#and fuck marie antoinette tbh she was set up to fail but like she also just let it happen so eh...

[corneille-moisie]

i never liked the 2006 marie antoinette movie

but now that ive moved considerably far on the left, i think i hate it even more

i didnt know i could hate something more than my 17 y/o self could ngl

[margridarnauds]

I noticed my beloved Marie Antoinette is falling behind and, let's be honest, I can't stand for that. So, let's talk about one of the best musicals of all time and the reason for my url.

-- Marie Antoinette is popularly thought to be an adaptation of the famous Austrian born French queen's life -- in reality, it isn't. It's an adaptation of the historical fiction novel by Shusaku Endo. Therefore, while it, like a number of the currently winning entries, is set in Europe, it is based on a Japanese novel by a Japanese author, it premiered in Japan, it was rewritten in Korea. While most people know it from either the failed German production or the Hungarian production and it does have Kunze and Levay attached to it (though more Levay than Kunze these days ngl), it represents a collaborative effort on behalf of two Asian musical industries.

-- The music. Again, when you hire Kunze and Levay, you know you're going to get something good at least from Levay, and they really outdid themselves here. From the haunting Blinded By The Lights of A Thousand Candles to the defiant Enough Is Enough to the ambitious villain song I Am The Best to the melancholy romance and regret of The Only Thing I Ever Did Right.

-- The historical accuracy. Look, this is a musical. Musicals have to change things in order to condense history in two hours. But I've had plenty of people who are far more into the Frev than I am say that this is one of the single best, most nuanced portrayals of Marie Antoinette's life they've ever seen, even if it does repeat some common myths like the Duc d'Orléans starting the Revolution or Marie Antoinette and Fersen having an affair. It includes the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, it includes the September Massacres, it includes projections from *actual pamphlets used to discredit Marie*, it includes *a legit replica of Marie Antoinette's actual bed in the Toho production*

Compared to the real bed at Versailles

-- The costumes are gorgeous. Both the Toho and the Korean productions went out of their way to create absolutely gorgeous costumes. Just searching for "Marie Antoinette das Musical" on my blog will turn up a few of the gifsets I've made of the costumes, but just for one of my favorite examples:

The stage design is gorgeous:

Like, seriously. Look at this. Or the projections they used to tell the story of the Varennes Flight.

-- The characterization, especially of the two female leads. There are quite a few musicals that have two female leads these days (Wicked, War Paint, Chicago, to name a few examples off the top of my head), but I think that Marie Antoinette really does a great job balancing them out, especially given tbh a lot of the musicals that are making it thus far are kind of sausage fests that either have one token female character or no female characters on the stage at all. Both Marie Antoinette and Margrid Arnaud are given sympathy and respect even as they're both allowed to be wrong. Margrid in particular is one of my favorite characters of all time -- everything that people say they want with a messy female character is there with her -- she's a gremlin, she's either directly or indirectly responsible for multiple catastrophic events in the French Revolution, she has daddy issues, she might or might not be fucking the king's cousin who is helping the Revolution out for his own ends only for the two of them to have a breakup in the middle of the trial of the century, she cries on stage, she has religious trauma. Literally everything you could possibly want in a female character. And she is also a rare example of a lower class woman in 18th century France given any amount of nuance or compassion, and she's double-billed alongside the most famous woman of the time and shares equal screen time with her! Literally no one is doing it like her.

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Championship Bracket

Cyrano ∼𝓋𝓈∼ Marie Antoinette

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