i think what really gets me is how this sort of thing just betrays a lack of respect, if not total disdain for musical theater as an art form. like okay fine maybe you're just too cool and mature and grounded and cynical and into True Art to be able to stomach a movie where people burst into song every five minutes and have dance breaks in the middle of the street and argue in 6-way counterpoint. but i'm not. i'm not and this medium is deeply important to me and a lot of other people. and like i don't think it's entitled to think people who love this art form deserve adaptations made by people who also love it.
that's why the "tick tick... boom!" movie was good. whatever else you can say about the man, lin manuel miranda gets musicals. he cares about them. he respected the hell out of the original work and sought to bring it to a new medium in a way that preserved what made it special. the "in the heights" and both "west side story" and "chicago" movies were good because they weren't ashamed of being musicals and clearly cared about the integrity of the original. even movie musicals that are significantly clunkier, like "the last 5 years" and "the prom", I still genuinely like to some degree because god dammit, they committed. did it always work? no. but at least they tried. at least they didn't disdain the source material for being what it fundamentally is.
and you'll notice those movies i mentioned didn't make a 1-1 replica of the original stage shows. all of those movies changed some shit- sometimes in ways i liked, sometimes in ways i didn't. but none of the changes felt like the director scrambling to save face or make the story seem less "silly" by virtue of its musical-ness. film is a different medium and a different language, and often by the time the movie comes along, audiences respond to different things; things have to change. sometimes that means doing what "chicago" did and making all the musical numbers either literal in-universe performances or dream sequences. sometimes that means doing what the remake of "west side story" did and adding new scenes to reframe some things and add new context. sometimes that means doing what "tick tick... boom!" did and expanding a minimalist 3 person show on a bare stage to a fully cast biographical journey of its writer, making full use of filming in new york, using the original staging as a framing device.
it does not mean trying to elevate the movie from being "just a musical". musicals don't need elevating any more than comic books do. and in both cases, i'm so frustrated with the movie adaptations being given to directors who clearly have zero respect for what the original is, who are so scared of looking silly that they cloak everything in self-awareness and irony and "realism" so no one will think they actually care.
like goddamn. i understand wanting to expand the market and draw in people who dislike musicals. from an economic standpoint, i get it. but why should anyone, musical lover or not, bother to see a movie you seem embarrassed to be directing? why should anyone care when you don't seem to care? why should someone who doesn't like musicals give the genre a chance when even the movie itself seems to hate that it's a musical?
