Where the Wild Things Are

Never read the Sendak book, and it’s not like anyone sat down and read it to me—my childhood wasn’t really set up for that kind of thing. But I saw the trailer for the Jonze film and something about it worked. The creatures don’t look cute or safe. They look real, wrong, unsettling. Like somewhere you’d actually want to run to if home felt small enough.

There’s this idea at the heart of it that matters: a kid escapes to a place where he’s the king, where he can make the rules, where things are honest in a way they never are at home. The trailer gets that. Jonze gets that. It’s not sentimentalizing childhood—it’s treating it seriously.

The internet’s already built this whole thing up. Everyone who grew up with the book is protective and excited. Critics are positioning it as something different, something that respects the material. I don’t have that connection to the source, which might be fine. I’m just watching the trailer and thinking, yeah, I want to see what he does with this.

Whether it holds up is another question. But the trailer’s already done its job.