Friendly reminder that people are allowed to be apprehensive about the Wicked movie. Fans of the Broadway show have been waiting YEARS for this movie to be made, but unfortunately it's being dropped during a time where adaptations of Broadway shows just aren't hitting the same, because they're not being catered to the right audience.
Even if you overlook the casting, and the fact that they're not even being marketed as the genre (the saving grace with this one is that most people know that Wicked is a musical), the actual musical aspect is enough to trigger a fear of the unknown.
I've seen a lot of people defending the most recent Mean Girls movie by saying, of course the music is going to be different, because it's a different medium and the stage version won't translate well on screen. And I do partially understand that, I get that changes need to be made for it to work better, but they changed the arrangements of the songs entirely, and I think that has more to do with trying to hit a different audience than it does about screen translation. It's a weak excuse when you look at the bigger picture.
Movie adaptions of musicals have been made throughout cinema history, and SO many of them have been successful for the right reasons, and some of them were even recent. Grease, Hairspray, Mamma Mia, Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables, Into the Woods, Little Shop of Horrors, West Side Story, Tick, Tick... Boom!, Chicago, The Sound of Music, In the Heights, Matilda—the list is endless. And, sure, there are issues with each and every one of them, things we can complain about, stuff we can pick apart, but the one thing that's consistent is that they all have the right energy. Changes were made because they needed to be, but the music and the vibe stayed the same. There's no excuse to revamp the entire thing.
Which brings us back to the fear of how they're going to handle Wicked. If "movie musicals shouldn't have as much music in them to balance it out" then what are we doing here? Because Wicked, in particular, is a musical where the score acts as a driving force for the plot, and if you're going to take half of that out to cater to an audience that doesn't like musicals, or change the arrangements, revamp the numbers etc. then it isn't going to work.
Obviously, we can't judge it too harshly yet, because we've had a 1 minute teaser trailer, but please remember that fans are allowed to be apprehensive.
And, side note, creators of movie musicals need to stop trying to make musicals for people that don't like them. If they focus on their target audience, then they'll be successful—that's filmmaking 101 and should not have to be said but here we are.
areudirty
annaxmalina
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