I can say with confidence that my favorite musical is Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods. Now I admit I haven't seen a ton of Broadway shows, in fact most of the ones I've seen have been adapted from Disney films. So there's some irony in that I was introduced to my favorite musical...through its film adaptation by Disney!
Long ago I placed Into The Woods sixth in my Top 10 Films of 2014, which I don't know if I would do again. Frankly I'm a little appalled at my past self for not including How To Train Your Dragon 2, and embarrassed for not seeing John Wick or Whiplash at the time (still haven't seen the latter). The point is, the more I've learned about Into The Woods the musical, the less I've enjoyed Into The Woods the film.
Before we go any further I'm just going to let everyone know I'm not here to trash James Corden...but I get it. Also this will contain spoilers so...don't go any further if you care about those.
For those that don't know, Into The Woods is what I describe as an "ensemble adaptation" that takes multiple fairy tales like Cinderella, Jack and The Beanstalk, and Red Riding Hood, and intertwines them into one narrative. At the center are the original characters of The Baker and his wife, who are cursed by their witch neighbor due to past misdeeds of The Baker's father, and preventing them from having a child. The witch tells them she can create a potion to lift the curse if they collect four specific ingredients in three day's time: the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, and the slipper as pure as gold. These ingredients are where the other fairy tale characters come in.
The Baker sets out into the titular woods to retrieve the items, while at the same time Cinderella, Jack, and Red also set out into the woods (Ahaha!) to achieve their specific goals (go to the ball, sell the cow, etc.) There's also Rapunzel, a couple of Prince Charming's, and an omniscient narrator. Now "Happily Ever After" does come for these fairy tale characters, but that is not where Into The Woods ends. That's just the first act.
Some time has passed, and as the narrator tells the audience, despite some minor inconveniences, the cast is still happy. Cinderella is bored with the princess life, meanwhile her Prince Charming (and his brother) are becoming unhappy with married life. Jack longs for more adventures atop the beanstalk. The Baker and his wife, now with their infant son, need more space in their home. But these characters keep singing they're "so happy" as if to convince the audience (and themselves) that they are living happily ever after.
The majority of the second act has the characters dealing with an attack from a second giant, who is the wife of the giant Jack killed. To make a long story short, this conflict leads to the deaths of Jack's mother, Little Red Riding Hood's grandmother, Rapunzel, and The Baker's wife (who falls to her death after having a brief fling with Cinderella's Prince. Interesting chain of events there, Sondheim...). Eventually this lady giant is defeated, and the story ends with Cinderella, Jack, and Little Red moving in with The Baker and his son. I'm really not doing the second act much justice with this summary but I'm trying not to waste too much time on the recap.
So, this sounds like a pretty bleak ending right? A bit bittersweet isn't it? Yes, but...that's kind of the point. Sondheim is making the point that "Happily Ever After" is a false construct. "The End" is not the end. There will always be more more giants, wolves, and witches. There will always be more obstacles, more consequences, and more hardships. That's life. People have to continue to grow, to learn, to go "into the woods". Pinning the blame on a fairy tale villain like a giant or an evil witch is not going to make your problems go away, nor is a magic slipper or bean going to make your life perfect.
Through Into The Woods, Sondheim masterfully uses fairy tales to tell his audience, not to believe fairy tales. It's genius. But...is it cinema?
Translating a story from one medium to another is always going to present challenges. Creatives have to be willing to make changes to the source material in order for their adaptation to work. Into The Woods fits perfectly into a two-act play structure. The first act is the regular fairy tale, and the second is what happens after. Disney's 2014 film adaptation really stumbles here. Not counting the credits, it's an hour and fifty-seven minute film, but we don't get to the second act until an hour and fifteen minutes in.
Now you're probably saying "Chris that's not that egregious." Well it is, and it isn't. On the stage, we get an intermission, and act two starts with a rearrangement of the opening song. Some time has passed for the characters, and they're not super content with their current situations. There is no intermission in a film, and the filmmakers decided to cut the time jump. Just as Cinderella and Rapunzel have married their princes, Mrs. Giant attacks and we're right back into the fray (or...woods).
