When word reached me that Disney was adapting Into the Woods as a movie, I was tentatively excited. My excitement grew as the marketing was released. I liked the visual aesthetic. It appeared perfectly cast. It had the blessing and participation of the original creators. But, going to see it with my family over Christmas break left me disappointed. Not outraged or angry, just disappointed. It's taken me quite some time to sort out exactly why this was. But now I want to commit to writing why I believe Disney's Into the Woods is an inferior retelling of a Broadway classic.
First, a confession. Into the Woods and I have a history. When I was sixteen years old, I had occasion to participate in a nearby private school's drama program, even though I was homeschooled. There was a shortage of males auditioning, and they needed as many as they could find. It sounded like fun, and I needed something to do, so I agreed. I ended up being cast as Cinderella's Prince. Now, it was a highschool production, but it ended up being something of a perfect storm of factors. There was a decent budget. There was some great design talent attached to the project. We were given a much longer time than is usual to practice. We had an actual theater in which to perform. But most of all, we had the benefit of a visionary director who was not only musically talented, but who resonated very strongly with the core of the story, and knew exactly how he wanted to bring it and its message to life. It was, I still believe, an excellent show, with a great cast and crew, with a director whose leadership I still find inspiring. It was one of the best times of my life. Also worth mentioning, it was my family's first real exposure to musical theater since my mother's own highschool days,and it eventually sparked the interest of my younger sister, who is currently pursuing her dream of performing on Broadway.
So go ahead, say it. 'You're nostalgic.' Fair cop, gov. If you are within that section of humanity that feels that any prior emotional connection to a work of fiction immediately renders what they say about it untrustworthy, unmerited, and outright filthy lies, you may stop reading now. This will be a waste of your time. Go watch an unbiased cat-video or something.
...Are they gone?
Good. For the rest of you, be warned that the following pseudo-intellectual rambling will be laden with spoilers. I'm going to assume that you've seen one or both versions of the story, which means you know it's pretty much impossible to talk about specifics without spoiling plot-points. If you have seen neither, you have been warned. Probably the majority of you have seen the movie alone, and that saddens me. For the past month, I've been trying to get as many of my friends as I can to watch the 1991 Broadway recording before someone can snag them to a cinema. Perhaps it makes me a horrible person to try and discourage people from going to see a movie unbiased and in all likelihood unreservedly enjoy it. But most of you will never know what you're missing, and that's a shame.
Of course, Adaption Distillation will always open up die-hard fans to disappointment, and Into the Woods and I were never destined to get along completely. They cut out my favorite song, for one, and truncated or removed the arcs of several characters, most notably that of my favorite, the Witch. But the problem, I think, goes much deeper than just what was removed or shortened for the sake of time and audience attention-span. It's more in the attitude. The way it carries itself. The problem I have begins in the first act, with a scene that has been lovingly transplanted from stage to screen: the drama of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf.
I applaud Disney for this scene, truly. I'm never a Johnny Depp fan, but he was well-utilized here. They also found some very clever ways of telling the story without the undertones of rape, and of course, minus the gore of cutting open a creature's stomach and extracting two living people. While I was happy for the sake of my young siblings in the audience... I am conflicted in my belief that this was a detraction. The Broadway version has always had an aura of creeping, oozing unpleasantness in the background, even in the first act, made all the more sinister by how the characters seem to be unaware of it. This queasy certainty that everything is going to go horribly wrong at any moment provides important juxtaposition with the snappy tunes and upbeat lyrics, which lull you into a false sense of security before going for the gut-punch midway through the second act, without any noticeable shift in tone. Recasting the wolf as a simple carnivore and using the visual of tearing cloth for his impromptu surgery goes a long way to dispelling that gloom, and its removal opens up for several fairly jarring shifts in tone. The decision by the Baker's Wife to cheat Jack out of his cow in exchange for a handful of beans is a minor one. The step-sisters' self-mutilation and subsequent eye-plucking via Cinderella Hitchcock's The Birds comes completely out of left-field. The movie does nothing beforehand to earn it, and then thinks showing cutaways of characters cutting pieces off themselves won't raise any eyebrows. This is something I could easily forgive. It's Disney, after all, not Saw. It didn't need to go full Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd to get the point across, and I would far rather erring toward the side of caution than the side of 'eww.' Still, the thought is there.
On a somewhat more nit-picky note comes the issue of The Witch. Again, for any lingering Nostalgia Police among the readers, the Witch is my favorite character. I am a sucker for a character who is cast as the unquestionable antagonist, and then is made sympathetic and human in their motives, and the Witch has that in spades. Sadly, the movie truncates much of her story-arc, and remove a fair portion of what makes her such a fascinating character. For starters, at the end of the first act, it is revealed only very late that regaining her beauty resulted in the loss of her magical powers, and frustratingly little is made of it when it is. It seems disinterested in exploring this profound loss as a consequence of her actions. In her quest to be a better mother to Repunzel by repealing her curse of ugliness, she ended up losing something far more valuable than good looks. This isn't even glanced over however before Repunzel rides off into the sunset with her Prince... never to be seen again in this film. I understand the possible reasons for this change, but the abruptness of it rather undermines the emotional impact of the Witch's Lament. Especially when those who have seen the Broadway version know that she was entirely right about the Prince in the first place. He turns out to be just as much of an unfaithful cad as his brother, and he would betray Repunzel and break her already fractured heart, if she is not killed by the giantess before he has a chance. The Witch's reaction to this loss is perhaps my favorite scene in the musical, she becomes the cold, cruel witch everyone assumed she should be, willing to do what needs to be done, regardless of the cost. The movie prefers to largely skip over the angle of the grieving mother, and it's too bad. Luckily, it is paid off well. Meryll Streep's performance of Last Midnight is equal parts sinister and heartbreaking, and easily the highlight of the experience.
Even more nit-picky involves the Prince's Steward. I know, I know. But, even this tiny character has an important role to play, in that he is the means for the demise of Jack's Mother. During the first confrontation with the giantess, Jack's Mother attempts to explain her side of the story, succeeding only in angering the towering woman further. Fearing for his life, the Steward strikes Jack's Mother over the head with his staff, stunning her, before giving the giantess false information, thus saving the stranded party. The blow struck however proves fatal. ?I was just thinking of the greater good. That's my job,? the Steward tells us, clearly trying to convince himself as much as us. There are some heavy ethical debates in there, even for such a tiny exchange. In contrast, the movie makes a telling change. Instead of striking her, the Steward merely pushes Jack's Mother out of the way in order to deliver his bluff, and the fatality is a result of her stumbling and hitting her head on a log. Instead of a deliberate choice made by the Steward resulting in unintended consequences, it was merely a simple accident, and not really the Steward's fault at all. Thus, when Jack finally learns of his mother's death and swears murderous revenge on the Steward, we are led to believe that Jack is just being unreasonable. While yes, this element of a child trying to find sense in a senseless tragedy still holds up, the movie gives us certainty when there should be doubt. ?What he did was wrong,? Jack intones, ?He should be punished.? The 'wrong' that the movie presents was an accident. A preventable accident with the Steward at fault, but an accident nonetheless, and not good reason to exact vigilante justice upon him. However, when striking Jack's Mother was a deliberate act, we are left to wonder. Perhaps he should be punished for his crime. What is the right thing to do? Is there even a right thing to do? This leaves the perfect mindset for No One is Alone explain that a choice must be made, but you also have to live with the consequences.
Admittedly, the gripes so far have been petty. Things that can be very easily explained by adapting to fit the medium. But this still leaves the biggest complaint I have with this adaption. The factor where the whole thing falls apart like taking the last center-block out of a Jenga tower. And that center-block is a combination of Act I Epilogue and Act II Prologue. My Broadway buddies may recall, Act I ends after the Prince's wedding to Cinderella, where the main characters all celebrate their newfound changes in fortune. Cinderella gets her prince. Jack gets his cow back, and he and his mother are rich beyond their wildest dreams. The Baker and his Wife are expecting their first child. The villains also are punished for their misdeeds, the step-sisters as blind cripples, the Witch having lost her magical powers. In the words of the narrator (also sadly cut from the proceedings), ?Everything that seemed wrong was now right, and those who deserved to were certain to live a long and happy life, ever after.? It is a wonderful moment. The story could end there, in fact. Indeed, most stories do. I've even seen a few critics, in a truly spectacular show of missing the point, say that the movie would be better if it did end there. 'Happily Ever After' is the fairytale ideal to strive for, after all. So with that emotional high, the musical gives you an intermission. You go to the lobby, grab a drink from the water fountain, go to the bathroom, return to the theater as the curtain rises... And with the same tune and very nearly the same lyrics as the Act I Prologue, we discover that all the characters we were previously told would live happily ever after... are not happy.
