaginative young children who continue to make the book a success each year, but to those who, like me, grew up with the book and remember it lovingly. With its Arcade Fire soundtrack (not so much indie nerd dogwhistle as flashing neon sign) and folky aesthetic, the trailer is a perfectly sold hipster nostalgia piece — and sure enough, I buy it completely.
This sent a tingle down my spine, for reals. This was one of the three favorite books of my early childhood. Between this and Coraline, it’s really good to see this kind of imaginative creepiness come back to kids movies.
— Joseph · Mar 26, 02:41 AM · #
Boy, it’s really going to have to add something special for me to like this. I don’t want to be Mr. Cranky McNegative but that movie looked like it had the potential to historically suck. I was just watching American Idol and this pasty young white goof Matt, sang “Let’s get It On,” and I was telling the wife, he can imitate the vocal stylings pretty good and most of the AI voters probably have never seen Marvin Gay singing this particualr number, but Dog… (I call my wife dog all the time, not just when we are watching AI) there are some things that people attempt that just make them look stupid in this really adolescently egotistical way if you don’t have something new and worthwhile to add. And thus there are somethings one should leave alone. Let’s not even get into tone and the meaning of a particular medium. But the whole mom kissing some other guy on the couch and the Dave Eggery-young-boy-angst slathered all over the cute young angsty school boy, man that was not what Where the Wild Things was about at all. Max was bad in all senses of the word. He was not filled with angst about his mother kissing some divocee. He could care less about his mother. He was trying to stab his cute little westy with a fork. He was a wild thing who liked being a wild thing until he got bored. Sure he came home to the bosom of his unconditionally loving mother, but you knew he’d shove off again as soon as the chow settled.
That was just a trailer. There might be a genius take behind all this. But The Arcade Fire? Dave Eggers? Really? Talk about marketing. I can feel a whole new wave of Max tattoos cresting.
— cw · Mar 26, 03:11 AM · #
I do not buy it. At all. The magic of the book was exactly in its beautiful and ultimately terrifying exoticism. Sendak has a gift for environments that are just weird enough to get creepy by the end of the book and make the reader Very Glad She Is In Her Own Bed at the end. (See also: Outside Over There. I remember having the same reaction to In The Night Kitchen as well, but I’m willing to accept that’s just me.)
So this trailer, with its gooey universalizing familiarity, is exactly WRONG. “Inside all of us there is”? Seriously? Why is escaping to the land of the Wild Things any fun if the Wild Things are exactly like the people you left behind, at least on the inside, where it counts?
— Dara Lind · Mar 26, 06:01 AM · #
“Milk! Milk for the morning cake!”
— Freddie · Mar 26, 03:09 PM · #
In the Night Kitchen was the creepiest of them all.
— cw · Mar 26, 03:26 PM · #
And my favorite.
— Freddie · Mar 26, 03:52 PM · #
This book is meaningful to me as a parent, too. Our entire family has it memorized.
“So this trailer, with its gooey universalizing familiarity, is exactly WRONG. “Inside all of us there is”? Seriously? Why is escaping to the land of the Wild Things any fun if the Wild Things are exactly like the people you left behind, at least on the inside, where it counts?”
I don’t get that impression from the trailer. Perhaps the “Inside all of us is…” is meant for the viewer to identify with Max? And I don’t get the impression from the book that Max is truly afraid of the land where the Wild Things are—he decides that, for all its warts, home is where he wants to be.
Of course, we’re extrapolating from a trailer, so we’ll see in October. I’m very hopeful that Jonze and Eggers will Get It Right, but I need to prepare myself for great disappoint.
— brian · Mar 26, 04:06 PM · #
I’m with Freddie, cw, and Dara on this one. This movie is going to be evil. If you wanted to make a good movie of WTWTA, they should have gotten David Lynch to direct. And yes, he can do G-rated fare; “Straight Story” was the stuff.
— Noah Millman · Mar 26, 04:40 PM · #
I’m excited, personally. I am skeptical as ever – my usual state of being for adaptations of my favorite stories – but this actually looks like it might be good. I’m also not terribly picky and can forgive a lot when it comes to adaptations though that does not extend to the second two LOTR movies.
I read this book to my daughter at least a few times a week so it’s pretty fresh in my memory right now, and as long as the movie stays true to the theme of imagination I’ll be happy.
“The night Max made mischief of one kind, and then another, his mother called him “Wild Thing!” and he said “I’ll eat you up!” so she sent him to bed without eating anything. That night, in Max’s room a forest grew, and grew, and grew until his ceiling hung with vines and his walls became the world all around…”
Yeah, that’s from memory. I could type out the whole thing. Maybe I’m just looking forward to a new spin on a tale I’ve got down a little too pat….
— E.D. Kain · Mar 26, 10:41 PM · #
I so need to dig out my old post on the “latchkey aesthetic.”
— Matt Frost · Mar 27, 02:28 AM · #
“Please don’t go. We’ll eat you up. We love you so.” Possibly one of my fave sentences ever. Perfection really.
— ell · Mar 27, 08:47 AM · #