Skip to footer

'Into the Woods': How the movie does fairy tales with a twist

'Woods' stars Meryl Streep, James Corden, and Emily Blunt, and follows a baker and his wife who are trying to break a curse.

|
Peter Mountain/Disney Enterprises, Inc./AP
'Into the Woods' stars Emily Blunt (l.) and James Corden (r.).

While some musical movie adaptations can fall flat (we’re looking at you, “The Phantom of the Opera” and “The Producers”), others like “Les Misérables” and “Dreamgirls” can turn into big business for Hollywood. So this year, Tinseltown is adapting the Stephen Sondheim classic show “Into the Woods” for the big screen. 

“Woods” is essentially a fairy tale mash-up story. The original characters of a baker (soon-to-be “Late Late Show” host James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt of “Edge of Tomorrow”) must break a curse that was placed on them by a malevolent Witch (Meryl Streep) and is causing them to be unable to have children. In order to break the curse, they must find a cow “as white as milk,” a cape “as red as blood,” hair “as yellow as corn,” and a slipper “as pure as gold.” It turns out such fairy tale characters as Jack of the beanstalk fairy tale (Daniel Huttlestone), Cinderella (Anna Kendrick of “Pitch Perfect”), and Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) have what they need. The pair also encounters Cinderella’s Prince (“Star Trek Into Darkness” actor Chris Pine) and a Wolf (Johnny Depp), among others. Rob Marshall, who helmed the 2002 movie “Chicago,” is directing.

You’ll find no spoilers here, but in the original musical, the first act consists of a fairly harmless tale in which the baker and his wife are trying to find those objects. But in the second act, the consequences of what they did to get them – and what characters such as Cinderella and Jack did to make their wishes come true – come back to haunt them. Suffice to say: do not be fooled by its fairy tale origins. 

Streep told the Los Angeles Times that she saw the show on Broadway and was herself surprised by the dark direction in which the story went.

“It was so unexpected,” she said. “How it turned was sort of shocking.”

While the movie focuses on fairy tale characters, the actress said she found some aspects of her character, such as the Witch’s protectiveness of her foster daughter Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy), to be relatable. 

“All I'm doing is trying to keep her safe,” Streep said. “That was something that ... didn't feel heightened or weird." 

“Woods” is in theaters now.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to 'Into the Woods': How the movie does fairy tales with a twist
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Culture-Cafe/2015/0101/Into-the-Woods-How-the-movie-does-fairy-tales-with-a-twist
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe