Into the Woods Official Movie Thread- Page 199

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/10/15 at 10:41pm

I have to admit that I really wanted Meryl to turn back into the hag before she went under the ground.

She brings the curse back on herself by giving away the rest of the magic beans and hurling them at the group.

It's even written into the lyrics.

And it would have made an already memorable exit for the Witch into an even better and more disturbing one.

[Jay94]

Posted: 1/10/15 at 11:48pm

I really think a lot of these complaints have to do with budgetary issues. It really was not made for a lot of money by today's standards.

[binau]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 6:09am

Even though there wasn't a full transformation, they definitely showed that Meryl was transforming back didn't they? I recall seeing the ugly hands etc.

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 6:31am

No ugly hands when she transformed back.

They showed a closeup of her hand in the flashback of the witch's rap when she initially turned into the hag. That was great and very effective.

[beautywickedlover]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 1:46pm

Congrats on the film for crossing the $100 million mark at the North American box office.

"As for the rest of the top five, Into the Woods crossed the $100 million mark this weekend and finished behind Selma with $9.8 million—and ahead of The Hobbit, which ended its box-office reign after three consecutive weeks on top."


Box-office report: 'Taken 3' takes the cake

[icecreambenjamin]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 2:04pm

I've made the observation that people are going to go see it but theyre not really liking it. It's making plenty of money, but pretty much everyone that I've talked to who has seen it has hated it with an unhealthy passion. It also has a really low score on IMDB and the audience reviews are far from good.

I was hoping that this film would make new admirers of Sondheim, but has instead made a lot of people who hate his music and are very vocal about it.
I thought that it was an okay film but is it really a 1/10? Most audience members seem to think so and the marketing department is to blame.
One of my friends was taking her 5 year old daughter to see this movie because the trailers made them think it was a sweet Disney film. They hated it and thought that the music was dull and boring and creepy.
I then gave them a recording of the stage show and they changed their minds because they knew what they were getting into.
Disney should've let they're audience know what they were getting into.

[Starship]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 2:09pm

The marketing was very deceptive, but Disney knew what they were doing. Fantasy films have a huge market and Disney knew it would draw a big crowd if it was advertised the way it was. If the "twist" was also featured in the promo I think it would've drawn a lot of audience members away. I'm sure many people, knowing Disney and with the PG rating, who were unfamiliar with the musical thought it was a happily ever after story with Frozen/Tangled-esque music. Updated On: 1/11/15 at 02:09 PM

[J_Jammer]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 2:35pm

INTO THE WOODS shows that people just can't use Google right and they trust too much in brand name. Their mistake.

[Starship]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 2:40pm

I agree. You'd think parents/people would do more research before they went. However, I don't COMPLETELY blame the unsuspecting audience members. Disney IS known to produce films with a generally very family friendly feel, and has done so for decades. Mix that in with the sugar coated marketing strategy they went with and you have a film that appeared (to everybody) to be a "classic fairytale." The way Disney promoted "Into the Woods" wasn't true to the material and I think that should be noted. I think it's fair (to an extent) that audiences unfamiliar with the material prior were surprised/shocked/upset. Research or not, I don't think the audiences are completely to blame. Updated On: 1/11/15 at 02:40 PM

[J_Jammer]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 2:51pm

It's funny that in this day in age that people go anywhere not knowing where they're going or what they're about to see...with all this information right there (literally) at their fingertips.

Disney isn't all sugar and spice. They have the blood of many characters' parents on their Mickey gloved hands. I think parents allow cartoons to be only for children and forget that those cartoons aren't as sweet as they may think.

Ursula in Little Mermaid was spookier in her transformation song than the Witch in Into the Woods was the entire film and even on any stage ever.

As for creepy...Gaston takes the cake or the fact that Belle falls in love with a Beast. An animal. Not at all like a Wolf telling a little girl about flowers and how plump she is? Please.

These lovely parents are why there are Little Reds running around ignorant of what Wolves are doing to them or will do to them.

I don't believe Disney did anything wrong or tricked anyone. They didn't market it any differently than they have any other film under their name. They allowed Age of Ultron to use a song from Pinocchio in the most creepiest manner possible. Disney isn't going for sweet and any parents who paid an ounce of attention at what companies Disney bought would know that this kind of change was coming.

This includes the not so wimpy women in Frozen. Those girls didn't need not a single man to get what they were after. They did that without spouting Feminist propaganda.

I do blame the parents. If they care about their kids and what they see, then they need to know what they're getting into no matter what marketing does to make them think.

[rattleNwoolypenguin]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 3:16pm

If most of the audiences aggressively hated it so much, it would have tanked.
It doesn't matter if there are an amazing number of bad 1 star audience reviews of it, the fact remains is these reviews aren't stopping hoards of people from still seeing it and bad word of mouth should usually kill a movie. And the biggest indicator of that is how incredibly well the album is selling. The general public's biggest dumb complaint was "I didn't know it was a musical! I hate the music!"

What we are seeing displayed online is a large group of people who didn't see the right trailers or didn't even remotely look up and find out it was a musical and are angry about being "misled" so they take to IMDB and twitter like irritable people who had a bad coffee, turn to Yelp.

[Starship]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 3:19pm

I agree. Disney does sport some more adult heavy films (Pirates of the Caribbean comes to mind) and a lot of their traditional films (Snow White, Pinocchio, etc.) are FAR more unsettling to me personally than there newer films.

However, when it comes to their more adult franchises, I think it's fair to point out that they are targeted more directly at the teens-adult crowd, prominently featuring the PG-13 rating. Although some of the franchises have audiences that drop down to young children (the Marvel franchise), they're most always promoted as a film for more mature audiences and their promotional materials always feature all the themes explored in the film (death, violence, etc.) The ITW promo definitely stayed more on the road of "Look! All your favorite fairytales in one movie! Fun!!" than anything else. Therefore, I think comparing this to Age of Ultron is a rather unfair comparison.

