Monthly Archives: November 2009

Script Analysis: WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't yet seen Where The Wild Things Are, you may want to check it out before you read this article. Let's set aside the question right now of whether or not Where The Wild Things Are is a good movie. Let's set aside the question of whether you liked it or not (or were a little bit embarrassed for liking it as much as you did). And if you feel like you wasted your twelve bucks on a movie in which essentially nothing happens, let's set that aside too. Love it or hate it, Wild Things is a movie worth studying, because of the bold and unique ways it is structured to reflect its authors' premise, both in its most wonderful, and its most problematic elements. PREMISE? WHAT PREMISE? Wild things is governed by a simple idea-- or at least a strong suggestion-- that we are seeing the whole world through the perspective of a young boy-- as he works out his rage over his isolated life (and more importantly, his parents divorce) by playing with a bunch of stuffed animals in his room. The writer-director team of Jonze & Eggers make a very strong (and very risky) decision that nothing in the world of the Wild Things is going to exist outside what a boy Max's age could reasonably imagine. This is embodied in every element of the film: