If Netflix had adapted Into the Woods

[rattleNwoolypenguin]

If Netflix had adapted Into the Woods:

Episode 1: Once Upon a Time... (Act One)

Episode 2: Ever After (Act Two)

Like a tiny Sondheim mini series.



Boom. THAT's how you keep the two acts separate on film and retain the gravity of the structure of the stage show.  A fantastic idea too late.

BUT it's not too late for them to adapt Sunday in the Park this way...

[Jarethan]

Not sure it matters since,if Part 1 is good,most people will watch Part 2 immediately after...a mini-binge.

[rattleNwoolypenguin]

Sure, but the point is Act One and Act Two can be experienced as separate entities if they are separate episodes unlike the movie which tried to merge them awkwardly without a time jump. 

 

[gypsy101]

i still don’t really understand why they couldn’t have done it in two acts for the film

[Jordan Catalano]

Or even just have made a halfway decent film.

[uncageg]

rattleNwoolypenguin said: "Sure, but the point is Act One and Act Two can be experienced as separate entities if they are separate episodes unlike the movie which tried to merge them awkwardly without a time jump."

 

I understand what you are saying but i feel the entire piece should be seen in one sitting. For me, a part of the beauty of the show was the switch in tone when returning from intermission and having gone through it all in one evening of theatre.

 

[TotallyEffed]

Theatre is very different than film. I wish people could just accept that.

[uncageg]

Maybe they should have gone old school and had an actual intermission for the film.

[GeorgeandDot]

The film has 0 style. That's one of the big problems with it. It's a theatrical musical and it should've been a theatrical film, but they just went the boring route. I would've loved to have seen someone like Wes Anderson do Into the Woods. Just someone that would've made some bold choices. The film totallu needed an old fashioned intermission, but Disney probably felt that, that was too risky. Disney, unfortunately, got their grubby little hands on Into the Woods.

[henrikegerman]

I thought the film was quite good.

Second to Chicago only in terms of movie adaptations of shows from the 80s on.. I mean 70s on 

[ScottyDoesn'tKnow2]

GeorgeandDot said: "The film has 0 style. That's one of the big problems with it. It's a theatrical musical and it should've been a theatrical film, but they just went the boring route. I would've loved to have seen someone like Wes Anderson do Into the Woods. Just someone that would've made some bold choices. The film totallu needed an old fashioned intermission, but Disney probably felt that, that was too risky. Disney, unfortunately, got their grubby little hands on Into the Woods."

This post is so on point. I hated the artificial theme park set look, the dulled colors, the boring cinematography, that green screen look that almost all of their live action films have, and worst of all, how they didn't do the second act justice whatsoever and turned it into a typical Disney film. Sure one on the more mature side, but I felt the film took the original point of the stage version and conformed it into a Disney re-telling of a fairy tale but with an "edge" (for the PG crowd) as opposed to something actually saying something.

[Loopin’theloop]

GeorgeandDot said: "The film has 0 style. That's one of the big problems with it. It's a theatrical musical and it should've been a theatrical film, but they just went the boring route. I would've loved to have seen someone like Wes Anderson do Into the Woods. Just someone that would've made some bold choices. The film totallu needed an old fashioned intermission, but Disney probably felt that, that was too risky. Disney, unfortunately, got their grubby little hands on Into the Woods."

^ The above exactly.

What really fascinated me about the movie adaptation is that the original stage version seems much more commercial than the screen adaptation that followed it. 

The script and the original production, in particular has a real dry humour that makes it not disimilar to movies like ‘Shrek’ or ‘Tangled’. The original production was really, really funny. The whole thing has an off centre feel, like the aforementioned movies. Why remove all of that? So much of the humour was jettisoned for the movie, when it would surely have helped it?

I’m intrigued to know how much this was Disney and how much was Sondheim/Lapine. Sondheim is not always at his best when let loose on his own past works. His own taste is often for the relentlessly bleak and dark and as much of a genius as the man is, he tends to prefer productions of his own work more when everyone else in the audience can’t find a glimmer of light within them. 

[Kad]

I think the film we got is better than the film we could've had in the 90s. If you think the changes were drastic to this one, then, well, you would've short-circuited over that version.

[Fosse76]

rattleNwoolypenguin said: "Sure, but the point is Act One and Act Two can be experienced as separate entities if they are separate episodes unlike the movie which tried to merge them awkwardly without a time jump."

That requires the assumption that the intermission serves an artistic purpose and not a practical one.

 

[ScottyDoesn'tKnow2]

I think with Into the Woods, it was both. They planned it as a two-act musical and the narrative of Into the Woods certainly made great use of having an intermission break up the action.

[Kad]

The real question is: if you want your film adaptation to be so faithful to the stage show that you'd prefer that each act got its own installment, then why not just watch the filmed version of the Broadway show?

[broadwaybabywannabe2]

and my answer about the film version of ITTW is, if Disney had only spent maybe $25 million more on the look of the film it would have made a better filmed musical...look at all the money they spent for Cinderella that year and that wasn't even a musical!!...

so I guess NETFLIX would have allowed the producers to spend money!...too bad  this didn't happen.

[Musical Master]

Agreed Kad, the film version that was going to be made in the 90's was reportedly so different from it's source material that it was an extremely family friendly, watered down, version of the stage show. Especially sparring the Baker's Wife and with her having a happy ending with her husband and child. Talk about missing the point of the musical entirely.

I for one am very grateful for the film that we got despite it's changes. Plus I think Rob Marshall is really good director on his own terms; IMO, his only black mark in a very fine resume is his ill-fated adaptation of Nine but that's something else entirely.

[haterobics]

rattleNwoolypenguin said: "Boom. THAT's how you keep the two acts separate on film and retain the gravity of the structure of the stage show. A fantastic idea too late."

One imagines it isn't an idea too late, but something they thought of... and rejected. I mean, your idea is just following the source material, not sure how that would escape them as a possibility.

[Loopin’theloop]

Fosse76 said: "rattleNwoolypenguin said: "Sure, but the point is Act One and Act Two can be experienced as separate entities if they are separate episodes unlike the movie which tried to merge them awkwardly without a time jump."

That requires theassumption that the intermission serves an artistic purpose and not a practical one.

"

^exactly

a gap is not important. What’s important to the story is that we feel there has been a passage of time, which is totally doable without an intermission.

The way the movie stitches the two acts together, is really neat and tidy and as a glue job works well. At that moment, it doesn’t feel like a hack job, the issue is that you have repercussions.

 It’s inportant that the majority of the characters we think of as the heroes (another important point) have reached what they have imagined their ‘happy ever after’. 

Having Cinderella marry the Prince and then spend and undisclosed amount of time, sitting around in a palace - whilst he is away on ‘royal duty’ as the show does, means the character herself is allowed to grow dissatisfied and she herself realises that this really isn’t the life she dreamt off because in fact, she never really knew what she wanted (as she states repeatedly in the song) it’s only after getting what feels like a perfect ending, which with it brings a lot of time alone with no chores to do, with which she can think, that she begins to realise this. 

Not only is that one of the overall messages of the film but without it, Cinderella’s actions make much less sense. If the giant ‘attack’ happens the day of the wedding, then she’s still a virgin who has spent little to no time with her husband and decides to leave him based on the hearsay that he is a philanderer - which he doesn’t disagree with. When did this affair take place? They’ve been married for five minutes. And again this is a character who struggles making her own discussions - the passage of time is what allows her growth and without it, the characters arc is lessened.

Same with the Baker’s Wife. The character needs time to realise that having a baby is not the answer to fixing her marriage. In the movie, she has barely given birth before she has an affair.

And the Witch - in the show, she doesn’t immediately look for Rapunzel. One imagines that she is enjoying living with her beauty and whatever that might mean...The fact she leaves Rapunzel wandering the desert for a period of time whilst enjoying the fruits of her ‘beautiful garden’ makes her all the more interesting. And all the more flawed. It also makes ‘Children Will Listen’ more of a moment of revelation for her.

[greensgreens]

Actually, from what I know of the proposed early/mid-90s version, it seemed to be great - if you're ok with just presenting the first act. The casting at that rumoured reading at Penny Marshall's house (did that actually happen or is it unsubstantiated?) would've been something (Cher as Witch, Robin Williams as Baker, Steve Martin as Wolf, etc.); sadly we'll never know now. But, with that cast and the involvement of Jim Henson, I think that first act would've been like no interpretation we've had before.

[g.d.e.l.g.i.]

You didn't read the script, though. Simply put: oy.

[Kad]

The two songs released from that version ("Rainbows" and "I Wish" are, in my opinion, vastly inferior to anything in the show... and most of Sondheim's body of work.

[haterobics]

Loopin’theloop said: "a gap is not important. What’s important to the story is that we feel there has been a passage of time, which is totally doable without an intermission."

Which also kills the notion of Netflix solving this problem, since they seemingly give you all of four seconds before automatically playing the next episode.

[Loopin’theloop]

haterobics said: "Loopin’theloop said: "a gap is not important. What’s important to the story is that we feel there has been a passage of time, which is totally doable without an intermission."

Which also kills the notion of Netflix solving this problem, since they seemingly give you all of four seconds before automatically playing the next episode."

you don’t need a pause in time, for real to feel there has been a passage of time in a story. The issue with the movie is that the baker’s wife grows pregnant at speed, due to the breaking of the curse and the passage of time is foregone in favour of the story continuing straight on. There are plenty of movies that convey a passage of time in mere moments. You don’t a gap to do this 

i don’t need to sit for twenty minutes between watching the Star Wars movies to know they don’t follow on directly.

 

its the passage of time within the universe of the movie that’s important, not the world of the audience