Into the Woods (the film/musical)

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This thread is about the musical (and its 2014 Disney film incarnation) Into the Woods.

I enjoyed it pretty well. It is a very great tale, and the songs are just so.... great and easy to sing along to. It's just that what happens in the final part is a real downer, without spoiling anything. Pretty dark stuff, that last part.

Into The Woods was my favourite musical as a teenager. I had the VHS of the staged version with Bernadette Peters and I watched it, back to back, multiple times a day.

I haven't made it through the Disney film yet, I started watching it, but I get annoyed when things diverge from the original staging/orchestration/etc.

I love dark musicals, and Sondheim is one of my favourite composers. I was recently in a production of Sweeney Todd (another dark Sondheim show, that also has a movie that is ok but not like the stage show.)

That touch of realism to what were originally already dark stories but with happy endings, is why I prefer the musical to the movie. I like how the happily ever after wasn't an end-all, and that themes like morality and consequences are very present when you look at what the wishes brought the characters between Act I and Act II (but you still end with the heartening No One Is Alone): Cinderella sang"But how can you know what you want till you get what you want and you see if you like it?", and there's a lot of wisdom in Sondheims lyrics and lessons were clearly taught by circumstance. The songs are catchy and clever, and the Witch is complex. I love that in the obc, the Wolf and Cinderella's Prince are played by the same person, to show how the personalities are alike.

Saw the movie, we were encouraged by a friend who was real enthusiastic that it was a re-imagining of a bunch of fairy tales. None of us had any idea going in that it was originally a musical, or that the movie was a musical either. Personally I liked it quite a bit, but our friend didn't because it was a musical. I do think the ending of the story could have been done a bit better / was filmed in a way where (won't say what) something was almost completely left off screen, I am imagining perhaps because they wanted to stay true to the stage version which (I'm guessing) couldn't really have shown this on stage either.