The basic story structure of the two is the same, and the film respects the intent of the original to the greatest extent possible.
Movies fill in the gaps that are not accounted for in picture books. For example, Max lives in a single-parent household. He has an extraordinary imagination and is very good at making up stories. Max's boat was given to him by his father.
We see the unpleasant things that have happened to Max in such a family environment: his sister ignored him and didn't protect him when it mattered; his mother took her boyfriend home and ignored Max's offer to see him. The tent's request, no dinner was prepared for him, only frozen corn. Max feels lonely, unprotected, and his demands are always unfulfilled. And his way of venting his grievances is to mess around and make things worse.
In that part of the storyline in the kingdom of beasts, the movie and the picture book are slightly different. Max relies on his ability to make up stories to keep himself from being eaten. Carol and KW are the two core characters in Beast Country. Carol can become destructive or capable because of KW. What Carol wants most is for everyone to stay together, but KW is often absent, and Carol can't accept KW's two new friends. What the Beasts fear most is loneliness, and Max promises to make everyone happy. But then it turns out that he can't do it, some people are unhappy with his preference for Carol, he wants to make everyone happy with a playful way, and it ends up making some people more depressed, and others hurt.
In the process of getting along with the beast, Max told the reason why he left home and saw how bad it is to control madness. When he hears KW say Carol, there's already a lot of trouble here, you can't make it worse, Max seems to completely forgive Mom.
The real world and the child's imagined world are intertwined, overlapping, and sometimes opposing. The director seems to be showing this on purpose, like Max's sister telling him to stay away, and he starts giving orders to the row of fences to roll them away. Max's ice castle was destroyed, and in the kingdom of beasts, Carol also took pleasure in destroying other people's houses, and Max joined him later.
Who does Carol symbolize? Max himself or Max's father, or something else? Also, is Carol's statement about loose teeth agreeable? Why does the story repeatedly mention the sun's imminent destruction? What's the point of Max hiding in KW's stomach and crawling out of it?
I love karen O's music.
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