Where The Wild Things Are: The Wild Rumpus Editionhttp://www.fanedit.org/ifdb/media/reviews/photos/thumbnail/300x300s/5a/eb/9a/_wtwta-front-134509848014.jpg
The Wild Rumpus edition offers a whole new experience of Spike Jonze’s film. Inspired by the original trailer, this fanedit features an entirely new indie-rock soundtrack, including the anthemic “Wake Up” by Arcade Fire, and many other great artists such as Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, and Sigur Ros.
Intercutting between the real and the wild world, the Wild Rumpus edition takes us inside the mind of Max as he tries to understand the complexities of the world around him in the only way he knows how…
Intention:
The original trailer for Where the Wild Things Are featured “Wake Up” by Arcade Fire. It set the scene, featuring Spike Jonze’s beautiful direction and the stunning cinematography, made all the more incredible by Arcade Fire’s anthem, and the fact that Max didn’t say a word.
In the film itself, Max was a precocious little boy, sometimes pretty annoying – pretty much the same as the boy in the story. But to me that first trailer promised so much more – a story of a sad, lonely quiet boy, and his imaginative escape to the only place he feels able to cope with life – The world of the Wild Things.
In addition to replacing the soundtrack and trying to match the tone of the first trailer, the movie has also been trimmed down to the essentials – the story of Max. This is a non-linear take on the story, allowing us to directly contrast Max’s experiences in the real world with his imaginitive escape to the world of the wild things.
I hope you enjoy it.
Special Thanks:
Thanks to all those who contributed ideas, including Dwight Fry, TMBTM, revel911, L8wrtr, Neglify, Leeroy, Geminigod, purplenurple, 98766654321, Quickcut.
Special thanks to those who reviewed a workprint and gave great feedback, including L8wrtr, Neglify and Geminigod.
Extra special thanks to Quickcut, for taking the time to design fantastic DVD and Bluray cover art designs, including multiple drafts.
Release Information
NTSC DVD-5
AVCHD (DVD-9)
Blu-Ray (BD-25)
Special Features
Bluray and DVD:
- Film Commentary
- Deleted Scenes with Visual Commentary
- Original Trailer
- Fanedit Trailers
- Soundtrack Music Videos
- Storybook Edit
(AVCHD release features film and commentary only)
Editing Details:
Wild Rumpus Soundtrack Details
Arcade Fire
- Wake Up
- We used to Wait
Bon Iver
- Flume
- Creature Fear
Sigur Ros
- Glosili
- Heysatan
- #1 Vaka
Midlake
- Acts of Man
Nick Drake
- Way to Blue
Fleet Foxes
- Ragged Wood
- Sun it Rises
- Helplessness Blues
Cuts and Additions:
CUT LIST/Edits
- Re-sequenced entire film, cutting back and forth between real and wild world to directly contrast what max is experiencing.
- Replaced almost the entire soundtrack.
- Cut max’s journey to the wild things by boat. First cut to the wild world sees max already in stormy seas arriving at the island.
- Stripped back dialogue between wild things when Max first sees them. Dialogue has been simplified wherever possible.
- Cut all bad behaviour/anger by max in early stages of the film. Have kept him quiet/sad, hopefully increasing our sympathy for him.
- Cut Max calling to his sister to play with him. again, tried to keep him a loner, struggling to know how to connect with people.
- Cut much of the original soundtrack (mostly replaced by new indie-rock songs)
- Trimmed dialogue between max and wild things before he becomes king
- Cut KW’s introduction. INstead, we meet her when Max does, at the bottom of the wild thing pile.
- Turned walk with Carol through the woods into a dream sequence.
- Removed tinkly piano from ‘did you know the sun was going to die” scene, and added wind foley to make the scene more desolate.
- Removed Dog. Didn’t want a joke at the end of the sun dying scene. wanted to keep the tone serious.
- Simplified dialogue in dave/model scene
- Removed soundtrack and added new foley to max lieing in bed thinking scene.
- Removed max telling mum a story. again, kept him quiet and sad as much as possible.
- Removed wild things building fort scenes. Max can just imagine that the fort is already built.
- Reversed shot of Max looking at Carol to better match transition from real world
- Cut max being mean to Judith. Makes her more threatening and him more sympathetic.
- Cut KW introducing Max to Bob and Terry as a ‘biter’
- Cut knock knock joke between bob, terry and alexander. Better not to know if they can actually speak/understand English.
- Trimmed Carol’s reaction to bob and terry
- Removed “everyone’s mad at me” line from Carol on the beachside.
- Removed Max giving instructions about the war to the wild things. Cut straight to action instead.
- Cut pause during war where Judith and Ira hide behind a log. Kept things moving for pacing reasons.
