Into the Woods Official Movie Thread — Page 189

Bucky
I'm pretty sure there are two beanstalks in the musical.

Icecream, seriously, why does it have to be one way or the other we feel about the Giant's Wife.

The Giant's Wife has been robbed and her husband has been killed.
By someone whom she embraced as a guest in her home.
She's pissed.
She wants revenge.
She wants the boy.
She's not being given him.
She's enraged.
She does horrible things.

She's doing what humans have done throughout the centuries in both legend and reality.

Think the Trojan War. Mass war and destruction of a civilization over the abduction of one woman, Helen.

Still, we don't think of Achilles and the Greeks as being other than people, now do we? Or feel bad because they are human, not monsters? In fact, we are meant to feel for both them and the Trojans.

Hell, you don't even need to go that far.

Jack himself is a thief and a murderer. He's still recognizably human.

I'm sorry if this sounds demeaning, but you seem to be looking at this story as if it were a simplistic good -v- bad conflict. It's not. Nor is it meant to be. It's meant to be as challenging as life itself.

We can still feel sympathy for Jack at the same time we strongly condemn his actions.
We can still feel sympathy for the Giant's Wife at the same time we strongly condemn her actions.
We can relate to the community not wanting to turn this little boy over to be killed.
We can relate to the Giant's Wife in her rage.

We can relate to being alive.

Once again, I didn't see the change as throwing off the Witch's lament at all.

She's been rejected and abandoned by her child.
She has been rejected and abandoned by the only person she loves.
Her restored beauty can not help her.
Her powers are gone.
No one listens to her.
She is alone.
And she is in danger of being killed by a Giant.

I find her grief just as believable and palpable as if Rapunzel were actually dead.

On top of which, even with Rapunzel not dying, many are still saying, as they have for decades, that the end of the story is too much of a jarring downer.

Disney, Lapine and Marshall struck a balance. Of course sometimes striking a balance means that no one is happy with the results.

But that's not the case here.

Sure some think the movie is objectionably sanitized, although I don't find their arguments at all persuasive.

Some think the movie is far too dark, but, again, people have always had this complaint about Into the Woods.

But many others, like myself, think it all works wonderfully well. Including some of us, long fans of the musical, who accept the alterations as judicious ones which sacrifice very little - if any - of the libretto's grit and power.

Updated On: 1/2/15 at 02:19 PM

I think it would have been cool to hear the reactions in the audience when Rapunzel gets stomped to death. Would have brought the film to a whole other level in my opinion.

Henrik, you make great points and I would be more inclined to agree with more of them if I didn't know WHY they chose to keep Rapunzel alive. It was a coward decision not based on merit. Had nothing to do with art or the film. It was just Disney covering their backs and to me that's disappointing.

If Sondheim had come out and said "Oh yes we didn't kill Rapunzel cause we wanted to look at a different prospective from blah blah blah". But it wasn't that. It was a decision made out of fear from Disney.

Yeah, Sondheim has never struck me as a strict non-compromiser. All of his early lessons came from longtime industry professionals who taught him the necessity and value of compromise, starting with Oscar Hammerstein. He's a realist. Realists can be great artists, too.

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I actually like that we are left with Rapunzel and her prince as foils to Cinderella and hers. Rapunzel's Prince is presented here as, at least potentially, more sincere than his brother, and potentially more faithful in love. No, we don't know that they will survive. But they have a chance. Rapunzel and her prince offer us a happy ever after that we can have at least some degree of faith in; as if the movie was saying that everyone's path is different.

It's different than the show. But it could have worked on stage as well without altering any of the core themes of the libretto. Just because we don't see Rapunzel and her Prince making the mistakes that people do, doesn't mean that they might not make them - they too are human. On the other hand, having a more traditional fairy tale ending for them (in theory!) doesn't take away from the conflicts and neuroses of the other characters; if anything, it arguably provides contrast and lends depth and perspective.

Updated On: 1/2/15 at 02:54 PM

Pretty sure what it shows is the original creators of the work willing to go along with the movie studio's requested (demanded) changes. This is hardly a unique situation for Into the Woods.

Sondheim and Lapine, of course, could have said no way and found someone else to make the movie, raised the money and made it themselves, or simply allowed it not to be made. Disney may be the initiator of the change, but others always had the option to stop it if they felt their story was being taken hostage or damaged in irreparable ways.

I've seen multiple reviews saying that it's a story where the protagonists are vile murderers.

Please link at least three.