Omitting songs from film adaptations is not a new practice, however, eliminating the time jump and the second-act prologue changes the message of Into The Woods for the film. The characters do not get the chance to lament their happily ever afters, much less enjoy them. Instead they find themselves having to continue to fight for them, and as I mentioned earlier, that comes at the cost of some lives. Suddenly the message isn't so much "There is no such thing as a happily ever after" as much as "Be careful what you wish for" which while that is still an important message, it is a very tired and cliche one.
Another song omission from act two really messes up the flow of the film, and that's the reprise of "Agony" (You know that upsets me...). The reprise has the two princes getting tired of their wives (Cinderella and Rapunzel) and becoming smitten with two other princesses (Sleeping Beauty and Snow White). Eliminating this song totally makes the Prince's fling with The Baker's Wife seem completely out of left field, and sort of makes it seems like the film is punishing her for cheating...because she dies immediately after? Yeah I'm still not sure what purpose her death serves if anyone wants to help me out here, please. Sure, earlier in the film (played by Chris Pine and Emily Blunt) they share a few moments but it's not enough for us to "ship it" as the kids say.
Side-note, the characterization of The Baker's Wife in the film misses the mark, too. In the musical she clearly wears the pants in the marriage and has to push The Baker to do more. In the film she's a much more gentle character and far more his biggest cheerleader. The musical makes it more believable for her to cheat.
There is one more detail from the film I want to touch on, and that's how they handled The Narrator and The Baker's Father. They're played by the same actor on stage, but they're not the same character...at least that's how I interpreted it. Anyway, on stage The Narrator is an actual character that interacts with the audience, and in the second act, the other characters. When Mrs. Giant is hunting for Jack, the characters turn on him and offer him up as a sacrifice. The Narrator pleads with them to spare his life, because they'll be lost without him telling the story. It's very clever because once the Narrator is gone, that's when the characters have to start taking responsibility for their own actions, hence Princes and Wives having flings, the four main characters screaming at each other in a song called "Your Fault" etc.
The film has no narrator character. Instead The Baker (Corden) acts as narrator. Now that's kind of a nice change. It brings the film full circle when he tells the story to the baby at the end. But again, the message of the musical is lost.
Now his father. His father is a supporting player in the first act, acting as an unnamed mysterious stranger helping the characters through the woods. When the curse is finally lifted, he passes away having paid for his misdeeds. In the second act, after his wife has died and the witch has abandoned the group, The Baker retreats and leaves his son with the others. It is then when a vision of his late father comes to him, and through the song "No More" (Mad the film cut this one), he realizes he hasn't learned anything, he is jus repeating the cycle, and it's time to take responsibility for his own life. The father doesn't appear in the first half of the film, save for a brief flashback in the prologue, but does show up in the second act. He appears as a vision to his son, but only through a brief pep talk does he tell his son to be "better than me". This just feels tacked on because the character was cut out of the rest of the film.
That's kind of the whole problem with how this film handles act two of the musical. It just tacks it on at the end and breezes through it (Was I trying to make that point with my quick recap of it earlier? I'll never tell!). Eliminating too much from this portion of the musical undercut the whole message and point of Into The Woods and thus the film fails at being a proper adaptation.
Now, I've bashed the film quite a lot here, and I could go on...but I really do enjoy it. The performances are great. The production design is top-notch, and the arrangements of the songs are really wonderful. I just came to this epiphany...in many ways this is the Disney live-action remake of Into The Woods. It takes a lot out of the source material, doesn't add much, but still enjoyable at the surface level because it's well casted and the new arrangements of the songs are good.
Really how much you like the musical of Into The Woods will determine how much you like the film Into The Woods. As I've grown to love the musical more over time, I've lost interest in the film. Does that mean I hate it? No. I still enjoying watching the 2017 remake of Beauty & The Beast, but I'll never take it over the original 1991 classic. That's sort of how I look at Into The Woods the film. It's not perfect, but at times, it can satisfy.
Could another film adaptation of Into The Woods work? Perhaps, but it's not clear we'll ever see it in this lifetime, and maybe that's a good thing. As the film said, and not the musical, be careful what you wish for.