This is a very big scene. And as it turns out, an extremely important one. It shows that the characters are no longer in the woods. They have returned to their lives, and they've had at least a year to settle back in. After the emotional growth they sustained in pursuit of their wishes, they've come back to the day-to-day and found it still has all the same problems and annoyances, just new ones. Wealth does not buy contentment. Marrying a prince doesn't immediately result in a healthy and worthwhile relationship. Turns out, raising a child is hard work. Already, the show has deconstructed the fairytale ideal by showing there is no such thing as Happily Ever After. And things only go downhill from there as the consequences of their actions catch up with them, in the form of an avenging giantess seeking justice for her murdered husband. The movie however takes a vastly different approach. After breaking the curse, the Baker's Wife becomes instantly pregnant, and seems to give birth that very day. And it is in the middle of the Prince's wedding where the giantess arrives, causing the earthquake that reshapes much of the terrain and forces the characters to return to the woods. It is a simple change, probably made for time, but it sends ripple-effects throughout the entire remainder of the story.
We'll start with Cinderella's Prince. As I said, I once portrayed this character, and I have spent a great deal of time thinking about him, both during and since. And in my eyes, his arc was so poignant in that he really doesn't have an arc. He is the same at the start as he is at the show's end. He has learned nothing, and gained nothing. He will never learn from his history, so he is doomed to repeat it. If not sympathetic, he is at least tragic. In Act II Prologue, he is shown to leave his new bride and strike out on his own, with no word of explanation. This is odd. After all, the kingdom is at peace, there are no pressing matters of state, everything is sunshine and rainbows. Why isn't he spending time with his beautiful bride, the person for whom he felt the agony of desire so shortly before? As we swiftly discover from Agony Reprise (once again, cut), he and his brother have both left their new wives in search of the next challenge, the next conquest, the next emotional high. Unable to be content with what they have, they must find more. This search, of course, leads Cinderella's Prince to a small tryst with the Baker's Wife, of which Cinderella catches wind via her ever-helpful bird friends. In what was by far my favorite scene to perform, she and the Prince separate, and never see each other again. Yet another in a trail of broken hearts and regret left by a man unable or unwilling to change.
The movie does for the most part do this character justice. But the critical ommission of the Act II Prologue means that he leaves Cinderella and returns to the woods not because of his selfish desires, but because of the friggin' giant on the loose. He literally just married Cinderella, he hasn't spent enough time with her to discover he is not content. Without this and Agony Reprise, we have no reason to suspect his lack of sincerity in his feelings for Cinderella. It's only when he unexpectedly turns his legendary charm on the Baker's Wife where we get a glimpse of it. By not taking the time to show his selfishness and discontentment beforehand, his seduction and infidelity is robbed of much of its emotional impact.
The Baker similarly suffers. The issue is again one of timing. After the giantess' stomp-fest, he starts singing:
?Into the woods, it's always when
you think at last you're through and then,
Into the woods you go again to take another journey.?
Wait, what? You haven't even had time to leave the woods yet! Why is it such a big deal that you're going back in? The movie retains the scene showing the Baker's reluctance to help take care of his own son, of course. But while the Broadway version handles this with admirable subtlety, the movie uses a blunt instrument. In the show, the Baker was under the impression that his father had died in a 'baking accident,' and it is only with the revelation of the Mysterious Man's identity (snip, snip) that he learns otherwise. Of course, this discovery comes only at the moment of his death, and the Baker is unable to ask the questions like 'why did you abandon me?' Only when the Baker is in danger of abandoning his own son does it become clear, and he must decide between continuing the cycle, or saying 'no more.' It is beautiful and poignant, and incidentally, my favorite song.
In contrast, the movie leans hard on the Baker's daddy-issues from the word 'go.' He knows from the start that his father ran out on him. The Witch drives it home: ?Your father was no father, so why should you be?? It is referred back to many times throughout the movie's runtime. When his wish is finally granted, the lack of an Act I Epilogue leaves no time to tell us how this miracle pregnancy is supposed make him happy ever after, so when he starts to show reluctance to take up fatherly duties, it comes as a surprise to no one. When his loss and grief drives him to nearly abandon his child, instead of a poignant exchange with a ghost or figment of the Baker's imagination, instead we get a cameo by an actual Ghost Dad, who literally spells everything out for the audience in the form of clumsy exposition. ?Be better than me, son. Do better.? All of this subtracts from the emotional weight, and omits 'No More,' which as I might have mentioned, is my favorite song.
