the lorax
" a tree falls which way it leans. be careful which way you lean."
sweet, impressionable, and determined. Ted is your average nice guy who's just trying to be the best young gentleman he can be. All he wants is to make Audrey happy, and if that means defying the odds and finding her a real tree, then so be it.
Ted Wiggins
Zac Efron
Mayor Aloysius O'Hare is the main antagonist of Illumination's 3rd feature film The Lorax, an adaptation of Dr. Seuss' 1971 book of the same name. He is the greedy and manipulative mayor of Thneedville
Aloysius O'Hare
Rob Riggins
He's a caring creature who loves the environment. He also shows that he has feelings for the Forest Animals and The Once-ler for when he tries to warn him that cutting down the trees is bad for the environment and could affect the whole world.
The Lorax
Danny Devito
Audrey is the neighbor and love interest of Ted Wiggins in the film adaptation of The Lorax. The back of her house formerly had Truffula trees painted on it but her wish is to see a real one. Audrey is shown to be bright and friendly.
Audrey Geisel
Taylor Swift
He is a greedy industrialist who cut down all of the beautiful, multi-colored Truffula Tree to make a peculiar garment known as a Thneed. In revealing the dirty secrets from his past, he confesses to almost single-glovedly destroying the forest.
The Onceler
Ed Helms
Despite her age, Grammy Norma is vivacious, silly, vibrant, outrageous, and crazy. She has a trickster side to her, and is very athletic and active. She is also brave and unafraid to speak her mind against people of power like Mr. O'Hare.
Grammy Norma
Betty White
Plot
Ted Wiggins is an idealistic boy, who lives in "Thneedville", a walled city that, aside from the human citizens, is completely artificial; everything is made of plastic, metal, or synthetics with no living plants. Ted has a crush on a local environmentalist, Audrey, who wants to see a "real tree" more than anything in the world, and decides to find one in order to impress her. His energetic Grammy Norma secretly tells Ted the legend of the Once-ler, who will tell anyone about trees if they brought him fifteen cents, a nail, and a shell of a great-great-great grandfather snail. When Ted leaves Thneedville in search of the Once-ler, he discovers that the outside world is a contaminated, empty wasteland. Once the boy finds him, the Once-ler agrees to tell Ted about the trees on the condition that he listens to the story over multiple visits. Ted agrees, but on his way home, he encounters the mayor of Thneedville, Aloysius O'Hare, who is also the proprietor of a company that sells bottled air to Thneedville residents. O'Hare explains to Ted that because trees produce oxygen free of charge, he considers it a threat to his business whenever he hears people talking about them. After revealing that he has "security camera eyes" all over the city, O'Hare pressures Ted to stay in town. However, Ted continues to sneak out of O'Hare's sight (with his grandmother's encouragement) and learns more of the trees' history.
Over Ted's various visits, the Once-ler recounts the story that when he was a young man, he departed his family to find good material for his Thneed invention and make a business. After stumbling upon a lush Truffula Tree forest valley, the Once-ler meets the guardian of the forest, the Lorax, after cutting down a Truffula Tree. The Lorax urges the Once-ler to leave the forest, but the Once-ler refuses. Eventually, the Once-ler promises not to chop another tree down, and the two seem to begin a friendship of sorts. Then, the young businessman's Thneed invention becomes a major success and the Once-ler's family arrives to participate in the business. At first, keeping his promise, the Once-ler continues Thneed production by harvesting the Truffula Tree tufts in a slow, but sustainable manner. However, his greedy and lazy relatives soon convince him to resume chopping down the trees. Over time, the Once-ler's deforestation spirals into a mass overproduction. Flushed with wealth, the Once-ler rationalizes his short-sighted needs into arrogant self-righteousness, and the Lorax's helpless protests do not stop him. The Once-ler pollutes the sky, river, and landscape until the very last Truffula Tree falls. With no further chance of business, he is left broken and abandoned by his family, with his mother disowning him, and with the region uninhabitable because of his business's pollution, the Lorax sends the animals off to find a new place to live before he departs into the sky, leaving only a stone-cut word: "Unless". Distraught and ruined, the Once-ler became a recluse.
