Mr. Rostan at “The Peanuts Movie:” The Mythos of Charlie Brown
Andrew Rostan was a film student before he realized that making comics was his horrible destiny, and he’s never shaken his love of cinema. Every week, he’ll opine on current pictures or important movies from the past.
The Peanuts Movie is a film I had the most mixed feelings imaginable about upon hearing of its production. One of the most unfailingly joyful parts of my childhood was discovering and devouring Charles M. Schulz’s world. This went beyond devouring the books and television specials. I would read out loud and give every character a distinctive voice, and some of the first stories I ever made up were further adventures for Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the gang, and as I grew older and learned more about the deeper philosophical meaning of Peanuts (most recently well summarized by Todd VanDerWerff in Vox), I fell in love with the strip more. Peanuts is a part of me.
The last film adaptation was released four years before I was born, and when I heard the new movie was a joint effort of BlueSky, 20th Century-Fox, Paul Feig, and the Schulz family, I felt a sense of promise. But it was also a 3-D movie for the most 2-D of characters, and the history of Peanuts in cinema sets a poor precedent for this film.