Unless

[Hannabella Doe]

I was looking through IMdb and I noticed this in the trivia section. "Unlike the original book, the Once-ler is shown fully in the story as a human. Executive producer Christopher Meledandri said of the change, "The minute you make the Once-ler a monster, you allow the audience to interpret that the problem is caused by somebody who is different from me, and it ceases to be a story that is about all of us. Then it's a story about, 'Oh I see, the person who led us into the predicament is not a person. It's somebody very, very different.' And so it takes you off the hook." But the problem with that is that it takes away the message of the book, and people wonder why I think this generation and the next is doomed with idiocy.

 

[TheRealCJ]

Saw this with my son last week, no awkward questions for me.
However, I really liked the Once-ler song, other than being a pretty good song, I think it represented the character well in that more often than not people like this don't see what they are doing as a bad thing and convince themselves that they are doing the right thing. Actually this makes for a better "bad guy" as you can relate to them. (My opinion at least) Other than that I thought Lorax was okay.

The thing is, the once-ler WAS just like that in the book/animated short, much more so, in fact.

In the book, the once-ler wasn't EVIL. What he thought he was doing was right; he argues that Thneed is an extremely useful multi-purpose product, justifying its manufacture. He also argues that shutting down his empire wholesale would put thousands out of work (I believe the number was 100 000), and when he realises the consequences of his action, he punishes himself via self-imposed exile.

Movie!once-ler, by comparison, is painted as nothing more than a good person led astray, he isn't PERSONALLY responsible, it was society forcing him to act! The result is similar (an "evil" person believing that they are doing the right thing), but the book version is a much better character, being much more sympathetic: its much easier to see things from his point of view.

 

[Something Amyss]

I've never read the book but the TV special intrigues me. I may be able to find a copy of the book too so there's that. I understand now why Bob was so pissed about The Lorax selling an SUV...it's a slap in the face of the author and it spits on the source material.

Even better, the movie takes shots at commercialism...WHILE they hocked an SUV.