Where the Wild Things Are

I know I’m far from the first to say this, but I’m so excited about the Where the Wild Things Are movie that it makes me uneasy. When I first heard about it, I thought it was an awful idea. I mean, the Dr. Seuss adaptations of the last few years are troubling examples of what happens when you try to make full-length Hollywood family films by adapting classic picture books. There’s just not enough story to go around, and of course what the studio hacks come up with is never near up to par. So when I heard that WTWTA was getting the live-action treatment, I was not enthused. It’s my favorite children’s book, and probably the single most flawless book ever written.
But then I saw the trailer:

I could probably gush incoherently about this for hours, so I’m to try to organize my thoughts into bullet points.

• The visual style is a perfect match for Sendak’s artwork. The colors are muted, and the settings have character without being the kind of bright green CGI forests that we’re used to seeing in children’s films.
• Every one of the Wild Things is recognizable from the book. There’s the chicken-headed one, the smaller goat-looking one, the one with long hair, etc. And they all look exactly like they did in the book, and yet somehow exist believably in three dimensions.
• James Gandolfini’s voice. I wouldn’t have predicted him for a Wild Thing voice, but now that I’ve heard it, I can’t think of any actor who seems a more intuitive choice. After all, Tony Soprano, in his own way, was a cuddly monster.
• “Wake Up” by the Arcade Fire. Like basically everyone else in the world, I’ve listened to this album maybe a few too many times in the past five years, but this really is an amazing song, and it gives the trailer a nostalgic, bittersweet flavor.
• While it’s true that there are many scenes in the trailer that resemble nothing in the book, none of them feel instinctively “wrong,” or like a betrayal of the book’s themes. We see Max being an excitable kid who’s dissatisfied with the real world, and we see Max having fun with the Wild Things. No sign of an unnecessary “origin” sequence, and no hint of any human other than Max having any interaction at all with the other world.

It’s certainly possible that I’ll eat my words and regret my enthusiasm when I actually see the movie, but I really hope that’s not the case. If anyone’s out there reading this, how do you feel about the trailer, and how much is that opinion affected by your feelings about the book?