Overlook

Joel Schumacher almost got out of his comeuppance for singlehandedly running the Batman film franchise into the ground.

Almost.

I speak of The Phantom of the Opera, which is the movie of the musical of the book.

Let me get this out of the way: It's a great movie. Within the first few minutes I was tearing up, just hearing the in-musical overture. Fantastic stuff. Phantom's one of the best stories out there, and Andrew Lloyd Webber did a great job translating it onto the stage in song and spectacle.

So that's the whole respectable-filmic-lauding over the film and its predecessor. Having said that, we need to talk about why the film is good.

Whenever you translate a story from one medium to another, be it from book to musical, or from musical to film, you end up changing it a bit. It can't be helped. Sometimes you get some of the dynamic that can create a masterpeice by doing so. Even translating script to film, sometimes, changes the piece. So it is with Phantom of the Opera, having changed somewhat in the transition. Not all of it is bad, but it's a shame to see the arc, the sweep of the thing changed to any degree. The main problems I saw during the film, to make it simple, can be summed up like this:

1) Awful dance sequence that actually ejects you from the movie as you attempt to place some weird pop-locking tuxedoed jackass into 19th century Paris,
2) Changing the lyrics to a song to justify the chandelier always having been in the opera house, which should actually be easier to pull off in film than they do on stage,
3) Slightly cheesy sword fight scene (though after the initial shock, you can commit to it),
4) Bag-head the beast. While a neat little sidetrack (again, attainable more on film than stage), the kid seemed like some kid off the streets with a bag on his head, nothing remotely tortured about him. Save the bag. I can't stress the bag enough,
5) That goofy shot during "Masquerade" where the camera moves forward at someone's face, then they swoop aside and there's someone behind them then THEY swoop aside and there's someone behind THEM... Jesus, Schumacher... don't you direct for a living? Didn't they get over that shot in Grease? Didn't they do it BETTER?

Anyway, the point is this: I was moved to tears in the first minutes of the movie, because of the music I heard. The problems I see with the film are directorial, nothing more, and the changes made to the film (even taking the singing out of some of the spoken dialogue was good) that I disagree with are largely the responsibility of Mr. Schumacher, and have nothing to do with the work itself.

So here it is, kids. The Phantom of the Opera rocks, and in putting it on film, you're basically putting the musical on film. You're one step up from actually documenting a stage production, and more power to you. More people will go and see it. The only times I had a problem with the film is when it deviated from this, and the only times I really, really enjoyed it (again, to the point of welling up) were when it was exact. So film the musical, it's a great one and will make a great movie, and you can try to do your own thing if you wish, but you'll probably end up diminishing it, if anything, but don't expect it to make up for Batman Forever and Batman & Robin, and don't expect to NOT get punched in the face.

There. I've said my peice. Go see the movie. It's great.

No thanks to JOEL.

Yes... I realize there are more spelling errors in this post than in an ex-con's loveletter to his now-con in prison.