#i know it only goes partway through act ii

[greyhavensking]

I… finally caught up on daiya no ace. I don’t know what to do with my life anymore.

but hey at least I got the greatest misawa shot of all time

[cyanocoraxx]

some thoughts on ultrakill V1 i have rn

i love love LOVE how v1 is increasingly referred to as a "creature" and an "animal" towards the end of act II. to start - V1 doesn't even begin their descent into hell with a weapon. it begins by booting up, probably awaking from sleep mode to not waste blood - i presume the descent from earth down to hell would have taken a while.  so begins V1's awakening and urge to survive.

V1 is as much of an animal as a machine. it's keeping itself "alive" for as long as possible through fuel, much like an animal doing what it does best without any idea of morality. some people liken this to them being a true neutral character, but we do see some aspects to V1 to suggest that it might have more of an inclination to kill for the sake of killing, not just refuelling. for example, the flesh prison produces an infinite amount of blood because it self-heals. V1 could stay there and drain it of blood for as long as it likes, as long as it can keep up. but it doesn't. it destroys the enemy in its path and charges ahead. the latter option would have been more efficient for a while, at least until V1 needs maintenance or whatever. so what else is charging V1's desire to kill, if not simply blood to refuel?

that brings me to something a little more existential.

two excerpts from a testament: "free will was a mistake. let the evil of their own lips consume them."

yes, V1 has some free will to some degree. it can decide what to kill, where to go to do it, and exactly how to do it. but it is bound by its need for blood. without ample storage for it, it needs to continuously kill to function. this is the restriction of its free will. and, yet, it bleeds blood just like the denizens of hell who once lived. partway between animal and machine.

what better way for god to eradicate its failed creations than by the very things its creations built, something with little free will? go on. kill the angels for their hubris. of course, angels only begin to appear in the greed layer, which says a lot. get rid of the beings of hell - they serve little purpose now anyway. once everything is gone and dead, the machines no longer function as they run out of blood fuel. everything is gone, and whatever higher power is out there can start again. now, i don't think this is anything like a god manipulating V1 or controlling it in any way - but perhaps a little nudge in the right direction. an experiment, perhaps. god abandoned the council and all the beings in hell, allowed this murdering gopro to wreak havoc on everything and everyone. failures erased, maybe. but is it that simple?

the lives of the denizens of hell are menial. almost vulgar. an existence simply shooting and attacking anything in their way. though now, to a creature like V1, the denizens of hell bear a pleasure that it cannot resist. it takes that, forgetting, for the hours it spends in hell, its own place on the menu. it bleeds like all the other animals of hell, and one day soon it too will run out. if god is allowing V1 to act this way, will it simply lead to another failure? is this all pointless in the grand scheme of things, despite everything? perhaps god is watching with amusement rather than hoping for an outcome. failure after failure, so let’s see how this time goes around. i think, perhaps, V1 would feel similarly. it should know that it will run out of blood sources eventually - after all, it came to hell once it ran out of sources on earth. so why not get what it can with style along the way? go out with a bang or whatever. maybe this is all partly a game with other intentions for both parties.

blood is fuel, or in the end, was fuel. can history disappear if it was written in blood? will the cycle repeat again? i think so. V1 and other machines like it are animals and nature finds its way.

[flynnspeaks]

“Frozen” Thoughts

Just got back from my trip and can finish this up from my drafts. Spoilers abound:

So tl;dr thought: Script is basically good, production bad. I think the show, script-wise, is 80% there but it needs some major changes to work effectively as a piece of theatre.

General stuff: - The only things outright cut from the film are Marshmallow, the icepickers, “Heimr Arnadalr” (replaced with a new coronation hymn) and “Frozen Heart” (which is still quoted in the show?? Like at one point a character literally says “born of cold and winter air”, so I don’t know why it’s missing). Every other song and character is represented. - The trolls are changed into sorta mystical ‘mountain folk’, and made into the narrators of the piece (I kinda felt this would happen--the movie has two options for a sort of greek chorus, the icepickers and the trolls. IMO they picked the wrong one). - Lots of new songs - Heavy ensemble--several new numbers incorporate them heavily, and they’re added to “Let it Go” (offstage voices) and “First Time in Forever”

The Good: - Two new songs are excellent additions to the score--a poppy Kristoff/Anna duet called “What Do You Know About Love” and an Act II solo for Elsa called “Monster” (insert Nicki Minaj joke here). The rest of the score isn’t nearly as memorable and there are times where it feels like you’re waiting for a movie number to happen, but it’s still for the most part good. - The score feels a lot more unified than the film--I know people complained about the songs in the film feeling sorta disjointed stylistically, and though that’s not a complaint I subscribed to the whole thing is a lot more cohesive here, both in terms of orchestration, in what the linking material is able to do, and the use of the ensemble. - Speaking of improvements over the film, “Fixer Upper” is vastly better. It loses a verse, and they’ve reorchestrated it to be more rhythmic, fitting with the other musical material the mountain folk get in the show. It’s far less jarring and far less annoying than in the film. - Both Hans and Kristoff get a lot more to do, which is good--less so for Hans, but we’ll talk about that later. - Sven is accomplished really well in an elaborate costume that sorta recalls Lion King but in a more ‘realistic’ vein. It’s very fun to watch, with one drawback--he blinks, and it’s really creepy for some reason. - The climax is really well-staged. It is also the only moment in the show that’s really well-staged, but we’ll get to that. - There were two families on either side of me both with little girls who seemed to be really enjoying the show. That doesn’t actually have anything to do with the show but it was nice. The Eh: - I was actually expecting some of the cut songs featured on the album would be used (”We Know Better”, “Spring Pageant”, “Life’s Too Short”), and they ended up not utilizing any of them. Which wouldn’t be a bad thing except that it often felt like those would’ve functioned better in the show than the songs they actually used--like, the opening number isn’t bad by any means, but it’s probably the weakest number in Act I and isn’t anywhere near as good as what a rewritten “We Know Better” probably would’ve been. “Life’s Too Short” is an interesting one, because I think it was definitely wrong for the moment in the film, but something about where the Anna/Elsa confrontation happens in the stage version feels like it desperately needed that number instead of the “Forever” reprise. - There’s dance breaks added to “Love is an Open Door” and “Fixer Upper”, and they’re not, like, awful, but they’re just sorta there. Here’s a thought: why not dance during the song? - The tone is really slippery in the first half of Act I. I’m probably misremembering, but I don’t remember Anna being this jokey as a kid in the film. It gets better as it goes on (either that or I’m Stockholmed into it by then), but they never quite reconcile the classic fairy-tale stuff with the more modern sensibility, and it jars constantly. - The finale is ok, but also just sort of there. They end on “Love is an Open Door”, which works better than it sounds but is also a really odd song to end on (like, why not just close with a “Vuelie” reprise?) - They try and justify the title of the show in one of the lyrics and it kinda really doesn’t work

