Disneyfying Into the Woods

Spoilers for Into the Woods below!

The word “bowdlerize” comes from the name of Thomas Bowdler, who helpfully edited the works of William Shakespeare so they would be more “appropriate” for women and children in the early 1800’s.  I can only imagine that Romeo and Juliet had a happy ending and Hamlet ended up alive and married to Ophelia.

There were major concerns about the film version of Into the Woods when author Stephen Sondheim seemed to indicate in an interview that parts of the story had been changed at the insistence of Disney, the company producing the film.  One wonders if their motive for producing Into the Woods was less profit and more protecting the image of various fairy tale characters for future projects (gee, a new live action version of Cinderella is coming out soon!). Sondheim later dismissed such concerns as a misunderstanding, but the final version does show signs of bowdlerization.

Some cuts had to be made to get the over two and a half hour production into a two hour run time, such as eliminating the character of the Narrator.  I’m going to ignore those changes (although eliminating the Narrator does eliminate another intentional murder from the script; more about softening the body count later).  I also don’t want to get into the debate of whether or not Prince Charming had sex with the Baker’s Wife or merely got to third base (second base?).  But what changes are there that can be laid at Disney’s door?

One minor change is the fact that in the movie version of Into the Woods, Cinderella’s father is dead while he is alive in the play.  This can’t be attributed to time saving, as he is a non-entity who scarcely had a line. I’d guess that with him alive, the cruel treatment of Cinderella by her step-mother and step-sisters came across as delinquent parenting.  Being dead lets him off the hook for the consequences of his marrying someone “beautiful of face but vile and black of heart,” as the narration describes the step mother. Frankly, I think this change improves the story.

One odd little subtraction from the text is the final word of the song sung by the Big Bad Wolf after meeting Red Riding Hood. He sings eloquently about his desire to devour Red and her Grandmother, imagining the “scrumptious carnality twice in one day.”  The final line of the song in the theatrical version is “Goodbye little girl/and helloooooooo lunch!”  The text of the liner notes confirms that it wasn’t just Johnny Depp messing up; the word “lunch” is no longer in the text, rendering the last line sort of meaningless.  Why allow the wolf to go on in graphic detail about his desire to eat two humans, but then get squeamish about referring to the precise meal the victims will be participating in? I don’t understand this one, but I detect the subtle hand of Disney in cutting the word “lunch.”

One obvious and non-crucial change is that in the theatrical version, Rapunzel’s dalliance with Prince Charming’s brother resulted in twin infants.  Obviously Disney couldn’t show the portrayal of out-of-wedlock hanky-panky, so the kids were cut out.  Presumably the Price and Rapunzel spent hours discussing current events and watching Game of Thrones on DVD.  More on the fate of Rapunzel below.

Let me now get to the places where I think the Disneyfication of Into the Woods significantly undermines the play’s power.  In the play there are a couple of deliberate acts of violence that result in death: the Prince’s Steward strikes Jack’s Mother when she is arguing with the lady giant, killing her; and the lady giant kills the Baker’s Wife by stepping on her.  In the movie the Steward merely pushes Jack’s Mother, who falls and accidently hits her head; the Baker’s Wife sees the giant, flees, and accidently runs off a cliff. Also, in the play a lot of the minor characters are said to be killed by the lady giant off-stage, including Rapunzel.

When Jack is told of his mother’s death at the hands of the Steward, he says that he’ll make the steward pay for his act. In the theater, when Jack is played as a young man, his vow of violence can be taken as a loss of innocence; this nice, affable, somewhat dim-witted young man is now saying he will commit murder. Making Jack pre-adolescent somewhat mutes this point, as he comes off as a kid just talking big.  But none-the-less turning an intentional act of violence into an accidental death diminishes the power of Jack’s vow of vengeance significantly.

One reason why it is acceptable to kill the lady giant at the end is that she has killed a great many people; but since she no longer kills the Baker’s Wife deliberately (plus the Narrator, Rapunzel, et al) the fact that she supposedly killed unnamed people off-screen dilutes the reason for killing her.  In the play, the audience wants her dead because she killed a character we liked, the Baker’s Wife, so we accept Jack’s act of violence against her.  If the Baker’s Wife merely died in an accident, the morality gets muddled.

As I alluded to before, Disney’s motives in producing Into the Woods nearly 30 years after its Broadway debut is a bit suspect.  Disney insisted the production be for the relatively low cost of $50 million, which they recouped in a couple of weeks (as I write this total gross is $155 million, not counting soundtracks and other peripherals).  While the play isn’t exactly X-rated, the material is not for kids and is based on versions of fairy tales that are more “grim” than the Disney versions were (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun). I suspect Disney wanted to get a bowdlerized version out there before someone made a version faithful to the play and Cinderella’s Prince Charming committed adultery with a woman he met in a forest.

This is not to say I didn’t enjoy the film immensely, and I understand that in converting a play to film some changes are required.  If anything, it is nice to see a play turned into a movie and not the other way around. The movie adaptation is excellent, but some of the edge of the play has been lost.  The changes are nice, but as the play notes, “nice is different than good.”