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a-love-poet-at-heart · 4 years

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chess 03 american concert really had their cake and ate it too plot wise instead of just choosing Broadway or West End. They went with a West End plot but with a Broadway plot touch up, (which pretty cool its so west end since it happened in America). Like it is a Disservice to it to just say the plot is Broadway based

cause like the first act is normal West End stuff until the end where Freddie actually loses his title. He didnt quit and abdicate, Anatoly won fair and square and Anatoly was crowned champion and defects. Then Second act is in Bangkok for another championship, pretty West end yea?, but Freddie is the challenger not the Chekov’s gun of Viigand. Now the rest of the second act is super West end plot, like they even have the Interview and an almost full version of The Deal song, but also include the Freddie Goes Metal song from Broadway. Obviously first they change who sings the interview and has Freddie’s parts given to the ensemble/chorus and interestingly enough the Deal gives half of Freddie’s part to Walter. Walter talks to Anatoly and tells him about The Deal and to throw the Game. He gets told he’s total shit, then Freddie talks to Florence and is rebuked. And for the Freddie goes Metal/A Whole New Board game, it happens right after The Interview but after Freddie gloats, Florence shows up, having heard it all, and says that part she already said in Florence Quits and is later reused in The Deal, “Who'd ever think it?/Such a squalid little ending/Watching you descending/Just as far as you can go/I'm learning things I didn't want to know”. Now this is how they transition to Pity the Child.

Now for the ending! Endgame is Weird. It has bits of both versions. The bit between Walter and Molokov is actually the West End version. Molokov talks about “having trust in one’s player” and “working for one who believes in loyalty, heritage, true to his kind come what may”. With Walter following up with “your late unlamented employee knows winning than the only thing won is the chess”. Then we have Florence say her bit, then Anatoly his. But then we switch gears and do the broadway endgame. Freddie says his lines about thoughts straying and Florence being Anatoly’s messes with him. Then its Anatoly’s part but its sung by a mix of Florence and Svetlana

Anatoly jumps back in with his part about her and her father and about “living his life alone then feel like I had harmed her”. Then Anatoly throws the Fucking Game. Freddie wins, the Dethroned King is Back with shouting Check and gloating to Florence about her backing the wrong side like the Broadway version.

now as the second act was mostly West End based there was no Fake Father and his lullaby. And when Walter and Florence talk after the You and I reprise its a mix of plots with the “IF he’s still alive” and “we dont know For Sure” from the West End but with the “we got recovered some key agents” from the Broadway plot.

Also as this fits in nowhere before, but they do remove The Soviet’s Machine which is understandable. But a bit disappointing as its giving Molokov less to do and I like that song, but Understandable. Also they fully cut out Commie Newspapers/Press Conference so its Merano, Freddie’s Entrance, Merano reprise, Anatoly and Molokov, Where I want to be then Us vs Ussr. And the show’s first real song is Merano. Before it is just the overture and plot details from The Narrator Arbiter. The Story of Chess is sandwiched between Anatoly and Florence talking after the Endgame and the You and I reprise. So Pretty Weird.

Now this whole version is pretty interesting as Freddie actually loses and comes back but gets no redemption arc. He says he has changed in The Deal but he hasn’t, he showed that earlier by basically blaming Florence for his loss in the first act during Freddie Goes Metal. (I like that that song parallels the Florence Quitting in the First act with Florence reusing song lyrics) Another interesting thing is during the Deal where after Molokov says that Florence might not believe Walter and his bluff of her father being alive he says “There are others to call in to assist us”. Which is kinda weird as its Walter going to Anatoly to tell him to throw the game. I guess this could also pertain to Freddie since when he is groveling to Florence he directly says “in return I’ll show you all that they know in Moscow” and “he won’t help you, he won’t throw the match”. Which makes me question why Freddie is so happy when Anatoly makes a “mistake” in the Endgame as he directly knew about The Deal and the possibility of Anatoly throwing the match. But since he was so confident he wouldn’t throw the match I shall say that Freddie believes that Anatoly actually messed up and didn't throw the game, but just happened to lose.

Side note: Odd that 2 songs earlier Freddie spoke to the Press so confidently blaming Florence for his loss and saying how better he was without her, when she could have still read that in the papers later instead of hearing it from his own mouth if she wasn’t there. So she still would have heard Freddie Bad Mouth her. And then during The Deal he just grovels, says he’s changed and asks for her back and says “they will bring back the Golden Era”.

Also really weird for during the Endgame Walter still says “Though it gives me no satisfaction” before talking about how if Anatoly wins he only wins the game. He and Molokov are on the same side, get Anatoly to lose, then Profit. But from that line, it seems he believes that Anatoly will not want to win the game. And with Molokov’s saying that how easy the game is when you trust your player. In the West End plot Molokov’s lines are about Viigand and him just gloating to Walter while Walter says that he hates to admit it, its better for Anatoly to lose the match. Now Molokov’s lines are about Anatoly, who doesnt have loyalty to his people as he just defected, so odd that Molokov is suddenly saying he trusts him and odd that Walter would hate to admit to Molokov that its best for Anatoly to lose the match. Now you could argue that Molokov was saying it sarcastically or hypothetically or he was talking about Walter’s perspective as I guess Anatoly is now Walter’s man. So it would make sense for Walter to basically say “No actually, you’re wrong I don’t trust him, I think he will lose”. But that seems very odd to me as before it is shown that Walter and Molokov are both on board with Anatoly losing, especially more so when you find out he recovered some key agents since Anatoly threw the match.

