Movie Adaptations

With many great plays and musicals, there are, inevitably, movie adaptations.  I feel like the most well known ones are musical adaptions, especially because I think you see a lot more of those these days anyway.  I have a lot of different feelings about movie adaptations.  I think there are a lot of pros and a lot of cons.  There’s also no way to have the same opinion about every movie adaptation out there.  Some of them really rock it, and some of them are nothing short of questionable…or worse.  When I’m going into a movie adaptation, especially of a musical, I try to go in with an open mind.  There’s a lot to take in.

One of the nice things about movie adaptations are that they make things like musicals more accessible.  Let’s face it…show tickets aren’t cheap, and most people can’t easily get to New York and Broadway very easily.  I live relatively close to NYC, and still can’t really afford to get up there and get show tickets.  If I had my way, I’d be up there all the time, seeing all the shows that I love the music to.  But it’s just not realistic.  On top of that, there are shows that aren’t even on Broadway anymore, like In the Heights.  Movie adaptations give me a chance to see those shows.

Another great thing about movie adaptations is that it gets people into shows.  I remember when the RENT movie came out in my junior year of high school.  I had seen it on Broadway only a year or two before, and had been a fan since I was twelve or thirteen.  The first time I saw the movie, I saw it with a friend who was also a fan of the show, but then I saw it with my cousins, who didn’t know the show at all.  And although my friend and I thought it was passable, it really got my cousins into the show.  There’s never a problem when a show you love gets new fans, at least in my opinion.  Movie adaptations can be that vehicle.

Something I kind of hate with movie adaptations, but that are inevitable, are the changes that have to be made.  I think the biggest one is that filmmakers have to make a lot of changes to adapt shows.  Even when there’s a lot of collaboration, like Lin Manuel Miranda’s work on In the Heights, changes have to be made.  When you know the show going in, it can be a little weird.  Now, I’ve never seen In the Heights onstage, but I am familiar with the show, and I was able to pick out the changes.  Some of them were a bit disappointing, some of them were understandable, and everything in between.  I still enjoyed the movie.

Sometimes movie adaptations are nothing like the stage show, and that’s okay.  The Hedwig and the Angry Inch stage show and movie are two completely different shows.  But it would have been pretty much impossible to make the movie a direct adaptation of the show.  I love them both for what they are, and I enjoy them both for what they are.  I didn’t even realize at first, but when I saw it on stage, I was a bit surprised.  But I definitely didn’t mind.  I don’t think I’ll ever mind either one.

There are definitely times where I truly hate a movie.  I think the Cabaret movie is a travesty, though I’ve never seen the play.  They changed so much, left out whole storylines and plots.  I feel like they were like, “LOOK, WE HAVE LIZA MINNELLI AS SALLY BOWLES.” and that was the end of that one.  Ultimately, I’ve come to hate the RENT movie, too.  There’s only so much you can do before I feel like I don’t even know that I’m watching.

Casting can always make a difference in movie adaptations.  You can really see it from movie to movie.  For example, in RENT, they had almost all the original actors in the movie.  Which is super cool on one hand, but on the other hand, they were all a decade older than the characters they were playing.  It was sort of weird.  Of course, they got Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane for The Producers, but there wasn’t so much of an age limit on that one.  I think with most movie adaptations, it’s best to just recast accordingly.

One of the best things about musicals are the soundtracks.  I’m a huge collector of soundtracks, and I think I can enjoy a musical that way, even if I’ve only ever seen the movie.  I remember discovering tick, tick…BOOM! in college and enjoying the soundtrack so much.  But when the movie came out a few years ago, I enjoyed that soundtrack even more.  I really loved the movie, too, though I know it was very different from the stage show.  I do hope to see it on stage someday.  I like to think I’ll keep loving the movie.

In general, movie adaptations really can go either way.  I think ultimately, I realize that there’s never a way that you can completely adapt a show into a movie.  It’s just the reality of what they’re doing.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy those movie adaptations, though we can also acknowledge that we don’t enjoy those movie adaptations.  We can always take away what we take away…and that’s always totally fine.