Spiderman News - Part 2

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Bono and Edge should never have meddled - them and their "producer" friends don't know squit about Broadway! they're like Daniel in the lions' den! :D
:madwife::bono::edge::madwife:

:rimshot:
 
deep said:
I believe there is a lot more evidence that lions ripped Christians apart
than there is that any Daniel ever entered and survived any lion's den.
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I believe the original post that brought up this oh-so-relevant topic invoked the story of Daniel, incorrectly, hence my post.
 
powerhour24 said:
I believe the original post that brought up this oh-so-relevant topic invoked the story of Daniel, incorrectly, hence my post.
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no, not incorrectly... i was actually thinking more of the fear factor and being surrounded by predators licking their lips ha

but if you want blood and guts, yeah, Roman circus then? lol
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
Im sure there are people who think its great. Im sure some of those people would think it was good even if u2 wasn't involved at all.

Just saying that those cases? Not the majority. And that's fine. To each his/her own.

If someone really wants to go see it, go ahead. In my opinion you're wasting your money when there's so much more to see. But its your money. Do with it as you please.
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When it comes to art what the majority think doesn't mean anything well I wouldn't be very surprised if U2 have even more haters of their music than they have fans. And we only know what critics and people who care to post their thoughts on the web think of this show and on forums at least it is always easier (and perhaps more entertaining) to criticize something you hated that praising something you liked or just think was good. But honestly yes I don't care what other people think : I like it and that's all what really matters to me. If everything else is on par with the score I hope it will do well but that's it. I don't also think this show being a success or not is important at all for U2 so it's not like I want to support it because I'm a U2 fan. I have never watched Million Dollar Hotel, never thought it looks very promising honestly and I could of course give many more examples why I'm not a blind fanboy if I thought I needed to justify myself, which is not the case.

Whatever they said they were going to release a record and I think it could really help the show giving it a much better image. Rise Above, BFFTS and ITWSE at least could be hit singles imo. The songs also like many U2 songs needs several listens to be really appreciated... which of course is a problem for a musical but one that could be fixed by releasing an album. If I have seen the show without knowing the songs first I'm sure I would have considered them ok at best not great because that's what I thought after listening to them for the first time. That's also not really the kind of songs you would expect from U2 at all and except few ones like No More, ITWSE or maybe Walk Away I can't see U2 playing them.

In fact it is almost impossible to compare most of those songs with U2 ones they are way too different from what they usually do and have done in the past... which is why I love them. For me one of the biggest achievements of this band is to have so much diversity in their discography and the songs from them I prefer are the ones that really tries new directions and are unique. A song like TOTD which I didn't like at all at first is a pure gem after several listens, so unique and special creating an atmosphere that illustrate so subtly and perfectly the main idea of the song: dreams *insert a joke about sleeping during SM here*. There is a lot of diversity and even experimentation at least for Bono and Edge in this soundtrack which is why it is so great imo but also why it probably can be quite puzzling and challenging at first.

mama> Sorry but I have no idea what you are talking about :/.
 
it was a joke medley - please don't make me explain... ok here i go: Julie = Julie Taymor :crack:

When it comes to art what the majority think doesn't mean anything
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there is also such a thing as "critical acclaim" you know - it is a concept valued by many artists ;)
 
mama cass said:
it was a joke medley - please don't make me explain... ok here i go: Julie = Julie Taymor :crack:



there is also such a thing as "critical acclaim" you know - it is a concept valued by many artists ;)
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Ok got it. Well I don't think U2 ever really cared about critical acclaim or at least they never looked for that. Looking to please anyone specifically is the best way to forget what you really want to do. If they wanted to please these critics then doing a challenging musical about a superhero with circus elements wasn't certainly the best option to choose. Instead they have decided to innovate, doing their thing and create something quite different from other Broadway show. This is what art should always be about and not trying to please a dozen of critics that don't know better about art than you and me as they aren't experienced and successful artists.
 
it's not about trying to please the critics... it's about presenting a work that is not severely and possibly irretrievably flawed and of sub-par standard...

Bono, Edge and Taymor have practically been given a blank cheque - they have a responsibility to come up with something AMAZING, not just art for art's sake... there is "good art" and there is "bad art", really... i just find it sad that this whole thing seems to be hinged on "big names" and not really whether those involved are actually capable and fit for the job... that does piss me off...

and you think U2 have never really cared about critical acclaim? o. k.

i'm glad you liked the show, you are entitled to your personal preferences, but please don't slate the critics with your blanket statements - these are very respected writers in the industry and some have been in their jobs for many years and have their own professional reputation and credibility to maintain, they know how Broadway works, they know the etiquette and they know the rules, and, really, Spider-Man has truly been a catalogue of disasters from start to, well, where it is now... Cohl isn't even a legit Broadway producer - he is a concert promoter, formerly Live Nation, he is out of his depth... i feel bad for the actors as they are there on stage trying to make the best of a bad job, and when you get an actor like Alan Cummings, originally cast in the show, saying in interviews that he "dodged a bullet", well, i think that's pretty telling in itself...
 
You are acting again like it is fact that this show is a disaster when this again is just an opinion. And the damn thing is not even ready for reviews! Of course there is bad art and good art but good art is certainly not the ones that critics like as their opinion is imo not more legitimate than anyone else's - and I haven't waited for SM to think that. Even if success doesn't mean necessarily artistic quality it is certainly still a much better indicator of that than critical acclaim. If SM is a success despite all the hate it is getting and despite being a very challenging, original and ambitious project then it will have achieved what it was supposed to do. This in my book IS good art.
 
ok medley, we're going round in circles here, we'll have to agree to disagree...

at preview stage, a show should be ready... the preview period normally serves to polish the show as a whole - it should already be the finished product, especially since they are charging full prices for tickets in this case... Taymor has already said that no major changes will be made, so perhaps very little will change between now and the new opening night of March 15 - the critics will be returning to review the show then as well, so we will see if they change their tune...

your reasoning is flawed btw - an example: McDonalds is hugely successful but the food is crap, so does success suddenly make the food good?

plus, you are totally contradicting yourself!

Even if success doesn't mean necessarily artistic quality it is certainly still a much better indicator of that than critical acclaim. If SM is a success despite all the hate it is getting and despite being a very challenging, original and ambitious project then it will have achieved what it was supposed to do. This in my book IS good art
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i will leave it at that... :D
 
mama cass said:
the critics will be returning to review the show then as well, so we will see if they change their tune...
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And if they do or don't that won't change the fact that their opinions will just be as valuable as anyone else's again.

mama cass said:
plus, you are totally contradicting yourself!
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Not really:

Even if success doesn't mean necessarily artistic quality it is certainly still a much better indicator of that than critical acclaim. If SM is a success despite all the hate it is getting and despite being a very challenging, original and ambitious project then it will have achieved what it was supposed to do. This in my book IS good art.
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:p

And btw the hamburger is a fantastic creation if you think of it at least two seconds :p.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
The idea that waterworld was an awful movie is just an opinion as well.

Most people have the opinion that it was a disaster of massive proportions, but i'm sure somebody owns the director's cut.

And hey, good for them. Whatever makes them happy.
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If you can't back up the idea that WW or SM are awful with logical arguments then of course it's just your opinion. Proving a fact, a truth that everyone has to agree with, requires logic not personal feelings. everyone =/= personal. Of course finding arguments and making a good analysis are much more difficult than throwing definitive unproven assertions but if you can't do that don't expect anyone to take your totally subjective thoughts for granted. There is a reason why you can't criticize and have to respect other people's opinion: that's because they are personal but that's also the reason why those opinions aren't arguments in themselves.