The Bad: - Okay, let’s get the worst out of the way: The Act II opening number is the absolute worst piece of garbage I have ever seen committed to the musical stage. It’s an extended comic setpiece called “Hygge” featuring Kevin del Aguila as Oaken (the “Yoo Hoo!” guy, who only appears in this scene) explaining what ‘hygge’ means to the audience, done as a polka. With a chorus in the nude. The entire song exists only to get Anna out of the winter gear she’s wearing into the recognizable winter gear from the film. The audience clearly lost patience with the number halfway through. The song ends with the chorus doing a kickline in the nude with fig leaves covering their privates. It had better fucking be cut before Broadway. - Olaf. Olaf Olaf Olaf. Starting with the script, he’s for some reason far more grating here than in the film, and I think it’s because he’s being written as an iconic character rather than the simply sweet innocent he was in the film. “In Summer” is towards the end of Act I, which is absolutely the wrong place for it--by this point the show becomes a waiting game for “Let it Go” and the song is only an irritating distraction in that context (it clearly needs to open Act II, but we saw how that went). Olaf also gets a second comedic number in Act II that just doesn’t work. It’s not “Hygge” levels of awfulness, but it just falls flat and again feels like a distraction. And then there’s the performance. - Okay, this is gonna be its own bullet point. So the actor himself is fine, but he’s stuck doing a Josh Gad impersonation and can’t really make it his own. But they have Olaf be a puppet, Avenue Q-style with the actor operating him from behind, and it is awful. First off he’s designed to look exactly like the CGI model, which jars immensely with the look of the entire rest of the show. And the puppet itself is actively bad--horribly inexpressive, and the mouth doesn’t appear to actually be able to close all the way??? At first I thought the actor just wasn’t a very good puppeteer but at some point in the show the actress playing Anna has to operate the puppet and the issue persists, so you’re left with this mouth that can only close partway and it looks baaaaaaaad. - Hans. Okay, so I was actually expecting them to do something with the twist--the thing is that worked immensely well in the film, but is also kind of a one-trick pony and in all likelihood the entire audience of the show is going to know the twist going in. So with that I was expecting them to either reveal it a lot sooner, so the audience knows what’s up before Anna does, or else reverse it entirely. Instead it plays out exactly as it does in the film, with the added wrinkle that a considerable amount of material has been added to make Hans more trustworthy and likeable, which makes the twist feel facile and contrived. More than anywhere else this is the spot that needed to be different from the film, and the fact it stayed the same reveals a lot about the show’s priorities. - The set is actually awful. All projections and drops, and very little in the way of actual interactive pieces. It honestly felt like a national tour set--not something you would put together for Broadway. And the “special effects” are laughable--a few moments where they have actual ice shards in the set that are kinda cool, but for the most part Elsa does elaborate hand gestures and they project a swirl of ice on the set. The dress transformation is fun, but the rest of it feels honestly cheap as hell (especially since this really feels like a show that would sell itself on special effects work). - The set being bad impacts the direction, which often has no idea what to do with its actors and leaves the ensemble aimlessly wandering in the background. The staging is bland and lifeless--occasionally enlivened when it’s able to copy directly from the film, but usually staid (”Love is an Open Door” is literally, like, walking. It’s bad). - More than anything you get the feeling this is a production that aims for little more than slavishly recreating the film, and it ends up feeling like something you’d see at Disneyland rather than actually on Broadway. I don’t think the script is bad--it’s got really bad moments, but will probably be fixed pretty well in time for Bway--but this needed a director like Taymor that could make it feel like its own thing. As is...I mean, it’s a Disney show. Maybe it’s expecting too much for it to be theatrically interesting, but damn I really wish it was.

Ultimately this isn’t a show that’s going to change your mind about the film. If you liked the film, you’ll likely at least enjoy the show (though I loved the film and thought this was merely allright, so YMMV), if you don’t like the movie you probably won’t enjoy this very much. Hopefully the script issues that exist will be fixed by Bway, and with luck it won’t be long after that when the licensing opens up--honestly the best possible production of this would be with a smaller company that wouldn’t be obligated to recreate the film but could do their own thing, treating the material seriously on its own. Until then, it looks like this is what we got, and I can’t say right now that it’s gonna be worth your time outside of what will probably be a pretty great cast album.