Movie and Musical Adaptions

(and what ruins them)

E. O. Milne

Only a few weeks ago it was announced that the Oscar winning movie ‘La La Land’ is going to be adapted to Broadway, for what is going to be one of the most anticipated performances of the decade. The movie is known for its great soundtrack and its tragic, yet beautiful, story line. Furthermore, on top of that the performances in the movie by Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling finish it off flawlessly, with Emma Stone having won best actress for her role.

But without these two such significant people being in the show, will this musical become one of the biggest let downs of the last decade?

Until the show is out and the critiques come rolling in, we will not know the answer to that question. However, this isn’t the first time a big movie has been adapted to the stage.

Movies like Heather, Beetlejuice, Mean Girls and more have all had their adaptations and became great successes. But this is not always the case, because there is sometimes something about a movie that changes the perspective of the viewer. Or the other way around.

In this article I want to talk about the differences between a story’s movie and musical versions and what can bring one to be better than the other.

An example of this is a movie called ‘Cats’, it was adapted from the beloved musical of the same name. It seemed to be perfect being given an all-out famous cast list, a giant visual effects budget and a director who had already directed Les Miserables some years prior.

It seemed like this movie was going to go down in history as one of the best adaptations ever seen before. But then when you actually watched the movie, all those ideas went down the drain.

Not only was the CGI terrifying, but the whole movie was just a complete showcase of the actors themselves, almost like a promotional 2-hour long movie just so that afterwards you would go watch James Corden in Peter Rabbit or listen to Taylor swift’s latest album.

What I’m trying to say is that everything that was done in the movie all evolved around making the cast look good and it seemed through such great expectations they forgot to actually make a good film.

They missed the plot, they missed the emotion, and in the end, they forgot to do what made the musical so good, there was no passion. Like eating a dinner made by a chef that wanted to be anywhere else.

I think one of the biggest issues with these adaptations, when you have such big expectations weighing on your shoulders, to create a great film or musical, you begin to lose any sense of creativity and focus more on if it is going to have people coming to watch in the first place through curiosity brought by the title and not by the new material alone.

Another time that things did not go to plan with a movie to musical adaptation was with the story of Spiderman, and when I say this, I am being dead serious. There was a musical adaptation of the superhero we all know and love but from the reviews online I’m beginning to think that in this show people disliked Peter Parker so much that they were ready to walk out in the first 20 minutes.

I think even the sound of ‘Spiderman the Musical’ sounds tacky and that’s because it was only made to put some extra money into the pockets of the rich. That is another way that these kinds of movies are ruined.

It is because the fanbase is already there for a movie or musical based on the other and they are only doing it so that they can get some more money from something that is already complete. Though that is a repetitive topic that is so common you just must begin to ignore it after a certain amount of time.

So, to give my judgment on ‘La La Land’ becoming a Broadway musical.

I would do anything to have this performance not be rubbish, but that must be left up to the creative minds writing the show as you read this.

Every now and then a show like ‘Mamma Mia’ comes along and reassures you that there is still hope in the art of adaptive storytelling.

And Broadway has still got its magic.