Beasts on the big screen

In 1963, the punishment of going to bed without supper was a standard form of discipline for an unruly child. Rarely would a child have such a wild adventure in their room, but in the case of Max from Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, imagination takes over during involuntary exile. How then, could filmmaker Spike Jonze take Max not only out of his room, but also out of a children’s picture book and bring him to modern day?
Where The Wild Things Are is a story with as much heart as it has visual brilliance. 12-year-old Max Records embodies the rebellious protagonist with such adolescent ease, he’s sure to remind you of a child you know, even if that child is the younger version of yourself.
Adding depth to the story of Max, we find an older sister (Pepita Emmerichs) who seems more interested in her friends than her little brother, and a divorced mother (Catherine Keener) who loves to hear the stories her young son tells her.
One night, as Max dons his trademark wolf pajamas and stands on the kitchen counter, loudly proclaiming, “Woman! Feed me!” the story’s classic fight takes a much more detailed turn. Rather than being sent to his room, Max runs away, eventually finding a small boat and sailing stormy seas only to end up on a remote island filled with unique “things.”
During the initial stages of the film, Jonze tossed around the idea of full animation as well as computer generated images before finally settling on real-life monsters, or at least as real as they could make them.
Employing the Jim Henson Company, notorious for making strange creatures in films such as Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal, Sendak’s Wild Things eventually became eight-foot puppets, operated from the inside.
Some computer animation was used, because the headpieces were too heavy for the puppeteers to wear with the mechanical eye and mouthpieces.
Once there, Max spins tales taller than the monsters and is made the new King of the Wild Things. Making his first order of business “Let the wild rumpus start!” Max also sets out to make everyone happy and build a large fort with the beasts.
Max soon befriends Carol (voiced by Sopranos star James Gandolfini), the Wild Thing he relates most with and because of this, Max eventually discovers a few things about himself. Other Wild Things include the dreadlocked KW (voiced by Lauren Ambrose), relatively happy couple Judith and Ira (voiced by Catherine O’Hara and Forest Whitaker), bird-like Douglas (voiced by Chris Cooper) and the smallest of the pack, Alexander (voiced by Paul Dano).
As time goes on, the Wild Things begin to question Max being king. After a lot of personal reflection — especially for a kid — Max decides it’s time for him to go back home and he sets sail once again. A variation of the original text reutns when KW tells Max “Don’t go. I’ll eat you up — I love you so.”
Shot in Australia, Wild Things takes the original premise of the book and amplifies it to something fitting for the big screen. The acting and voice work is spot on, from the naivety of the monsters when they first encounter Max to the innocence Max has as he’s lovingly tugging on his mother’s pantyhose.
Not particularly slated toward a younger audience, Wild Things is surprisingly dark in certain scenes. However, the studio did slate 70 percent of their media marketing toward general audiences and adults. Considering Warner Brothers produced both Where The Wild Things Are and the hugely popular Harry Potter franchise, odds are they’re not coming up short either way.
Sure to be a classic, Where The Wild Things Are shows the same thing it did in the book; that inside all of us is a “wild thing” that is okay to let romp around every once in a while, but for the most part, should be kept in our imaginations.