SPOILER – watch the trailer first

This is an interesting concept for a C&H movie, that will of course never get made (at least while Bill Watterson is still alive, anyway) – except – that I believe it leaves behind a key essential point (if not THE essential point) of C&H – tragic comedy.

Throughout the comic, we are always confronted by Calvin’s underlying struggle to fit in, while his personality, likes and dislikes and the fact that he’s six, serve to nearly always defeat him to varying degrees. Yes, for the most part his parents never step in, and Suzie tries early on, but figures him out pretty quick and then just tolerates him after that.

So Hobbes is all that’s left – and while he proves a true friend time and time again no matter what Calvin does – and he’s not always an unforgiving one – he’s in the end a figment of Calvin’s imagination – or possibly a projection of what Calvin knows he could be – but doesn’t really want to.

Just turning it into a psycho-pseudo horror story (scary or not) misses the comedy (which brings back the reader, strip after strip, despite the comedy usually being at Calvin’s expense) and only tells one part of Calvin’s complexity. Having read several Bill Watterson interviews, one thing he says several times is that he expected Calvin might have a tough adulthood, when his preferred lifestyle was going to evaporate right before his eyes and likely make him pretty sad. Maybe so – but even if Calvin got past that, I don’t think his imagination would consume him in the end – I think he might just lose it – which could be even worse, really….. 🙁

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