So if instead of saying that this show is terrible or a mess... you want to point to good arguments to explain why precisely it is so awful I would appreciate that and that would certainly make the discussion much more interesting.
 
there's some good, informed arguments over on the Broadway World message board if you want to check them out...
 
mama cass said:
there's some good, informed arguments over on the Broadway World message board if you want to check them out...
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I'm following it indeed that's quite interesting but I'm sorry I don't see any particularly compelling arguments at least against the show. Perhaps that's because I'm biased who knows? So is there some of them you want in particular to point out? Seriously when you see the replies in that particular thread: Why is Spiderman canceled tonight?(BroadwayWorld.com) , you can really feel the totally irrational hate I was talking about previously... All those guys hoping for this to close is just... well... no comment.
 
medley said:
I'm following it indeed that's quite interesting but I'm sorry I don't see any particularly compelling arguments at least against the show. Perhaps that's because I'm biased who knows? So is there some of them you want in particular to point out? Seriously when you see the replies in that particular thread: Why is Spiderman canceled tonight?(BroadwayWorld.com) , you can really feel the totally irrational hate I was talking about previously... All those guys hoping for this to close is just... well... no comment.
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there's loads of stuff there, there's a thread specifically about the reviews, and the spokesperson's reactions to the reviews...

hope it's ok to copy this here, but i thought this was a pretty well-reasoned comment...

Man, there is nothing I enjoy more than trashing critics! What the New York Times did to the original "Kiss of the Spider Woman" was unconscionable and unforgivable... And over the years I've watched shows that have touched me on a gut level and that I enjoyed be ripped to shreds by critics who seemed more interested in proving how intellectually superior they were as writers, than in giving a fair assessment to the shows themselves. You should have seen the TEARS rolling down people's faces as they left the theater after the original production of Chess, which was then summarily trashed and destroyed by critics who seemed bent on destroying "the musical by Abba".

But in THIS case, having sat through Spider-man last Wed night, and having gone with an open mind and REALLY WANTING to like it... I think the critics all got it right and were, on the whole, VERY fair in their reviews. It's no news that Taymor and the producers have said no to pretty much every uber literary agent in the biz who offered up their clients to help clean up the book. And it's no secret that the biggest complaint that people HAVE with the show is the book and inane story lines that don't emotionally connect, go anywhere, or in most cases even get resolved. And if Taymor had put her ego away and opened her heart and said to the world "I got it wrong on some of the story elements and such and such who I highly respect is going to help us fine tune the story and lyrics over the next month", then I HAVE to believe the critics would have stayed away and GIVEN them the chance to resolve some things. But it's clear that wasn't what's been happening over at the Foxwoods. Instead it's band-aids. Let's face it - Taymor couldn't have made the Lion King what it WAS if she wasnt artistically brilliant. But remember: someone ELSE wrote that book and it follows the movie VERY closely. And for a lot audiences, her "Across the Universe" didn't fully connect either. I could write paragraphs about why, which I won't do. But again, that script had extraneous story lines ("Dear Prudence"? Who cares. We don't KNOW Prudence yet enough to CARE about her angst, and then she becomes almost a footnote anyway. And what about the kid's father? SO rich for developing, but no, it was just dropped and off we went on our magical journey and not given a chance to connect with HUGELY important part of the lead's inner psyche... Similar to what's been glossed over and left out of Spider-man... )

I honestly HATE seeing Broadway failures and I want people to stay employed and see lines of people outside of theaters lining up for tickets. And I think the detractors on here like to think that those of us being critical of the show somehow WANT to see it's demise. But that's simply not true for all of us. Yes, I think there are SOME on here who clearly hate the world and probably hate their lives SO much that they sit in their dark little holes spewing venom at true theater lovers here on the message boards... But I think there are probably a lot more like myself who feel that EVERY success on Broadway is a win for the art form and will continue to allow what we love to thrive.

So it's with a heavy heart that I say what I've said about Spider-man. And it's with a heavy heart that I have to stand behind the critics and acknowledge that their reviews are very fair.

I will give Spider-man a second chance. After March 15th, I'll go back again and with an open heart and open mind... And believe me, if the problems with the book that I detailed pretty specifically on another thread are resolved, nobody will be more vocal than I will be, in support of the show.

And I HOPE they prove me wrong. But what I think the critics are realizing is that the writing is on the wall: smoothing out rough edges and more rehearsals and band-aids aren't going to save a book that honestly never should have seen the light of the day.

