Not liking this song substitution at all. "You Can't Win" has a negative lyric that says nothing about who the Scarecrow is or where he came from. Just that he has given up on life. "I Was Born on the Day Before Yesterday" is an answer to Dorothy's question and tells you where the Scarecrow came from and how he came to be. It also puts a positive spin on the character ("this time, I'm gonna make it." ) The movie adaptation sucked. There's no mincing of words about it. They got everything wrong, from concept to execution, and it failed on all levels. The more they try to emulate the film, the less faith I have that this will be a decent production. Not only do I cringe at the idea of seeing a depressing and depressed Scarecrow yet again, his makeup in the ads is disturbing. He looks like the love child of Freddy Kruger and Beetlejuice. And Dorothy looks like a confident city girl heading to the mall for a shopping spree. Ugh. Trust the story people. It's "The Wizard of Oz." You can adapt it all you want and pay tribute to it, but you can't make it better. So don't try.
I think a lot of people don't realize that the original stage version of "The Wiz" is in many respects a more faithful adaption of the source material than the MGM classic film. The film version of "The Wiz" threw so much of it out and decided to be "smarter" than the source material. They fell flat on their faces. I had hoped these producers understood to keep a distance from the poor creative decisions in the movie, but I guess not. Maybe someday we'll see a legitimate TV or film version of the original stage musical "The Wiz." This isn't going to be it, however.
Honor the material. That's all you have to do. The Scarecrow doesn't need to be a lost character who thinks "he can't win." Stupid. And we don't need a new song from Ne-Yo that boosts the characters' confidence to kill Evilene. There is already a confidence-boosting song called "Be a Lion." It's beautiful and comes at a great spot dramatically in the show. So we'll get a SECOND song that does the same thing, right as they go off to kill the witch? Even the MGM movie knew not to do that. If you notice, the last full song in the classic film is "If I Were King of the Forest." From that point on, after they see the Wizard, the movie essentially becomes a non-musical action film. No more songs. Because the pacing and the drama are more important. That's why they cut the reprises of "Over the Rainbow" and "Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead" in addition to "The Jitterbug." So this production of "The Wiz" is going to add a song precisely where it isn't needed, with a song that does what another song in the show already does: boost confidence for the main characters. Ugh!
I can understand making some edits and doing a bit of a revised book to get rid of some of the '70s dated references or language, but when you swap the Scarecrow's song to that miserable self-pity ditty that Michael Jackson sang (well enough) in the film, you alter his character. That's not smoothing edges, that's changing course. It didn't work before, and it won't work now. The movie is one big soggy Kleenex full of boo-hoo, and it has nothing to do with the tone of the original story or the tone of the original stage adaptation of "The Wiz." Okay ... I've ranted enough. Yes, I'll watch it, but I'm already hating these unnecessary changes. My hopes of a faithful adaptation for TV are gone.
"Jaws is the Citizen Kane of movies."
blocked: logan2, Diamonds3, Hamilton22
Updated On: 10/26/15 at 07:30 AM
