Where The Wild Things Are: The Wild Rumpus Edition

Seamless edit. The restructuring worked so much better than the original film. The music was a vast improvement in my opinion. This is absolutely my go to version of this movie. Great work!

My review is based on the blu-ray version of the fanedit.

Technically, it was brilliant. There wasn't a single cut audio or visual that indicated this was a fanedit. I was really surprised by this. Removing and replacing music, that can be a really difficult task, but had I not seen the original, I would not have known this was a fanedit. I really liked all the music choices too (well, one exception mentioned below)

Narrative was mostly fantastic. I did not care for the original. In the original the kid was annoying and bratty and that's not how I like my main characters to be. Cutting all of his unlikeable scenes actually made him tolerable in this version.

I didn't really get the ending at first though. It was so fast, all of a sudden the movie was over and I was left with "wait, what just happened, how's it over" I had to rewind it to watch again because it really comes up on you. If you look away for 5 seconds, literally you miss the whole thing. After rewatching though, it's actually much darker than I noticed naturally. I think this was one area where the music didn't really work. It sounded like a happy ending, but upon rewinding and rewatching the last 30 seconds, I was like "wait a minute, that's not happy at all, this is actually a really dark ending." The implications of that last interaction with his mom and the camera zoom on his outfit really is a much darker ending than the music and title screen seemed to indicate.

I highly recommend this edit. I especially would recommend this edit to be shown to others as an introduction to fanedits. I suspect that everyone who has seen the original will like this version better and anyone who hasn't seen the original would never even realize this wasn't original - and when told, they'd have no interest in going back.

Enjoyment: 9 (original 4)

March 16, 2012 @ 5:47 am

I had not seen the original when I decided to watch njvc’s take but that’s often how I choose to watch my fanedits. In this particular case I had an idea of what to expect; already being a fan of the director Spike Jonze, I knew that anybody who chose to fanedit one of his movies would have a deep connection to it and that he wouldn’t disappoint.

I was right; the entire movie transported me into another world, and was felt more like a song than a cinematic experience. The new music njvc chose fit perfectly the mood of each scene and felt as though it had been the original choices made by the director. I can’t comment on the cuts because everything felt so natural that I didn’t once feel like something was missing. In fact, everything felt perfectly in place.

The presentation probably helped; we are treated with beautiful menus and a nice set of extras, including one I particularly enjoyed: the “Storybook Edit”

All in all, a fantastic package. One of the best fanedits I’ve seen on this site.

9/10

March 20, 2012 @ 2:54 pm

*This rating was given before reviews were required*

I had to add my dissenting opinion to the otherwise glowing reviews here. There may be some people who will find it helpful or informative.

What NJVC has done here is technically very impressive. His edits are not simply "seamless", they are artful. Audio crossover fades keep things moving and provide a sense of continuity between scenes which otherwise might be lacking. The song choices are inspired and do SO MUCH to increase the enjoyment of the film. There is a lot to appreciate in this edit.

The areas I feel differently than the other reviews basically fall into two categories.

This film is based on one of my favorite books as a kid, and I love the framework of that adventure. A boy goes off on a scary adventure where he 'out-wilds' the wild things and becomes their king before going back home. There's a sense of a grand journey that builds in scale. I feel a lot of that is lost with the restructuring of the scenes and the cutting back and forth in time.

The original film did a great thing when it framed Max's wildness as A) acting out due to the family breaking down and B) a selfish problem to be outgrown. This allows the film to not only be an adventure, but to also be a tale of heartbreak and redemption, where you see Max unable to take his new family situation and run away, then it becomes a coming-of-age story where he comes to terms with the fallibility of adults and the idea that there "is no such thing as a perfect king". He learns to think of others, stop expecting so much, and value teamwork and building something long-term.

For me, the structure of the new narrative does a great disservice to the themes of the story. The pacing is totally thrown off, with Max just suddenly being on an adventure but without the sense of danger and desperation and angst he originally brought to it (which is reflected in the Wild Things, like all his feelings). Then the constant flashbacks in the middle of the film are so on-the-nose paralleled to their real-world components, it doesn't feel like Max has run away from his problems, it feels like he is playing in his own world, consistently imagining monsters and adventures while at home. The ending is the worst of all. It undoes the mother's forgiveness and understanding, and changes the film from Max growing and learning a lesson to Max just having a string of creative adventures. By moving a scene from earlier in the film to the end, the interacting between Max and Mom implies no lessons were learned by either, and the whole thing was just one event in a series. You could argue that it actually doesn't make any sense, but I'll stop at saying that it just doesn't fit with the narrative throughline of the film.

The original film was imperfect. It definitely needed a bit more of the emotive magic that NJVC's musical edits put in. It also probably needed a bit more fleshing out of the story with some more explicit details to add depth. For me though, this edit goes the opposite direction and makes the film very superficial and just 'a boy's adventure'. It's worth a watch, to be sure, and everyone can then make up their own mind. But for me the original film is a much deeper and more emotionally cathartic journey.