- Cut Max stepping on KW and KW saying she is leaving. Needed to be removed to help aid the fluidity of the transition back to the real world.
- Cut strange expression on Max’s face in the Kitchen.
- Trimmed running away from home footage.
- Cut Carol’s reference to KW having run away and Max needing to get her back.
- Added foley (forest, waves) during Nick Drake song.
- Added scene of Max and Spike Jonez, as a short flashback (father and son)
- Added foley (due to audio replacement) during KW and Max’s last conversation.
- Extended footage of journey home by boat, using deleted footage from earlier in the film.
- Completely new ending, showing reveal of the ‘actual’ wild things, and implying that Max is headed back to the Wild Things again afterall.
I watched the theatrical Where the Wild Things Are back in the day, without knowing much about the book it was based on (must be popular in English-speaking countries only). I found the movie nice to look at but weak as cinema, narratively pretty much the equivalent of spending a couple of hours in the park watching kids at play, and not much else. A particular let down coming from Spike Jonze, having enjoyed his previous stuff.
When njvc announced his edit, the concept intrigued me, and I checked out the book in preparation. I must say the book won me over from the start, it’s pure charm and feels a lot like what being a kid was all about for me back then. Also, I thought the Max in the book was a real kid, while movie Max was a Hollywood kid (nothing against the actor, he performed very well for a child, it’s just the way the character was written). I got also shocked that they didn’t use for the movie what I thought was the most cinematic image in the book: the forest growing in Max’s bedroom. I would have expected its inclusion to be assured.
Then I got to the Wild Rumpus edition. How did I feel about it, particularly considering that the Max in the edit is even less like its book counterpart than the Max in the theatrical version?
Pure and simple, I loved every second of it. It’s one of the most beautiful fanedits I’ve ever seen. Or dare I say, the most beautiful.
And Max manages to be more like in the book by being less like in the book. That is, the theatrical release tried to have it both ways by having the kid naughty as in the book yet at the same time quiet and sensitive. The edit focuses on the quiet and sensitive aspect, thus allowing the character to grow its own personality and not seem indecisive about how he’s supposed to be. Another thing I loved was the fact that it goes back and forth between the real world and the wild things world in Max’s imagination. The way the book is written, albeit linear, leaves clear that it’s all part of Max’s imagination, while the theatrical release is somewhat ambiguous about it. The edit fixes that and helps follow Max’s visits to the wild things as his way to “escape” his reality.
Then there’s the music, which is perfect. The generic original score is discarded in favor of a brilliantly selected collection of indie songs, all of which fit each scene to a T. Kudos to njvc’s musical sensibilities.
The technical stuff is also consistently good, video and audio are fine and editing looks totally professional, with no hard cuts or bad mixes to speak of. Extra features include a nice audio commentary, an overview of the deleted stuff, trailers, and a short storybook version edit that is worth the download alone.
Plain and simple, one of the best edits of the year. 10/10.
I watched the theatrical Where the Wild Things Are back in the day, without knowing much about the book it was based on (must be popular in English-speaking countries only). I found the movie nice to look at but weak as cinema, narratively pretty much the equivalent of spending a couple of hours in the park watching kids at play, and not much else. A particular let down coming from Spike Jonze, having enjoyed his previous stuff.
When njvc announced his edit, the concept intrigued me, and I checked out the book in preparation. I must say the book won me over from the start, it’s pure charm and feels a lot like what being a kid was all about for me back then. Also, I thought the Max in the book was a real kid, while movie Max was a Hollywood kid (nothing against the actor, he performed very well for a child, it’s just the way the character was written). I got also shocked that they didn’t use for the movie what I thought was the most cinematic image in the book: the forest growing in Max’s bedroom. I would have expected its inclusion to be assured.
Then I got to the Wild Rumpus edition. How did I feel about it, particularly considering that the Max in the edit is even less like its book counterpart than the Max in the theatrical version?
Pure and simple, I loved every second of it. It’s one of the most beautiful fanedits I’ve ever seen. Or dare I say, the most beautiful.
And Max manages to be more like in the book by being less like in the book. That is, the theatrical release tried to have it both ways by having the kid naughty as in the book yet at the same time quiet and sensitive. The edit focuses on the quiet and sensitive aspect, thus allowing the character to grow its own personality and not seem indecisive about how he’s supposed to be. Another thing I loved was the fact that it goes back and forth between the real world and the wild things world in Max’s imagination. The way the book is written, albeit linear, leaves clear that it’s all part of Max’s imagination, while the theatrical release is somewhat ambiguous about it. The edit fixes that and helps follow Max’s visits to the wild things as his way to “escape” his reality.
Then there’s the music, which is perfect. The generic original score is discarded in favor of a brilliantly selected collection of indie songs, all of which fit each scene to a T. Kudos to njvc’s musical sensibilities.
