- Looks like "a pentagram" of Gerard Way and someone with a rounder facial structure.
- Seems bi.
- Once corrupted, took on to wear Slytherin-ish clothes.
- Slytherin-ish clothes? Leaving the colour aside, I believe his clothes were more like Willy Wonka's. It does make him look like a snake, though, considering his posture.
- Jossed, the Lorax is as sadly accepting of the Once-ler's behavior as he is in the book. But unlike the book, the story does not end there...
- The second trailer does seem to show that a chunk of the film is Ted trying to escape and plant the seed.
- One trailer also shows the Lorax lifting himself into the sky as the Onceler watches.
- Confirmed. More events are tacked onto the book's ending, but Ted never meets the Lorax.
- Jossed. He's still human!
- That would have been cool, though.
- Jossed.
- This explains why there isn't a grandfather or father present in the trailer.
- The grey hair may rule out father, but grandfather is a possibility, unless the hair turned grey due to the stress of realizing what he did to the environment.
- Could explain why the mother and grandmother acted a certain way once the Once-ler was brought up at dinner. Bitter feelings come from the mother because he left them, but grandma always had a soft spot for him.
- Ted's Grandma does seem to know alot about the Once-ler.
- There's also the way Grandma strokes the living seed, saying "I remember you!"
- The younger Once-ler had noticeable freckles. Ted's Grandma doesn't, but Ted's mother and Ted himself both have freckles as well.
- As TheSassyLorax points out, if Grammy Norma is old enough to remember when there were trees everywhere, why doesn't she simply tell Ted what happened to them? Why send him off into the dangerous wastelands outside of town? Unless she had another reason, such as sending him to meet his grandfather...
- But if she wanted him to meet his grandfather, why didn't she go out herself to bring him into Thneedville? Why have Ted do it?
- By that point, Thneedville was a fortress designed to not let anyone in or out without permission. Even if Norma would've been able to find the secret door, there isn't any indication she would've been able to make the trip at her age, given that the outskirts of the city are a polluted, toxic wasteland. And if she would've been able to reach Once-ler's house, the odds that he'd abandon his self-imposed exile and return to Thneedville with her are from slim to none. It would be more simple to send Ted, since he's younger and has a scooter, and as far as she knew, there wasn't anything wrong in venturing outside, since she didn't know about O'Hare's intentions to keep the city in lockdown— even if it would've required brute force and violence.
- But if she wanted him to meet his grandfather, why didn't she go out herself to bring him into Thneedville? Why have Ted do it?
- On an interesting side note, Betty White supports Norma/Once-ler.
- Another possibility: The Once-ler is Norma's long-lost brother. We didn't see her in flashbacks, but perhaps she chose not to go into the family business, disliking the whole "greed is good" thing. She met and married Ted's grandfather and lived a quiet, unassuming life. Perhaps, upon hearing rumors of this crazy old hermit living outside of town, she realized it was her brother whom she drifted apart from years ago, and wanted to reconnect before one of them passed. Plus, "Uncle Wuncler" does have a nice Seussian ring to it.
- The Once-ler was going to listen to the Lorax, but then the Lorax went and put his bed in the river causing the Once-ler to almost drown, and the Once-ler won't care what he has to say and therefore the crapsack world.
- Close.
- Confirmed. In fact, he's more sympathetic overall.
- Jossed, sort of. His own thneed business grew the town as it is today, but it went out of business, and the town is now governed under O'Hare who had nothing to do with Thneeds and got an idea of how to become a zillionaire on his own.
- He was never in a wheelchair, just in a chair with wheels. And the Lorax was coughing, not the Onceler. Doesn't joss this theory, though.
- Going with another poster, O'Hare is a relative of the Once-ler. He's ashamed of what happened, so he hides it from Thneed-ville and won't let anyone leave. If they do, they might meet the Once-ler who will tell the story and shame him out of power.
- Nope, the film shows he's a villain through and through.
- Makes sense, actually. That might be the reason why they advised him to chop down the tree instead of simply finding a device to harvest only the leaves— which is the only part of the tree they used. That would be less destructive for both the business and the environment.
- That's no fun.
- Once they're both over 20, the age difference will matter not a bit. Provided she can see him as a potential love interest and not just a little brother.
- She does kiss him on the cheek at the end, but there's nothing else to confirm or disprove that they end up together.
- But then, why do all the citizens seem to know that trees produce air for free, and why does Audrey (at least) know about photosynthesis?
- They didn't. Audrey and Ted both had to tell them that trees produce air for free, and only Audrey really knew about photosynthesis— and that was from a book (or equivalent). Only the older people would know about trees, and it seemed like Gramma Norma was the only old person in that town.
- Yeah, O'Hare could claim with a straight face that "photosynthesis" was something Audrey had come up with herself and no one argued.
- Makes me kinda wonder where he's going to make friends from, since everyone left already...
- Human friends! He still has to eat, he could have made them on his way to the store for all we know. Maybe he travels into the city for poker nights or something. He doesn't seem to live very far.
- He may actually not be that old. He was probably in his early 20s when the events of the Flashback took place, and the film shows O'Hare looking roughly the same as he did when the Onceler's factory went under. That would seem to indicate that only 25-30 years max have passed since then, which would make the Onceler roughly 50, and prematurely gray.
- It does make sense for him to grey prematurely, between the pollution and his guilt.
- Yeah, while I was watching my guess was that they were his cousins, until Once-Ler's mother declared that Brett was her new favorite child. Then again, maybe that makes the sting worse: she's picking her nephew over her own son.
- There's also option two; they are her children, either Once-ler's dad died or his mom just betrayed his dad with his uncle; making Brett and Chet his half-brothers.
- Also, in the book, he invites his brothers and all his uncles and aunts, but not his parents, to join him in his success.
- Watch that scene again. The tree is clearly standing upright, and not leaning in either direction.
- the pink apron
- the bunny pjs
- watch the scene where the Lorax and animal friends invade his house.
- there isn't a real love interest for the Once-ler.
- his reassuring himself that "knitting is totally manly"
- maybe why his mom is dissappointed in him
- Isn't the whole point of Camp Straight that he has all these traits but is still heterosexual? Not that there's any love interest, or really anything in the film to provide evidence of what he's sexually attracted to, so he's Ambiguously Gay at best. Also, how does the scene in which the animals invade his house indicate anything? I imagine most people, regardless of orientation, wouldn't exactly enjoy having a number of forest animals break into their home and empty their fridge during the night.
- Not to mention being "girly" isn't an indication of sexuality? A dude can have a pink apron and cutesy bed clothes and be completely heterosexual, or Ace, or be on any other spot of the spectrum. Those things and actions aren't indications of anything, they've just been typecast.
- Highly unlikely, unless they changed their names. Their names are given as Marty and Mc Gurk.
- They could be Brett and Chet's sons.
- Are you sure you're not one of those crazy Once-ler fangirls?
- Can't it be both?
- Further proof: his moves in the beginning of How Bad Can I Be. Especially the one when he's facing the same way as the audience, if you get what I mean.
- They made him attractive as a bad guy to invoke All Girls Want Bad Boys. It just worked a little too well...
- I believe he's referred to as Pipsqueak twice.
- I think what the OP means is that baby bar-ba-loots are called "puppies" instead of "cubs." Like how baby skunks are "kittens." That particular one is named Pipsqueak, but he's a puppy. Like how you can name your pet cat Fluffy but it's still a kitten if it's young enough.
- The Once-ler doesn't have freckles. Neither does Audrey.
- If that's the case, poor Ted will be friendzoned forever: not only is he of another species, Audrey's also really a male (although we could argue whether that means anything for Loraxes), Ted's also way way younger than "she" AND he lacks the 'tache.
- Alternetivly she is A Lorax but not The Lorax.
- The physical differences could be a case of Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism
- She could be his daughter and a Half-Human Hybrid for all we know.
- Jossed. Right before the Lorax closed the door, the barbaloot blinked. The dead don't blink.
- The problem with this is that you can't really make the Thneed really nature friendly. You could use the most environmental sound method in the world to harvest the tuft, make sure to replace every tree you may damage and use a totally carbon-neutral process to knit it, and it would still be a total waste of natural resources because it's a useless piece of junk that no one really needs and people buy only because of a fad. Remember "Reduce" (i.e don't use things you don't need) is the first of the three Rs.
- Okay; well, he could still inherit the business but make things like actual clothes (which people do need to replace from time to time) from the tufts and foods from the Truffula Trees' fruits, hence having a business that's environment friendly.
- He'll make the Thneed into something useful and use the fame and fortune he gets to promote environmentalism and protect other forests. He could also let people recycle their Thneeds; give them back when they don't need them anymore and use the material for old Thneeds to make new ones. Then he'd have another source of materials besides the trees. '
- In the book (and cartoon) the Thneed was actually useful, being an all-purpose object, "It's a shirt, it's a sock, etc", the ecological crime was the process of making Thneeds was ruining the environment, with smoke, chemical waste, over-harvest of the trees, and the like.
- Grammy Norma and the Once-ler (who lives out of town) are the only people in the movie with gray hair.
- No. There is an old lady in "Thneedville", plus the workers who said the trees use 96 batteries. The latter were also seen working with younger O'Hare, and were clearly older than him, so they do remember actual trees.
- O'Hare has shown that he will do pretty much anything to keep his business running, and the movie handily demonstrates that people knowing that trees make clean air, or anything else about trees for that matter, is bad for his business, as when they're all ignorant, he can fool them that trees are bad.
- She survived by faking senility - something she only stops doing when the only person around is Ted and all the windows are closed.
- The Thneedville Wall- Berlin Wall
- Knocking off the statue of O'Hare's head- Stalin or Lenin statues
- Kid with radiation- Chernobyl aftermath
- The creatures leaving(being sent away)- Trail of Tears
- Truffula tufts- Native Americans' land
After seeing the immeasurable profits the Once-ler made, O'Hare decided to start on a company of his own after the Thneed business failed. Presumably, there were a lot of people in Thneedville who didn't have the money to move out and were now trapped in the wasteland. So he started selling a resource that wasn't just a fad, something that they needed to survive: clean air. It was something they couldn't get without traveling a long ways away, something they could never decide they didn't need, and something that there would always be plenty of elsewhere. After all, the Once-ler had done the hard part for him by getting rid of all the trees...
- And if there aren't any other members of the Once-ler's family that have taken the same path he has yet, there may be a few in the future that become inspired by his decision not to destroy anymore and learn from their own mistakes.
- The entire movie was really just a play put on by a high school drama club. The appearance of the Lorax at the beginning wasn't the real Lorax, just an actor in a costume coming in to introduce the play. Then drama club decided that the story needed to be stretched out to fit a stage performance, that's why there are so many songs, plot points and characters added. The story was dumbed down to make it more suitable for kids in the audience, hence the lack of subtlety, the comic relief, and the happy ending. It's possible that we were actually watching the play through the eyes of an imaginative young kid in the audience, too, and the kid imagined everything on stage as real and maybe even bigger and grander than it actually was.
However, O'Hare said that no one ever leaves town! And theoretically we can rule out the idea of people coming into Thneedville, as those people would know the truth about the outside, and the townspeople would soon catch on. So there must be someone who's able to bring in food and materials discreetly, who's trusted enough by the townspeople to be able to come and go as he pleases without suspicion, who has a vehicle which would not require anyone entering or leaving town through the wall... oh, wait. O'Hare can, in his blimp.
My theory is that O'Hare, and possibly a small team of trusted individuals such as Moony and McGurk (because I highly doubt that O'Hare, a selfish man, would do all of this work himself), occasionally leaves Thneedville in his blimp to pick up food and materials from elsewhere to bring back to Thneedville for the citizens and workers to use. As well as this, he most likely also picks up factory-made items such as the electric trees, the batteries for those electric trees, and most important of all his own O'Hare Air products. I imagine the other people in on this scheme would then be responsible for transporting the food and materials from the blimp to the shops/restaurants/building sites where they would be needed.
While you might think that the people of Thneedville would be confused as to where all this stuff would be coming from, I very much doubt they would even care. They describe Thneedville in the opening song as 'paradise' and 'got-all-that-we-need-ville'. The song is so self-aware about how ignorant they are- the line I think represents this most of all is "In Thneedville, we don't want to know / where the smog and trash and chemicals go". They really do not care why things are happening and where they are coming from so long as they get the end result- a happy, carefree lifestyle. Why else would they be so accepting of living in a town completely cut off from the outside world?
I mentioned earlier that they do say that each of their trees are made in factories, showing that they at least know what a factory is, so it could well be possible that the townspeople know that they are getting things from outside of Thneedville- what's more important to O'Hare, however, is that they never find out why. Hence why he uses the blimp and not, say, some delivery vans which would require him to make the outside of town accessible.
It all makes sense. For such a tiny man, O'Hare has such a huge blimp- apart from showing off that he's rich, why else would he need such a scaled-up mode of transport? Especially since, as see in the movie after he warns Ted not to leave town, he travels around Thneedville in that little glass train too.
With the blimp, O'Hare would be able to conduct all this discreetly, efficiently, and most importantly without suspicion from the townspeople as to why all this was happening. He would also definitely have the funds to afford this considering he claimed to be a 'zillionaire'. While he might have been exaggerating, he's definitely rich, probably at least a millionaire. The people of Thneedville rely on O'Hare Air to survive, and I reckon that if Ted had not revealed the truth about trees, this process would have continued successfully for many years to come.
- This is really more of a Headscratcher, but I'll answer it anyway. Plants without leaves do photosynthesize, leaves just increase surface area available. The fuzz could photosynthesize. Maybe it has chlorophyll, but it's obscured by other pigments.