After he finishes telling his story, the Once-ler finally understands the meaning behind the Lorax's last message and gives Ted the last Truffula seed in hopes that he can plant it and make others care about real trees once more. Ted's desire to impress Audrey also becomes a personal mission to remind his town of the importance of nature. O'Hare, still determined not to have trees undermine his business, takes heavy-handed steps such as covering Audrey's nature paintings, closing off the door that Ted uses to see the Once-ler, and forcibly searching Ted's room for the seed. Ted enlists his family and Audrey to help plant the seed, which has begun to germinate after water was accidentally spilled on it. O'Hare and his employees pursue the dissidents until they manage to elude him and reach the town center. When Ted finally attempts to plant the seed, he is interrupted by O'Hare, who rallies the population to stop them by telling the people that trees are dangerous and filthy. To convince them otherwise, Ted takes an earthmover and rams down a section of the city wall to reveal the environmental destruction outside, thereby showing them what O'Hare is encouraging. Horrified at the sight and inspired by Ted's conviction (as though a part of the Lorax is within him), the crowd turns against O'Hare when they discover his true nature, his own henchmen expelling him from the town (by his own jetpack-like helmet), and the seed is finally planted. Time passes and the land starts to recover; new trees sprout, the animals begin to return, and the redeemed, now-mustached Once-ler is happily reunited with the Lorax.
The movie ends with a quote from Dr. Seuss: "Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."
reception and box office
As of March 17, 2012, the film had received a score of 53% Fresh at the review compilation site Rotten Tomatoes, a majority of positive reviews, but just shy of a "Fresh" rating, which requires 60% or greater. The site's consensus of film critics' opinions stated that "Dr. Seuss' The Lorax is cute and funny enough but the moral simplicity of the book gets lost with the zany Hollywood production values. Overall audience reviews were much more favorable, rating the film with a CinemaScore grade of A. As such, the film grossed the biggest U.S. domestic opening weekend to date of 2012 with a total of $70.2 million, enough to make up its production cost in the opening weekend. In its second weekend, The Lorax brought in $38.8 million domestically, pushing the domestic take over the $100 million mark.
differences from book
Due to being a feature-length film based on a children's book, it changed several things from the story: The nameless desolate city was named Thneedville and turned into a colorful plastic paradise. The boy was given the name Ted Wiggins. Several characters were added to the franchise: Mrs. Wiggins, Grammy Norma, Audrey, Cy the O'Hare Delivery Guy, Marie, Wesley, Dan, Rose, Aloysius O'Hare, among others. The Once-ler and his family now have faces; the latter also were given names. The Once-ler doesn't build a small shop, he gets a inflatable house from his cart. The guy who bought the first Thneed does not exist here. The Thneed is a failure at first, until a woman wears it as a hat and everyone begins to like it. The three forest animals leave all at once, not one at a time, although each one gets their own part in How Bad Can I Be?. The Lorax is seen coming back and we see that Ted did plant the seed. The Once-ler puts his 15 cents, nail, and great-grandfather snail in a table, not the Snuvv. However, the Snuvv is implied to be used when he gets a small Truffula out of his hand when he sings "almost every creature knows" in "How Bad Can I Be", and it was used as the basis on why the Once-ler was human (since it is described as a hole in his glove, showing the green parts are not his skin). The Lorax is friendlier to the Once-ler and forms a friendship with him before being betrayed.