And in MY humble opinion, if Miss Taymor DID admit that she made some mistakes and put the life of the show and the millions in investment and the future of her cast members ahead of her own ego, and brought in someone to rewrite the book, she would have SKYROCKETED in my opinion of her. We're all human and nobody can ever get everything right. There were, after all, three major directors on Gone With the Wind. Would it ever have been the classic it became without having Cukor AND Fleming's stamp on it?

I honestly think Miss Taymor would have made a LOT of friends and gained a lot of fans if she had been humble enough to admit that she got some things wrong and brought in someone to make it right. That would have proved artistic brilliance to me.
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Read more: Spider-Man rep speaks out on the 'early' reviews(BroadwayWorld.com)
 
There was a fair story on NPR yesterday afternoon about all the negative reviews coming out, and it mentioned that Oprah and Glenn Beck were among the defenders of the show. They gave decent air time to Michael Cohl to defend the show and mention how its still a work in progress.
 
medley said:
If you can't back up the idea that WW or SM are awful with logical arguments then of course it's just your opinion. Proving a fact, a truth that everyone has to agree with, requires logic not personal feelings. everyone =/= personal. Of course finding arguments and making a good analysis are much more difficult than throwing definitive unproven assertions but if you can't do that don't expect anyone to take your totally subjective thoughts for granted. There is a reason why you can't criticize and have to respect other people's opinion: that's because they are personal but that's also the reason why those opinions aren't arguments in themselves.

So if instead of saying that this show is terrible or a mess... you want to point to good arguments to explain why precisely it is so awful I would appreciate that and that would certainly make the discussion much more interesting.
Click to expand...

:sigh: there's always one...



if you go back through this thread, i have pointed to numerous reasons why this play is a terrible mess. and my reasonings, many of which were posted before this rash of reviews, just happen to align almost perfectly with what 90% of the reviewers have said. so while it may just be opinion, it's a fairly wildly held opinion.


so again, here we go... what is wrong with this play? besides the obvious technical mishaps, accidents and so-so audio (a lot of which has been fixed and cleaned up i hear), this play suffers from a poorly written script. the book ain't no good.

the green goblin? the actor who plays him is phenomenal. he's terrific. it's a shame that his work is going to go unnoticed because of how badly this play is being received. if this play had followed more in line with the movie and comic books, and the first act was more of the setup, and the second act was more action filled with spiderman vs. the green goblin? i'd probably say it was a fun play and worth the ticket.

unfortunately, that's not the case.

taymor has insisted on making the story her own, and creating her own villains, with arachne at the lead. the force-feeding of this storyline down our throats makes the story very confusing... firstly because you're trying to figure out why they keep flashing back to this ancient mythological spider-woman, and then because you're trying to figure out when mythological spider-woman became a real life, modern day person.

i understand she wanted some sort of mythology to the story, with a plot twist to boot. problem is it's poorly written, poorly set up, and just leads to a disjointed mess of a second act.


and allllllll of these critics seem to point to those exact same reasons why the play stinks. and yes, they've broken protocol and submitted reviews before the official open. but they haven't done it because of hatred... they've done it because they're charing FULL price... a higher price than many award winning shows just down the street... to a public that is going largely due to the hype, for a run of previews that doesn't seem to ever end.

as has been said many times... previews are supposed to be the final dress rehersals. a way to tune things up in time for opening night. they're not supposed to last very long, and previews aren't normaly the higest priced ticket on broadway.

in short... the critics feel that the public is being ripped off by these previews, probably because they feel the producers know that the show stinks and want to rake in as much cash as they can before the actual open, because this play could very well die a quick death once it opens for real. the critics broke protocol because they feel the producers are wronging the theater going public.

there's no hatred... there's no conspiracy theory... there's just a misconceived mess that could have been good if somebody had just been able to tell julie taymor that she can't write worth shit.

but of course, these aren't facts. just the opinion of myself... and most other people. but sure, not everyone.
 
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