Like Mr. Nowack says, I don't see what kind of precedent is being set in the first place, let alone what makes it dangerous. I'm also of the mind that Sondheim would have let Rapunzel live 20 years ago (there was just a discussion the other day about the 90s film script where the Baker's Wife lives, so I can't imagine he'd have been to precious about Rapunzel back then). That piece is just vague histrionics about nothing. No one thinks the Lament is "chilling." I just can't take a piece seriously that refers to it as one of the ten best movie musicals of all times all the while by portending it foreshadows a pox on all future movie musicals.

I get that Into the Woods is a show that means a lot different of things to a LOT of different people, but there seems to be some kind of underylying theme with a lot of people (and not just here) that this is text is so sacrosanct and shouldn't have been altered at all, when in fact, as stage to screen adaptions go, it's pretty faithful, despite the loss of a few songs and deaths.

People are of course entitled to feel how they feel about the result. I think that Dreamgirls was a travesty given what could have been from the source material, but the consolation to me is that even though it was well-received, it's pretty much forgotten from people's consciousness. Even Jordan's link, which mentions almost eveyr musical made since the new millennium, ignore it. And I get the author's feeling about being misled by filmmakers, because Bill Condon kept repeating that only one song was cut from Dreamgirls, but that was only true if you were only counting the songs that made it to the OBC recording, and even then that was still a reach to say.

I saw the film again today, and I liked it more the second time. I even thought It Takes Two was right to be kept (I was thinking it slowed the movie down originally). I still think Giants in the Sky would have benefited for more elaborate flashbacks then just ones of Jack going up and then down the beanstalk. The only change that stuck out today was that all the lyrics that were excised from "No One is Alone" are all the lyrics that really drive the message that that song is about community responsibility and how the actions of one can affect the lives of many.

Updated On: 1/3/15 at 04:46 PM

Gothampc, in the original show you hear the footsteps, then a slightly raised platform cracks apart and the BW falls off the back of it. You hear the giant, but I don't think anything is shown or said that indicates she is necessarily stomped on. I didn't think the movie scene was any less explicit than the stage scene. In both versions it's possible she might have died just from the fall.

Which goes back to the idea being discussed earlier of the giantess not really being a villain bent on murdering everyone. She only wants Jack and says she will leave once she gets him. In the stage version the narrator even says she is nearsighted and without her glasses, which implies that she really has no awareness who she is killing by stomping around the kingdom. The only person she could be accused of purposefully killing is the narrator, since she drops him when she realizes he's not Jack (but even then, she didn't single him out in the first place. She was tricked into thinking he's Jack).

I saw the film today, and I liked it more the second time. I even thought It Takes Two was right to be kept (I was thinking it slowed the movie down originally).

I felt like the relationship between these two was handled poorly. At the begging of Act 1, its basically falling apart. It is stale and life less. They do love each other but they can't connect. They are in desperate need of couples therapy…and they get it when they go into the woods.

If this is made clear at the start, it makes "it takes two" incredibly powerful. Because the riff between the baker and his wife wasn't as significant in the movie, it turned it into just a cute song they sing.

James Corden made the baker too much of a "nice guy". In the play he's kind of a jerk, constantly belittling his wife and telling her what to do. Because he was played so soft we didn't get to see his arc through the entire show. He grows from being impulsive, insecure and selfish into a strong, compassionate father figure.

The film turns a super complicated adult relationship into one that is shallow and superficial.

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accidental double post

Updated On: 1/2/15 at 08:45 PM

Saw it again, and it was even better! I found it perfect, and had no issues whatsoever!

"James Corden made the baker too much of a "nice guy". In the play he's kind of a jerk, constantly belittling his wife and telling her what to do. Because he was played so soft we didn't get to see his arc through the entire show. He grows from being impulsive, insecure and selfish into a strong, compassionate father figure.

The film turns a super complicated adult relationship into one that is shallow and superficial."


Couldn't disagree more...I found there relationship handled excellently! Is it different? Yes. Corden and Blunt portray their "Bakers" differently then Zien and Gleason. I actually felt like Corden and Blunt loved eachother which brought something out in It Takes Two that hasn't been brought out before. I never loved that number...now it is one of my favorites! I also felt more for the Baker for the first time when his wife died, because you see how much he loved her in this, and how much she loved him. His struggle is not his relationship with his wife, as he seems to be a pretty good husband, but he is still haunted by his father's abandonment of him... he is struggling to become a good father he wants to be, and when his wife dies, he loses the person he relied on, and the love of his life.