As is probably clear by now, the story if Into the Woods is very dear to my heart, one I believe holds a subtle brilliance. It is at once a cutting social commentary, thorough and brutal deconstruction of fairytale tropes, and sympathetic human drama. And for all my griping, the movie still retains this core admirably. It still retains depth and weight, though not nearly as much as its source material, and the message remains. We are still cautioned:
?Careful the wish you make, wishes are children.
Careful the path they take, wishes come true, not free.
Careful the spell you cast, not just on children.
Sometimes the spell may last
past what you can see,
And turn against you.
Careful the tale you tell, that is the spell. Children will listen.?
It's a sobering message, and one well worth considering. It's interesting, especially coming from a studio whose jingle is to this very day a chiming rendition of Jiminy Cricket's hit 1940 single:
?When you wish upon a star,
Makes no difference who you are.
When you wish upon a star,
Your dreams come true.?
I would say that this crucial difference lies at the heart of the problem faced by Disney's Into the Woods. To adapt a beloved work for consumption by a wider audience is well and good, but the core message of the story runs completely counter to the 'sunshine and rainbows' attitude that Disney has pushed on popular culture for decades. (And it would appear someone was aware of it, because the jingle is notably absent from the Disney logos at the start of this film.) Recent works like Frozen indicate that perhaps Disney is willing to make changes and acknowledge that fairytale romances may not be the standard to strive for in life. But even there, the characters get their wishes through the power of True Love, and everything just kind of sorts itself out. Happily Ever After. The story of Into the Woods stands in direct defiance of these ideals, and so to be adapted by Disney, compromises would always have been made, regardless of the artistic integrity of the people involved. A small price to pay, some might say, for all the good we get. And there is good to be had. The performances by all the actors are truly excellent. The singing is for the most part great. The design and aesthetic benefits greatly from the budget and scale that come with a Hollywood production. And despite the lack of depth, the core of the message is still intact. But I will continue to hold that Disney's Into the Woods is an inferior retelling of a classic story.
First, a confession. Into the Woods and I have a history. When I was sixteen years old, I had occasion to participate in a nearby private school's drama program, even though I was homeschooled. There was a shortage of males auditioning, and they needed as many as they could find. It sounded like fun, and I needed something to do, so I agreed. I ended up being cast as Cinderella's Prince. Now, it was a highschool production, but it ended up being something of a perfect storm of factors. There was a decent budget. There was some great design talent attached to the project. We were given a much longer time than is usual to practice. We had an actual theater in which to perform. But most of all, we had the benefit of a visionary director who was not only musically talented, but who resonated very strongly with the core of the story, and knew exactly how he wanted to bring it and its message to life. It was, I still believe, an excellent show, with a great cast and crew, with a director whose leadership I still find inspiring. It was one of the best times of my life. Also worth mentioning, it was my family's first real exposure to musical theater since my mother's own highschool days,and it eventually sparked the interest of my younger sister, who is currently pursuing her dream of performing on Broadway.
So go ahead, say it. 'You're nostalgic.' Fair cop, gov. If you are within that section of humanity that feels that any prior emotional connection to a work of fiction immediately renders what they say about it untrustworthy, unmerited, and outright filthy lies, you may stop reading now. This will be a waste of your time. Go watch an unbiased cat-video or something.
...Are they gone?
Good. For the rest of you, be warned that the following pseudo-intellectual rambling will be laden with spoilers. I'm going to assume that you've seen one or both versions of the story, which means you know it's pretty much impossible to talk about specifics without spoiling plot-points. If you have seen neither, you have been warned. Probably the majority of you have seen the movie alone, and that saddens me. For the past month, I've been trying to get as many of my friends as I can to watch the 1991 Broadway recording before someone can snag them to a cinema. Perhaps it makes me a horrible person to try and discourage people from going to see a movie unbiased and in all likelihood unreservedly enjoy it. But most of you will never know what you're missing, and that's a shame.
