Where the Wild Things Are

I think this is a successful and unsuccessful film adaption by the director.  Spike Jonze was good at the beginning of the movie.  He showed how Max’s character was.  The quick flare of his temper when his small igloo was stepped on by his neighbors/ friends shows that he can get angry even when he was the one who decided to start the snowball fight and then hide in his igloo that would not protect him at all.  Also, the quick forgiveness of Max shows the other side of him.  When he ripped the heart, he had just realized what he had done and calmed down.  And then again when he talked back to his mother in a way a child would and should not do shows the way Max grew up and how it affects him now.  If it was not for his behavior, he would not have traveled to this imaginary world.  This basically shows why Max ran away to the boat.  In the story he did not go out of his house.  The world just grew around him. I think that was the only successful parts of the movie.  The rest of the movie was boring, uninteresting and just random add on for the movie that didn’t need to be there.  To be a children’s book, I think you need to make it a children’s movie as well.  The monsters looked fine but the whole plot was not good.  In the short story, the author doesn’t go into much of Max’s experience in his imaginary world but the movie does.  While in the woods where the Wild Things live, all kinds of activities happen that the story never explains.  I think the story said they just had fun and then Max had to leave for the human world.  Spike Jonze did what directors are supposed to do, try and recreate the story from their understanding.  The story never said anything about a dispute after having fun.  That had Carol fighting against every other member of the Wild Things because he thought Max was the real king while everyone else knew that Max was just a human being that was pretending to be a king.  Carol did not believe them and started chasing Max to ‘eat him’ because Max never came out to him to say that he was not a real king.  I think that was the reason why Max lost touch with the Wild Things and left the land.  His relationship with Carol went down and then wanted to say good bye one last time and none of that was ever said in the book.  I believe mostly to sticking to the book instead of expanding and trying to explain the book.  Spike Jonze should have only done what was necessary for the movie yet not over do the scenes because that is what made this movie a not successful film adaption.