Where the Wild Things Are

There's an odd clip from the live-action "Where the Wild Things Are" floating around the net these days. Apparently it pops up somewhere and then disappears just as soon as Warner Bros. lawyers find out about it. I caught a glimpse of it through a link at Ain't It Cool. The clip is... weird. It's a mixture of costumes and CGI, and had an off-kilter vibe about it. It feels like some kind of test footage, and that's where my money is--an early test piece, despite the fact that Moriarty claims it's too "finished" to be a simple test. Maybe, but the animated face on the monster looks too rubbery to me for it to be the finished product. If this is anywhere close to what the finished film will look like, though, it'll be like mainlining the distilled essence of Sid & Marty Kroft.

By the by, the great John Lasseter did an animation test on "Where the Wild Things Are" for Disney back in '83. I remember reading something about this somewhere at the time, in a post-TRON world where computer animation was all the rage. Maybe it was in Starlog. In any event, there was a still printed from the scene in Max's room, and over the years I wondered occasionally what had become of this project. Thanks to the magic of YouTube, the test is now online for everyone to enjoy:



Is it just me, or does Max look for all the world like one of Peter Pan's Lost Boys?

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