Also interesting is how Florence and Svetlana are apart of the Endgame and sing Anatoly’s lines. Now with Svetlana’s lines it there seems to be two interpretations, first that if Anatoly went back to her she would not take him. “Is this [being married to Anatoly] the life I need?” She says he is selfish and childish but ends it with saying me, “Those around me bleed to death”. So I see that as the people bleeding to death is her children, so she is harming her children by choosing life with Anatoly. The other option is that Svetlana was always talking about herself, just like originally Anatoly was talking about himself when he said those lines. She’s blaming herself and chess itself for Anatoly’s actions. Personally I do not like this so, I’m going with the first option.

Overall, I kinda like this version of Chess. Nice that they didn’t just pick a plot, but changed things up and mixed things together. Didn’t add anything really new to Chess, like the Kennedy Center Production. Also interesting they mostly used the West End plot instead of Broadway when it happened in America. Personally I didn’t like Freddie not changing and no redemption arc for him, but I just have a soft spot for him.

There are some techinical problems with the production, mics not being on at the right time, some fumbling with words, the orchestra coming in too early and drowning out Freddie when during his small dialogue before the second chess game of the first act, Adam Pascal’s mic going off for a few lines during One Night in Bangkok. Also I think Walter flubbed a line during the Deal cause he says “we all stand to lose, you, me, the lady also” so

#chess the musical #chess musical #chess #oh wow this was much longer than planned #i just love this musical

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cookie-waffle · 6 years

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okay so here’s a little theory I just came up with.

I think one of the biggest reasons (but certainly not the only reason) why GoBots crashed and burned back in the 80s, whereas Transformers got hella popular despite GoBots actually being on air first was largely due to the character designs.

See, the character designs in GoBots seem to mimick the toys very closely. Now that doesn’t sound like a bad thing, until you see how poorly the toys actually translated to 2D character designs:

Like, see this? they pretty much look like G1 Transformers toys. Okay, seems cool enough. Should look okay in the cartoon then right? Actually...

LMAO what the shit.

You’d think this would be a great design choice since they DO in fact look exactly like the toys, but what the creators of the show failed to realize was that although these characters looked cool as shiny metal 3D action figures, they were not good designs for cheap-to-animate yet still visually appealing 2D cartoon characers. What they ended up looking like instead where your standard boxy wind-up robots except with weird (even bording on creepy) uncanny looking human faces with a few wheels slapped on here and there.

Now let’s look at the original Transformers.

The toys didn’t actually look too different than GoBots, aside from them being a bit bigger, a blockier design, and perhaps also a bit more complext to transform. But overall they were just as colorful and made out of the same materials. I have a few of the original season 1 toys that were made of metal, and I have held an in-tact original GoBot before, and I can say that they both felt mostly the same. In fact, the GoBot I got to look at (which I belive was named Leader-1?) had a lot more metal parts than all my G1s, meaning that he may have actually been more valuable.

But if the toy designs were so simillar, than how did Transformers knock GoBots out of the ball park? I mean, look at Irionhide here, he was one of the original main cast of Autobots and he looks like he’s screaming for the sweet embrace of death:

Well it’s actually simple really!

They didn’t all look like their toys.

That is the SAME EXACT character as that toy as he appears in the cartoon. I think the character designs realized how badly the toys would translate to low-budget 2D animation, so what they seemed to do instead was take heavy insparation from Japanses anime robot designs. And this may very well be due to the fact that the original cartoon is techinically an anime since Transformers originated in Japan. If it was first created in America, I think our friend Irionhide here may have looked a lot more like his “I’m in constant agony please kill me” toy counterpart.

Here’s another great example.

We all know Bumblebee right? Well, this was his first toy:

Now the toy itself looks kinda cool, but the official artwork looks more unfriendly. Like this little shit would stick you up behind an Arby’s with a kitchen knife at 4AM.

So how did he look in the cartoon then?

CHUBBY AND CUTE!!!!!

Look how significantly friendlier and far more appealing he looks in the show than he does as his toy! This guy wouldn’t mug you behind an Arby’s at 4am, he’s the type of guy who loves and cherishes his friends and stays up really late at night texting you because he knows you had a shitty day and really need someone to talk to. I’d trust this fat yellow man with my life.

Now the toy designs did eventually start to represent how the characters looked in the cartoons a lot better, but as for a lot of the very first figures, they looked p awkward. So yea, take this as a lesson in cahracter design. If you are designing a character to sell a toy, you may want to take some artistic liberties that will allow the character to be more expressive and appealing to look at, instead of straight up trying to copy exactly how the toy looks.

This also goes to show how Transformer’s Japanese origins and it’s possible influence on the cartoon’s character designs may have actually saved the franchise, which I think is pretty interesting.

#transformers #character design #maccadam

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