Of course, Adaption Distillation will always open up die-hard fans to disappointment, and Into the Woods and I were never destined to get along completely. They cut out my favorite song, for one, and truncated or removed the arcs of several characters, most notably that of my favorite, the Witch. But the problem, I think, goes much deeper than just what was removed or shortened for the sake of time and audience attention-span. It's more in the attitude. The way it carries itself. The problem I have begins in the first act, with a scene that has been lovingly transplanted from stage to screen: the drama of Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf.
I applaud Disney for this scene, truly. I'm never a Johnny Depp fan, but he was well-utilized here. They also found some very clever ways of telling the story without the undertones of rape, and of course, minus the gore of cutting open a creature's stomach and extracting two living people. While I was happy for the sake of my young siblings in the audience... I am conflicted in my belief that this was a detraction. The Broadway version has always had an aura of creeping, oozing unpleasantness in the background, even in the first act, made all the more sinister by how the characters seem to be unaware of it. This queasy certainty that everything is going to go horribly wrong at any moment provides important juxtaposition with the snappy tunes and upbeat lyrics, which lull you into a false sense of security before going for the gut-punch midway through the second act, without any noticeable shift in tone. Recasting the wolf as a simple carnivore and using the visual of tearing cloth for his impromptu surgery goes a long way to dispelling that gloom, and its removal opens up for several fairly jarring shifts in tone. The decision by the Baker's Wife to cheat Jack out of his cow in exchange for a handful of beans is a minor one. The step-sisters' self-mutilation and subsequent eye-plucking via Cinderella Hitchcock's The Birds comes completely out of left-field. The movie does nothing beforehand to earn it, and then thinks showing cutaways of characters cutting pieces off themselves won't raise any eyebrows. This is something I could easily forgive. It's Disney, after all, not Saw. It didn't need to go full Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd to get the point across, and I would far rather erring toward the side of caution than the side of 'eww.' Still, the thought is there.
On a somewhat more nit-picky note comes the issue of The Witch. Again, for any lingering Nostalgia Police among the readers, the Witch is my favorite character. I am a sucker for a character who is cast as the unquestionable antagonist, and then is made sympathetic and human in their motives, and the Witch has that in spades. Sadly, the movie truncates much of her story-arc, and remove a fair portion of what makes her such a fascinating character. For starters, at the end of the first act, it is revealed only very late that regaining her beauty resulted in the loss of her magical powers, and frustratingly little is made of it when it is. It seems disinterested in exploring this profound loss as a consequence of her actions. In her quest to be a better mother to Repunzel by repealing her curse of ugliness, she ended up losing something far more valuable than good looks. This isn't even glanced over however before Repunzel rides off into the sunset with her Prince... never to be seen again in this film. I understand the possible reasons for this change, but the abruptness of it rather undermines the emotional impact of the Witch's Lament. Especially when those who have seen the Broadway version know that she was entirely right about the Prince in the first place. He turns out to be just as much of an unfaithful cad as his brother, and he would betray Repunzel and break her already fractured heart, if she is not killed by the giantess before he has a chance. The Witch's reaction to this loss is perhaps my favorite scene in the musical, she becomes the cold, cruel witch everyone assumed she should be, willing to do what needs to be done, regardless of the cost. The movie prefers to largely skip over the angle of the grieving mother, and it's too bad. Luckily, it is paid off well. Meryll Streep's performance of Last Midnight is equal parts sinister and heartbreaking, and easily the highlight of the experience.
Even more nit-picky involves the Prince's Steward. I know, I know. But, even this tiny character has an important role to play, in that he is the means for the demise of Jack's Mother. During the first confrontation with the giantess, Jack's Mother attempts to explain her side of the story, succeeding only in angering the towering woman further. Fearing for his life, the Steward strikes Jack's Mother over the head with his staff, stunning her, before giving the giantess false information, thus saving the stranded party. The blow struck however proves fatal. ?I was just thinking of the greater good. That's my job,? the Steward tells us, clearly trying to convince himself as much as us. There are some heavy ethical debates in there, even for such a tiny exchange. In contrast, the movie makes a telling change. Instead of striking her, the Steward merely pushes Jack's Mother out of the way in order to deliver his bluff, and the fatality is a result of her stumbling and hitting her head on a log. Instead of a deliberate choice made by the Steward resulting in unintended consequences, it was merely a simple accident, and not really the Steward's fault at all. Thus, when Jack finally learns of his mother's death and swears murderous revenge on the Steward, we are led to believe that Jack is just being unreasonable. While yes, this element of a child trying to find sense in a senseless tragedy still holds up, the movie gives us certainty when there should be doubt. ?What he did was wrong,? Jack intones, ?He should be punished.? The 'wrong' that the movie presents was an accident. A preventable accident with the Steward at fault, but an accident nonetheless, and not good reason to exact vigilante justice upon him. However, when striking Jack's Mother was a deliberate act, we are left to wonder. Perhaps he should be punished for his crime. What is the right thing to do? Is there even a right thing to do? This leaves the perfect mindset for No One is Alone explain that a choice must be made, but you also have to live with the consequences.
