5. Where The Wild Things Are (2009)
When Spike Jonez decided to adapt what is probably one of the most famous and well-established children's books of all time, he opted to do it for those people who had read the book as kids, and had grown up to be hipsters or something. That's the only real way I can think to explain what happened with this adaptation, which is not so much the child-friendly material of the original book, but an occasionally dark, abstract movie about the
subject of childhood, aimed mostly at adults. And don't worry: you don't have to be a hipster to enjoy. So whilst this is - generally speaking - a horrifically bad adaptation in the sense that it isn't really appealing to children and that's exactly what the book is, the movie itself is an intriguing and surprisingly complex one when viewed as a standalone entity. Granted, the picture book was just 40 pages and nowhere near as scary nor appealing to the adult mindset, so Jonez met a fair amount of criticism for taking away the simplicity and the magic of the source material. In doing so, though, he ended up crafting something quite remarkable.