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I want to start with the technical aspect of the movie, and then talk about the figurative nature of the film.

The combination of puppetry and CGI is surreal. I didn’t once feel like these creatures were cheesy or unrealistic.

From a writing perspective, there were a few moments that felt a tad forced, particularly the scene with the owls. In the novel, the owls didn’t have names or talk, and the only reason K.W. retrieved them is because Max said he wanted them as guard owls for their fort. I understand the owls were needed to move the plot of Carol’s controlling tendencies forward, though, so I don’t fault the writers for it. Overall, the movie addresses and expands on everything Maurice Sendak’s original work does. I felt like the story was very full.

From a figurative perspective, this was one of the richest movies I have ever seen. I think the while movie was about Max finding out what it is like to be his mother, to live in a place bombarded with immaturity and fighting, to feel the pressure to make everything better.

Carol was the most interesting character to me, and I think the movie was as much about carol as it was about Max (perhaps Carol is a manifestation of Max's animalistic qualities). I sensed Carol truly wanted his clan to stay together and that he wanted things to be good. He just didn’t have the mental capacity or patience to deal with the realities of life and the need for space (evident in the scene where Max asks for a secret room for himself). Carol had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, which became apparent after Max told him the sun was going to die someday. He was worried but didn’t want to show it, and then stayed up all night to make sure the sun came up. We have all been Carol, carrying the weight of things we don’t need to carry, and it was hurting him and the people around him.

Another perspective I picked up on was the perspective of atheism. In the film, Alexander says, “There is no such thing as a King.” And to me, I took this to mean that the Wild Things had been searching for a being that would make sense out of everything, who could make everything broken in their lives better, and Alexander’s statement showed they were giving up on the idea that it was possible. In the end, when they are all saying goodbye, I think the Wild Things weren’t saying goodbye to Max as much as they were to the idea of a person who could fix what they had created: a culture of control and manipulation. When Carol stumbles into the sea and looks longingly at Max, I think he was really saying goodbye to the idea of someone else fixing his own problems, and something in his eyes said, “We have to figure this out on our own.”

I saw the Wild Things’ plight as a place where God had been shut out, a place where selfishness reigned supreme. And this was why Max would never have succeeded as a King, and why the Wild Things ate every other King but Max. They wanted the King to serve them, and not the other way around, and perhaps this is why the movie was so haunting to me: they are so much like us. They wanted to have a King operate in their current frame of life without rocking the boat too much, not change the frame altogether. So Carol stumbling into the sea with teary eyes, to me, can also be a hopeful scene, because he was letting go of his current frame of wanting things to get better without having to change. He was accepting that life can’t go in the same way anymore if anything is to change. Some things are too broken to be fixed, and we can see this realization in Carol's eyes. This moment, while painful for Carol, will ultimately lead to his redemption and the redemption of his community, but he had to go to that dark place of realization, that breaking point, before anything could change. Perhaps it was his moment of baptism into a new life.

I was amazed to see how Max found pieces of himself in many of the Wild Things, especially Alexander and Carol. Without realizing it, Max had done to Alexander what his sister’s friends had done to him. Max was also able to identify with his mother because he had to play the role of peacekeeper and mediator to the Wild Things’ selfishness and immaturity.

Once the movie abruptly ended, everyone in the theater sat silent and still for about ten seconds before quietly getting up to leave. And that is the kind of movie Where The Wild Things Are is – something that should be absorbed. I went with my friend Sean, and he just recently got a Where The Wild Things Are tattoo on his leg. I was a little worried that he wouldn’t like his tattoo anymore after seeing the movie, but he told he that he saw the movie as a completely separate piece of work than the children’s book. He said he saw it as an interpretation of Maurice Sendak’s original work, and I thought that was a good point.

I think many people won’t like this movie because they will have gone into it wanting Max to be the King who made everything better, not the human who has problems like everyone else. Everyone who left the theater last night felt differently about their crowns, I think, because this movie forces us to take a look at our own limitations. The movie forces us to address the Savior Complex we all have, and that is refreshing if you think about it. Movies like this place God back at the center, and help us all to relax and let go of our need to feel like we are saving the world. They also act as a reminder that God is not going to wave a magic scepter and make everything better.

There are many lessons to be learned from this movie, from what happens to communities that are wrapped up in controlling each other to what it looks like to be honest about who we are. In the end, I think this is a story about the raw hope and gritty salvation that comes from understanding and the acceptance of human limitation.