Admittedly, the gripes so far have been petty. Things that can be very easily explained by adapting to fit the medium. But this still leaves the biggest complaint I have with this adaption. The factor where the whole thing falls apart like taking the last center-block out of a Jenga tower. And that center-block is a combination of Act I Epilogue and Act II Prologue. My Broadway buddies may recall, Act I ends after the Prince's wedding to Cinderella, where the main characters all celebrate their newfound changes in fortune. Cinderella gets her prince. Jack gets his cow back, and he and his mother are rich beyond their wildest dreams. The Baker and his Wife are expecting their first child. The villains also are punished for their misdeeds, the step-sisters as blind cripples, the Witch having lost her magical powers. In the words of the narrator (also sadly cut from the proceedings), ?Everything that seemed wrong was now right, and those who deserved to were certain to live a long and happy life, ever after.? It is a wonderful moment. The story could end there, in fact. Indeed, most stories do. I've even seen a few critics, in a truly spectacular show of missing the point, say that the movie would be better if it did end there. 'Happily Ever After' is the fairytale ideal to strive for, after all. So with that emotional high, the musical gives you an intermission. You go to the lobby, grab a drink from the water fountain, go to the bathroom, return to the theater as the curtain rises... And with the same tune and very nearly the same lyrics as the Act I Prologue, we discover that all the characters we were previously told would live happily ever after... are not happy.
This is a very big scene. And as it turns out, an extremely important one. It shows that the characters are no longer in the woods. They have returned to their lives, and they've had at least a year to settle back in. After the emotional growth they sustained in pursuit of their wishes, they've come back to the day-to-day and found it still has all the same problems and annoyances, just new ones. Wealth does not buy contentment. Marrying a prince doesn't immediately result in a healthy and worthwhile relationship. Turns out, raising a child is hard work. Already, the show has deconstructed the fairytale ideal by showing there is no such thing as Happily Ever After. And things only go downhill from there as the consequences of their actions catch up with them, in the form of an avenging giantess seeking justice for her murdered husband. The movie however takes a vastly different approach. After breaking the curse, the Baker's Wife becomes instantly pregnant, and seems to give birth that very day. And it is in the middle of the Prince's wedding where the giantess arrives, causing the earthquake that reshapes much of the terrain and forces the characters to return to the woods. It is a simple change, probably made for time, but it sends ripple-effects throughout the entire remainder of the story.
We'll start with Cinderella's Prince. As I said, I once portrayed this character, and I have spent a great deal of time thinking about him, both during and since. And in my eyes, his arc was so poignant in that he really doesn't have an arc. He is the same at the start as he is at the show's end. He has learned nothing, and gained nothing. He will never learn from his history, so he is doomed to repeat it. If not sympathetic, he is at least tragic. In Act II Prologue, he is shown to leave his new bride and strike out on his own, with no word of explanation. This is odd. After all, the kingdom is at peace, there are no pressing matters of state, everything is sunshine and rainbows. Why isn't he spending time with his beautiful bride, the person for whom he felt the agony of desire so shortly before? As we swiftly discover from Agony Reprise (once again, cut), he and his brother have both left their new wives in search of the next challenge, the next conquest, the next emotional high. Unable to be content with what they have, they must find more. This search, of course, leads Cinderella's Prince to a small tryst with the Baker's Wife, of which Cinderella catches wind via her ever-helpful bird friends. In what was by far my favorite scene to perform, she and the Prince separate, and never see each other again. Yet another in a trail of broken hearts and regret left by a man unable or unwilling to change.