the onceler
The Once-ler lived with his mother, his brothers Bret and Chet, his uncle Ubb, and his aunt Grizelda. They all thought he would "result to nothing," so when the Once-Ler left to sell his invention, the Thneed, they were happy to laugh at his optimism. Even so, Once-ler continued on his journey to find the perfect material for his Thneed. After a while of being pulled in his fully loaded cart by his mule while playing songs on his guitar, he stumbles upon "the most beautiful place he had ever seen." The valley was filled with Truffula trees, Bar-ba-Loots, Swommee Swans and Humming Fish which had nothing against him. The Once-Ler upon seeing the Truffula trees. As he chops down his first Truffula tree, the Lorax is summoned from thunder in the sky and forms in the tree stump. The Lorax warns him, but the Once-ler ignores his threats. During the night of his arrival, while he is peacefully sleeping, the Lorax, with the help of the Bar-ba-Loots, the Swommee Swans, and the Humming-Fish, take his bed and shove him into the river. Unfortunately, their plan is ruined because one of the youngest Bar-ba-Loots found himself on the bed as well, but is unable to swim. The Lorax saves the Bar-ba-Loot, Pipsqueak, as well as the Once-Ler and they make a deal. The Once-ler promises not to chop down any more Truffula trees, but in turn, the Lorax says he will keep an eye on him. As time passes, the Once-ler's Thneed gets discovered and goes into a high demand. In order to fufill that demand, the Once-ler calls his family to the valley to help him make the Thneeds. His mother demands him to start cutting down the trees to make production faster, and under the pressure, does so. An older Once-Ler sees that a seed is finally planted. The Lorax calls the Once-ler on his broken promise, but the Once-ler cannot see what he did wrong. After his family arrived in the valley, the once happy and kind Once-ler disappears and is replaced with a greedy, money-crazed salesman. He denies that he has done anything wrong, but feels incredibly guilty to see the last of the Truffula trees being chopped down. All of the animals left and the Lorax picked himself up and rose away, leaving a rock with the word "unless" engraved in it. During the years, he stared at that word in his house, wondering what it meant. He told his story to a curious Ted Wiggins as well as gave him the last Truffula tree seed, righting his wrongs.
mr o hare
He was previously mentioned to be the main antagonist, and this is proven several times within the duration of the film, being represented by his anger, plots and plans, or even something as big as breaking into someone's house without permission. O'Hare's air company went great lengths to keep the locals from leaving town, thus finding out the alternative to his methods was replanting the Truffula trees. Because of that, Ted Wiggins made an enemy out of this so-called "elected hero" when the teen boy tried to get a real tree for the girl of his dreams. When Ted spoke for the trees (as though a part of the Lorax was within him) by tearing down the walls of the town to reveal the truth and showing the last tree seed as a start of many much-needed changes for the all-artificial town of Thneedville, O'Hare tried in vain to get the citizens on his own side, revealing his true nature in the process by threatening to fire his delivery man Cy and singing that the seed should die. Through this, the residents of Thneedville saw O'Hare as the greedy dirtbag he really is, and they impeached him by having him blasted off in a jet-helmet, proving his defeat. It is unknown where he landed, and this is not covered for the few remaining minutes of the film. However, it is almost certain that he landed in another town, or even in the sections of the ruins behind the wall that weren't covered with Truffula trees by the end of the film. His last name might be a reference to Fred O'Hare from Universal Studios' other film, Hop. After O'Hare got blasted off in the jet pack at the end, it is unknown where he landed. His full name is Aloysius O'Hare, according to the Thneedville song.O'Hare has short, black hair. He also has black eyes. He has several wrinkles across his face, as well as thick eyebrows, and a round, short nose. It is seen several times in the film exactly how small he is compared to several other townspeople. He wears a grey business suit, with a black belt and golden strap, as well as a white tie, and blue shirt. He wears black shoes.As early as late teenhood, he got ideas for making money when he saw one of the billboard workers coughing on smog. Years passed, and O'Hare made a fortune selling oxygen tanks for a machine he designed to keep the otherwise-smoggy-air fresh for Thneedville residents, but in order to sell what people used to get for free.