As for the classic films, the subject matters of those selections tend to have been left behind in that era of Disney films. Disney's newer films (late 1990s onwards) tend to not explore those themes anymore. You don't see them making more mature movies like "Mulan" or "The Lion King" anymore. Pixar really is the only Disney associate that has movies with bigger meanings (UP).

I think it's fair to say that Disney really has moved away (for better or for worse) from their more classic films that had more depth and meaning than their newer movies like Frozen (sorry to all the Frozen lovers). Disney in the 21st century markets more towards "nice and sweet" than "emotionally compelling with a strong storyline."

That being said, I do stand by my belief that people should research a film before seeing it. It takes less than a minute and there's really no excuse why you shouldn't.





Updated On: 1/11/15 at 03:19 PM

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 3:28pm

This movie is hardly tanking, and it continues to do well at the box office.

The people who don't like it just happen to have REALLY LOUD VOICES and love to give "negative gazillion" ratings if they could, JUST TO MAKE THEIR ANNOYING LOUD VOICES EVEN LOUDER. Clumsy oafs.

But there are just as many people, if not more, who love the film or really like it or have no problem with the content or themes. And their children are actually learning something and thinking and questioning and pondering, God forbid.

It's the VOCAL MINORITY who must be heard though. AND THEY WILL MAKE SURE YOU BLOODY WELL HEAR THEM!

THIS MOVIE GETS A MINUS-TEN-MILLION RATING!!!! Because I didn't know it was based on a sophisticated play. Ew!

[sueb1863]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 3:55pm

I agree - some people hate the movie, but it hasn't slowed it down at the box office after two and a half weeks. If it was universally hated it'd be out of the top 5 by now and it would have flatlined around $60 million or so after the first weekend instead of crossing the $100 million mark and ending this past weekend at #3. And if everybody hated the music the soundtrack wouldn't have been #8 on Billboard last week (it's still #12 on the Amazon top 100 list of music best sellers).

Heck, the movie ADDED 295 theaters last week. They don't do that with bombs that everybody hates.

It ain't 'Grease' but it's not 'Nine' either. And I've seen a lot of love for the movie on Twitter and tumblr.



Updated On: 1/11/15 at 03:55 PM

[Starship]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 4:25pm

ITW is now at 120 million and is #4 at the Box Office!

[binau]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 4:33pm

The imdb rating is down to 6.8 now. This is not a good score . Despite the material being almost 30 years old, it almost seems to be 'ahead of its time' in terms of Disney. It seems there are a vocal crowd who aren't loving the film.

Updated On: 1/11/15 at 04:33 PM

[rattleNwoolypenguin]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 5:01pm

I wanted to mention, after seeing the film a second time I was so taken by the decision to very simply put the title "INTO THE WOODS" at the end with no magical looking font or frills. It contributed to what the film really did effectively; take the fairy tale world and morph and deconstruct it into a relatable reality at the end especially in the way you see the fairy tale characters at the end as just normal people. So when the words "INTO THE WOODS" appear finally, you feel like all along it meant "going through a trauma" or "the harsh realities of life"

Just a truly wonderful adaptation.

Updated On: 1/11/15 at 05:01 PM

[sarahb22]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 5:34pm

Actually if you check out Tumblr and Twitter there are a lot of fans of this movie, and many of them are young people. But the nature of the Internet is such that if you go looking for something, good or bad, if you skew your search in a certain way you'll find it.

The bottom line is: how is it doing at the box office? Answer: very well. That's all the evidence I need. The movie is a hit.

[Len6677]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 7:26pm

The only way this movie would have ever had a super high score on IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, or whatever, is if they drastically changed it and sanitized it to make it more of a crowd-pleaser. The fact that it has such split reactions is a good thing. As others have mentioned, what matters is that it has made money and that it has turned a lot of people on to the greatness of ITW & Sondheim.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 8:02pm

This includes the not so wimpy women in Frozen. Those girls didn't need not a single man to get what they were after. They did that without spouting Feminist propaganda.

[Eye Roll Gif]

[KathyNYC2]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 8:41pm

^^Yes but according to some, FROZEN was just a push towards homosexuality..you know, admitting who you are no matter what anyone else thinking, coming out of the closet, the close relationship of two women (ok sisters but let's not split hairs)...the not to be trusted men. I mean you can find someone to find something offensive in just about anything..

Of course, they are the beloved values in the much loved Little Mermaid where the female character has to give up who she is in order to get the prince...find idea there to teach our youngsters. How many complaints do we hear about that one?



Into the Woods was not a beloved theatrical show that everyone loved - lots of people love it, many people did not. Why would that be any different for the film?

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 8:53pm

Frozen went way overboard with female chauvinism, bordering on a misandrist perspective.

It was messed up.

[J_Jammer]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 10:10pm

Well, I'm not part of the need to hate Frozen crowd. So I disagree. A lot.

Phyllis, hold on while I gather and line up the amount of cares I have. Oh wait, I just wasted them all on typing this. Carry on, you broken human. Updated On: 1/11/15 at 10:10 PM

[Musical Master]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 10:57pm

Well, the Globes have been passed and INTO THE WOODS didn't get a single thing. Ah well, at least there's Oscars which I'm sure this film will not go empty handed at.

But big congrats to BUDAPEST and the other winners. Updated On: 1/11/15 at 10:57 PM

[beautywickedlover]

Posted: 1/11/15 at 11:02pm

I thought that if 'Les Miserables', which won in its category at the Globes even though it was not the best reviewed film, could win then maybe 'Into the Woods' could too. Oh well.