The movie does for the most part do this character justice. But the critical ommission of the Act II Prologue means that he leaves Cinderella and returns to the woods not because of his selfish desires, but because of the friggin' giant on the loose. He literally just married Cinderella, he hasn't spent enough time with her to discover he is not content. Without this and Agony Reprise, we have no reason to suspect his lack of sincerity in his feelings for Cinderella. It's only when he unexpectedly turns his legendary charm on the Baker's Wife where we get a glimpse of it. By not taking the time to show his selfishness and discontentment beforehand, his seduction and infidelity is robbed of much of its emotional impact.
The Baker similarly suffers. The issue is again one of timing. After the giantess' stomp-fest, he starts singing:
?Into the woods, it's always when
you think at last you're through and then,
Into the woods you go again to take another journey.?
Wait, what? You haven't even had time to leave the woods yet! Why is it such a big deal that you're going back in? The movie retains the scene showing the Baker's reluctance to help take care of his own son, of course. But while the Broadway version handles this with admirable subtlety, the movie uses a blunt instrument. In the show, the Baker was under the impression that his father had died in a 'baking accident,' and it is only with the revelation of the Mysterious Man's identity (snip, snip) that he learns otherwise. Of course, this discovery comes only at the moment of his death, and the Baker is unable to ask the questions like 'why did you abandon me?' Only when the Baker is in danger of abandoning his own son does it become clear, and he must decide between continuing the cycle, or saying 'no more.' It is beautiful and poignant, and incidentally, my favorite song.
In contrast, the movie leans hard on the Baker's daddy-issues from the word 'go.' He knows from the start that his father ran out on him. The Witch drives it home: ?Your father was no father, so why should you be?? It is referred back to many times throughout the movie's runtime. When his wish is finally granted, the lack of an Act I Epilogue leaves no time to tell us how this miracle pregnancy is supposed make him happy ever after, so when he starts to show reluctance to take up fatherly duties, it comes as a surprise to no one. When his loss and grief drives him to nearly abandon his child, instead of a poignant exchange with a ghost or figment of the Baker's imagination, instead we get a cameo by an actual Ghost Dad, who literally spells everything out for the audience in the form of clumsy exposition. ?Be better than me, son. Do better.? All of this subtracts from the emotional weight, and omits 'No More,' which as I might have mentioned, is my favorite song.
As is probably clear by now, the story if Into the Woods is very dear to my heart, one I believe holds a subtle brilliance. It is at once a cutting social commentary, thorough and brutal deconstruction of fairytale tropes, and sympathetic human drama. And for all my griping, the movie still retains this core admirably. It still retains depth and weight, though not nearly as much as its source material, and the message remains. We are still cautioned:
?Careful the wish you make, wishes are children.
Careful the path they take, wishes come true, not free.
Careful the spell you cast, not just on children.
Sometimes the spell may last
past what you can see,
And turn against you.
Careful the tale you tell, that is the spell. Children will listen.?
It's a sobering message, and one well worth considering. It's interesting, especially coming from a studio whose jingle is to this very day a chiming rendition of Jiminy Cricket's hit 1940 single:
?When you wish upon a star,
Makes no difference who you are.
When you wish upon a star,
Your dreams come true.?
I would say that this crucial difference lies at the heart of the problem faced by Disney's Into the Woods. To adapt a beloved work for consumption by a wider audience is well and good, but the core message of the story runs completely counter to the 'sunshine and rainbows' attitude that Disney has pushed on popular culture for decades. (And it would appear someone was aware of it, because the jingle is notably absent from the Disney logos at the start of this film.) Recent works like Frozen indicate that perhaps Disney is willing to make changes and acknowledge that fairytale romances may not be the standard to strive for in life. But even there, the characters get their wishes through the power of True Love, and everything just kind of sorts itself out. Happily Ever After. The story of Into the Woods stands in direct defiance of these ideals, and so to be adapted by Disney, compromises would always have been made, regardless of the artistic integrity of the people involved. A small price to pay, some might say, for all the good we get. And there is good to be had. The performances by all the actors are truly excellent. The singing is for the most part great. The design and aesthetic benefits greatly from the budget and scale that come with a Hollywood production. And despite the lack of depth, the core of the message is still intact. But I will continue to hold that Disney's Into the Woods is an inferior retelling of a classic story.