It seems like every year there’s a new Lorax related trend: The Onceler thirst that could be chronicled in a whole library of articles, the “Let it Grow” outbreak of both 2016 AND 2023, and the multitude of trends on TikTok that have just become popular this year. I always feel like a 90-year-old, youth-despising curmudgeon whenever a new Lorax trend pops up, and the reason why is very simple:
I hate this movie.
I loathe the 2012 film, The Lorax. I hate the stupid hipster Onceler and his stupid Ed Helms voice. I hate the incredibly exaggerated capitalist caricature, O’Hare. I hate the songs, I hate Zac Efron’s miscasting, I hate Danny DeVito’s “That’s a Woman?” line that was played in every single trailer for this movie for months.
I can’t even enjoy this movie ironically, because to me, it’s more than just a bad movie. Believe me, I’m happy to laugh at blunders like “Shark Tale”, but The Lorax (2012) isn’t just a bad movie in terms of quality — frankly, it’s irresponsible.
If you went to elementary school in the late 2000s like I did, you probably read the original Lorax novel as well as watched the 1970s film in class. The film isn’t anything like Illumination’s 2012 attempt — it’s shorter, for one thing, and animated in the two-dimensional style of the book. From pretty much all angles, it’s very loyal to the original text, and I think this is an asset. The original Dr. Seuss book is simple with a great message — We need to protect the nature around us and not let ourselves be consumed by greed, or else we won’t have a planet to live on.
One of the most important, deliberate choices made in the original book is to preserve the anonymity of the Onceler. We never see his face, and his name is not specific enough to be attached to a certain figure. The reason for this is clear — anyone could become the Onceler if they weren’t careful enough. Despite the fantastical setting, his story was also one that anyone could relate to — he wanted to be successful, but he made the choice himself to drive his business to the point of the environment’s destruction.
By giving the Onceler a face and an overly-sympathetic story, the movie completely relieves the viewer of any sort of guilt they might feel when they relate to him.
The other issue is the movie’s villain, O’Hare. He sells air to the people of Thneedville after their city is made inhospitable by the destruction of all the Truffula trees. The problem with this villain is that he’s so cartoonishly evil that the viewer cannot possibly see themselves in him. They’re just watching a fake villain do fake things, and get to cheer at the end when the one person causing environmental problems is defeated by Zac Efron pretending to be a 12-year-old boy.
Obviously, a movie intended for children can’t and shouldn’t be expected to accurately represent the consequences of pollution, even the original Lorax book and movie make the message clear: “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better — it’s not.” You, the viewer, need to care. And you need to care beyond just planting a seed — you need to keep diligent and take care of a tree until it becomes a whole orchard. It’s hard work, and the 2012 Lorax movie ends with a celebratory song and dance like it’s all fixed.. It completely perverts the message in the original, sympathizing with the character who destroys an ecosystem for profit, babies the viewer by making the villain so ridiculous that they couldn’t possibly identify with them, and ends the whole movie with the problem solved fairly easily.
And I haven’t even mentioned the brand deals Illumination did to promote The Lorax (2012), including calling a gas-powered SUV “Truffula Tree Friendly” in a tie-in with Mazda. While this is outside of the movie’s quality, it still doesn’t sit right with me that the movie discourages its characters from prioritizing profit over care for the planet, and then the company, Illumination, does exactly that. Is the 2012 Lorax movie the worst movie in the world that will corrupt all children who watch it? Definitely not. However, I do think that the movie really disrespected Seuss’s original intention. Just because it’s a movie intended for children doesn’t mean it’s free from any criticism, as we’ve seen time and time again that kids’ movies can be some of the greatest films there are (For example—Wall-E is a great movie for children with a similar message to The Lorax). It’s always important to be critical of the media we consume, but when it’s something as silly as The Lorax, it’s kind of hard not to think — “How bad could it possibly be?”