It recently came to my attention that one of my all time top ten favorite childhood books, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, is being made into a full length feature film. Not only is it being made into a feature film, but it is also going to be a live action feature film. While I totally love and adore both the director, Spike Jonze, and the screenplay adaptor, Dave Eggers, I have to say that I am a bit sad to see a book that is vividly visualized in my head and via the beautiful illustrations in the book itself being made into a full length live action film. First, because if I go and see the film, which most likely I will, I will now have the images that I have so carefully crafted in my head, replaced with images that are no longer mine but have been purposefully decided by someone else. Additionally, I will now potentially see the actors faces as the characters instead of how I imagined them.
Second, Where the Wild Things Are is a very succinct book with a very specific time frame allotted for the story. To make this short illustrated story into a feature film there will need to be some elaboration as to the background of the characters and the story itself. Is this really what we want? Do we really need to know any more about the characters then what Maurice Sendak decided was needed in the original story? Granted there is potential that this will be done with lots of care and skill, but there is a reason that Maurice Sendak chose to make the story as it is and why it is so successful. Should that really be messed with?
Finally, I have to say that generally I am just kinda sad about all of these great kids books being made into films as of late. I really feel that this takes away some of the creativity and joy from reading these books both as a child and and adult, and really if we are offering children the fancy new sparkly version where they don't actually have to pick up a book and can still get the story, then can we really complain that kids aren't reading as much these days?
IMDB for Where the Wild Things Are
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6 comments:
Better a good movie than a bad one, certainly--but sometimes maybe no movie is best of all.
i love you hotstuff, but on this one i have to disagree. in terms of the movie coming out and, thus no interest in the book... i actually think will turn out to be the reverse. and once the kids see the pictures of maurice sedak, they will not easily forget them.
although, i also have to say that it just doesn't bother me when masterpieces are re-made for film. i like to see how it's done and i don't think it's that hard to judge them separately. it's a neat creative endeavor. but then again, this is coming from lady whose mom used to tell her to watch the movie instead of reading the book so we could have more fun. (though truth be told i never took her advice).
I read that, Hotpants. But isn't it true that there are movies that are better than the book??
hehehe. i thought you might read that and laugh "Anonymous". and yes there must be some movies that are better than the book, but i can't think of any right now, can you?
Sorry to state the obvious but if you are so concerned with keeping Mr. Sendak's images intact in your collection of memories, don't see the movie.
An interesting case would be the Harry Potter books/movies. This is a case where it is a waste of time to worry about whether the books or films were superior. They were both very well done and enjoyable to experience independent of each other. That being said, as someone who enjoys the suspense of turning a page, I prefer to read the book prior to watching the movie. Furthermore in terms of the phenomenological experience of the books vs. the movies, I found they exist rather independently of each other in my head.
Anonymous, you are missing the point....there is no comparison of Harry Potter, the book, which is not dependent on pictures for imagination to a picture book that has words surrounding the pictures to add a bit more to the pictures.
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