The technical stuff is also consistently good, video and audio are fine and editing looks totally professional, with no hard cuts or bad mixes to speak of. Extra features include a nice audio commentary, an overview of the deleted stuff, trailers, and a short storybook version edit that is worth the download alone.
Plain and simple, one of the best edits of the year. 10/10.
Okay, just watched this fanedit and I agree that it was, well, simply better!
Maybe because I liked the original movie quite a bit I did not realized that this movie SCREAMED for an edit like this one.
Taking the non-linear route was indeed the way to go and njvc does it masterfully. The pace is IMO better. We follow Max’s journey and feel his emotions better. The new musics fit perfectly. It’s technicaly impeccable and the presentation is classy.
I don’t know if njvc had in mind to make a “better” movie. Sometime we faneditors just want to make alternate takes or try new ways to tell a story according to our own taste, hoping other people would find it good. The results are sometimes weird but interesting, sometimes completely differents. But this fanedit shows a great respect to the original while being (and I say it again) a better movie.
This was the perfect idea and the perfect way to push an already good movie a bit further.
10/10
Okay, just watched this fanedit and I agree that it was, well, simply better!
Maybe because I liked the original movie quite a bit I did not realized that this movie SCREAMED for an edit like this one.
Taking the non-linear route was indeed the way to go and njvc does it masterfully. The pace is IMO better. We follow Max’s journey and feel his emotions better. The new musics fit perfectly. It’s technicaly impeccable and the presentation is classy.
I don’t know if njvc had in mind to make a “better” movie. Sometime we faneditors just want to make alternate takes or try new ways to tell a story according to our own taste, hoping other people would find it good. The results are sometimes weird but interesting, sometimes completely differents. But this fanedit shows a great respect to the original while being (and I say it again) a better movie.
This was the perfect idea and the perfect way to push an already good movie a bit further.
10/10
There really is not anything further that I can add to the comments that proceed mine. This is simply a tour-de-force of fanediting. I downloaded the BD edit of this, and everything about smacks of top-notch perfection. From the flawless BD menu, spectacular picture quality and flawless editing, this is what I would hope all faneditors aspire to, both in terms of creativity and execution.
Just to cover the bases:
Image Quality. BD was spectacular. 10/10
Audio Quality. Sounded fantastic on my home audio. 10/10
Video Editing: Flawless. Impossible to determine that this wasn’t released in a theater. 10/10
Audio Editing: The audio levels are vastly improved over the workprint which I saw, but still not quite as even as I would prefer, but I think this is a matter of personal taste rather than execution. No pops, no stray audio, everything blends perfectly so 10/10.
Menu and Special Features: Professional quality. I can only hope to have menus this spectacular. 10/10
Story: I enjoy the original version, it’s a great movie and is not flawed in any specific way, which makes NJVC’s decision to take it on all the more impressive. As much as I do like the original however, it’s exceedingly depressing. Spike did a great job at exploring the mind and world of a troubled youth, but it is far from the charming, simple book which I adore.
I don’t think any amount of editing could create the world as I see it in the book when I read it to my kids, but NJVC does an amazing job of remolding the film into something that still generates empathy and angst, but without overwhelming you. This is my replacement copy now. Chances are that when I sit down to watch WTWTA, it is the Wild Rumpus Edition that I’ll pop into the player.
There really is not anything further that I can add to the comments that proceed mine. This is simply a tour-de-force of fanediting. I downloaded the BD edit of this, and everything about smacks of top-notch perfection. From the flawless BD menu, spectacular picture quality and flawless editing, this is what I would hope all faneditors aspire to, both in terms of creativity and execution.
Just to cover the bases:
Image Quality. BD was spectacular. 10/10
Audio Quality. Sounded fantastic on my home audio. 10/10
Video Editing: Flawless. Impossible to determine that this wasn’t released in a theater. 10/10
Audio Editing: The audio levels are vastly improved over the workprint which I saw, but still not quite as even as I would prefer, but I think this is a matter of personal taste rather than execution. No pops, no stray audio, everything blends perfectly so 10/10.
Menu and Special Features: Professional quality. I can only hope to have menus this spectacular. 10/10
Story: I enjoy the original version, it’s a great movie and is not flawed in any specific way, which makes NJVC’s decision to take it on all the more impressive. As much as I do like the original however, it’s exceedingly depressing. Spike did a great job at exploring the mind and world of a troubled youth, but it is far from the charming, simple book which I adore.
I don’t think any amount of editing could create the world as I see it in the book when I read it to my kids, but NJVC does an amazing job of remolding the film into something that still generates empathy and angst, but without overwhelming you. This is my replacement copy now. Chances are that when I sit down to watch WTWTA, it is the Wild Rumpus Edition that I’ll pop into the player.
DVD
