So... We've all seen it right? I've been hesitant to talk about this for quite a while and now that I have the proper platform I feel its time to discuss this. Before we get started I would like to thank Broxacc211 on Letterboxd for asking me to discuss The Lorax (2012) and I would like to remind you that my suggestions are always open . Please note any negative opinions on the film are not aimed at the user, Thanks again and lets jump into this! from my first viewing of this flick it becomes immediately apparent that Illumination has no interest in preserving the moral of an Important story. This film is the equivalent of a Barbie doll...shiny, plastic, soulless and raising false expectations. The musicThis story's problem's are immediately highlighted in our opening scene when BOOM! A musical number is thrown directly into your face. While I do think that a musical can convey important messages its clear this music is nothing more than a catchy time filler made to hold the attention of a child. Unlike most high quality musicals this music doesn't convey any music, you could cut the music and know the exact same amount of information... Yes the Original film has music but unlike what you would expect these movies actually do not share any of the same soundtrack. Now lets check out the first two tracks in both films
Right off the bat you're probably wondering why the excerpt from the 1972 song is so short and well...its not an excerpt. These two songs alone welcome us to the biggest problems with the 2012 adaptation. Under the trees is a short opening track for 1972s The Lorax that clock in at 37 seconds long, tells us all about the environment we are interacting with, and has interesting language, but Thneedville is nearly 3 minutes long (far longer than it needs to be) and tells us almost nothing about the film. We are not introduced to anything farther than "there's a lot of plastic ". The music in The Lorax (2012) destroys the rule "show don't tell" which leads me to- Show DON'T tellI know this is a children's movie but that still doesn't mean you need to be spoon fed every piece of information. We hear about how evil Mr.Ohare is, we here about how destroyed the environment is, we hear about how negatively affected everyone is but we never see it. It would have been helpful to have imagery of the plants dying, animals being upset, ect but instead we are told this constantly which makes the stakes feel infinitely lower and you could argue "its just for the kids" but kids actually enjoy complex characters and situations. The I watched this movie with the girl I used to babysit and she openly claimed the movie was boring then started coloring instead. Humans are curious and we always want to see things we've never seen before, its quite disappointing that the film doesn't even attempt to give us interesting visuals or subtle writing Ques, This makes the film come off as uninteresting and a Film with such an important message should be anything but mindless. The only visuals we were really given were telling us that Ted liked Audrey which I'll get to in a minute. forcing a toneThis movie has a strange choice to ditch the dark and interesting tone of the original to try to bring you a bland generic comedy. Although in other films the bright colors and positivity would be welcome it doesn't work very well here, the moral of the story is that we are destroying the planet with the original film (and book) having a darker richer color pallet. It helped set a tone and brought severity to the situation But the bright fuzzy look of this film carelessly says "ill be fine! nothing's wrong" which is irritating. The moral & advertisingThe moral of the story is drowned out horrifically. If you strip the movie of cheesy musical numbers and flashy animation this movie is letting the entire outcome of the universe rely on a teenage boy having a crush and the fighting of a massive corporation. In the original story we see that the once ler himself questions his choices from time to time and that the townspeople buying the thneeds are just as bad which is a message that's important. The advertising of this film makes all of its problems shine through as the lorax was used to advertise Barnes and nobles, Honda, and Ihop. the fact that a movie about saving the planet from big companies and keeping wildlife alive is sponsored by a car company is mind boggling. Unfortunately we have seen no change in attitude from the production company behind the film so we can only assume they will continue to rip the heart out of film till someone stops them. save trees:If you are genuinely interested in saving trees here are some sources to do that (all links are non affiliate):
Team Trees
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