Here's The Childhood Memory-Ruining Bullshit That Is The Lorax Movie

This summer, audiences suffered through the abomination that was The Smurfs. Many of us who actually grew up with the Smurfs avoided it. But there’s more trauma-inducing memory-ruining to come! When Dr. Seuss’s classic book The Lorax was published in 1971, with its titular character who “speaks for the trees,” it was considered a fable about preserving the environment from the logging industry. Bleak stuff! The fanciful morality tale was turned into a brightly-colored (yet fairly somber) animated movie in 1972, and now it’s been made again, with the voices of Zac Efron and Taylor Swift. This newfangled Lorax flick seems to have an uplifting, joyful spirit (Polyphonic Spree!) and a lot more characters than the book had. Seriously, where did all those random white people come from? (If it’s a fanciful story set in a fanciful place why is everyone white?) Also? The writers have added a heteronormative angle: The kid is searching for trees not because he’s curious about the world he lives in but because he has a crush on a girl. If you haven’t started wincing yet, check out the last scene of the trailer, in which The Lorax has a confrontation with a rotund lady. A guy says, “You wouldn’t hit a woman!” And The Lorax says, “That’s a woman?” Would Theodor Geisel approve of that kind of joke?