14 thoughts on “West Side Story”

  1. The inclusion of a transgender character plus the refusal to include closed captioning for the Spanish dialogue so as not to offend Spanish speakers or some such nonsense makes it a hard NO for me.

    2. I tend to prefer foreign languages not be captioned in English-language movies. It’s a more of a challenge for the writers and actors but for me repeatedly switching between watching and reading makes it more difficult to keep my mind in the movie.

      1. True but it beats not knowing what is said, plus I am used to closed captioning even on English speaking shows thanks to my poor hearing.

        1. The very best closed captioning I’ve ever seen was in the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Without it, the film would have been incomprehensible to those of us unschooled in Mandarin. I don’t know what it was that made the CC so effortless and effective, but the filmmakers nailed the technique incredibly well.

      2. I would rather watched subtitle products than “english dubbed” any day of the week. Usually the english dialog is horribly mis-translated.

        Foreign languages without are as useless to me as if, what was that folk saying, ‘playing a fiddle to a cow’?

  3. I was mildly interested, because I enjoy West Side Story as a musical. I’ve seen the stage performance many times, and even when I hear the intro to the movie version with Natalie Wood, I still imagine the better sounding live orchestra. A new version with better sound would be great.

    But I don’t understand Spielberg as a director, the need to make a character gay (isn’t this like casting a Scarlett Johansen to play an Asian or gay character?), the need to even mention lack of subtitles as a thing that matters, and especially a change to the ending that not only misses the point of the original but also of Romeo and Juliet. Yet these things seem to be all Hollywood wants to do when making a remake. That have to piss all over it, and then piss again on the audience when the audience decides they rather not be pissed on. If they just admitted they hate the original IP, then I could understand why they do this.

  4. I saw it with my wife on opening night in the SF Bay Area. Seven people in the theater for the 9:00 showing. Of course, the entire cineplex was empty so it may not be just West Side Story. Are people that afraid of the cooties?

    I don’t think it was a terrible movie, but it also wasn’t a good movie. My main complaint is the moving seemed very bleak and lifeless compared to the original version. Some of the editing choices were very puzzling as well which ruined the pacing of the story.

    I honestly don’t know why the movie was remade. Totally unnecessary. Speilberg could have saved himself a few $10’s millions by bank-rolling a restoration and re-release of the original and many more people than the woke crowd would have been happy to see it. Also, the gender dysmorphic character was an eye-roller as well. Whatever happened to some girls just being a tomboy? Sheesh.

    1. “Whatever happened to some girls just being a tomboy?”

      Whatever happened to “Born This Way”?

      Suddenly being gay isn’t genetic but a choice or the outcome of a social construct. Born This Way didn’t go away but it morphed.

      No longer is it that gay people were born gay and straight people were born straight but rather all sexuality and genders are social constructs and people are born asexual or born with a deviant gender or sexuality. The belief is that straight people only exist because of society and that by using social constructs, the Progressive Marxists can change an individual’s gender and sexuality.

      They know this is true because Progressive Marxist professors and psychologists have run experiments where abusing kids caused them to be confused about their sexuality and to carry out the abuse they suffered on other people. This shows that gender and sexuality are just social constructs and that there wont be Social Justice until every child undergoes social construction.

      That is why there are no more tomboys.

      1. Related to the complaints of Rowling questioning whether a rapist with a penis is a woman; why is it that we must accept multiple forms of genders and pronouns while also accepting that a man with a penis can only be a woman if that is what they claim? Isn’t that a suggestion that there are only 2 genders, but what they are is whatever you claim them to be when asked?

    2. I agree with that a restoration project would have been better. The colorization is perhaps classic to the original, but the sound could have been improved dramatically.

  5. Most of the audience and even lots of opera performers don’t speak the language and still enjoyed it without subtitles but it was niche. Now subtitles are common and the niche is a little bigger. The same is true for foreign language with subtitles.

    “West Side Story” was a successful musical when musicals were very popular. They aren’t now and who knows when they will come back. Every few years someone gets the idea that Shakespeare will be really popular if they can make it “relevant”. Those turn out to be a money sink as well.

    Informing half the population that they’re too bigoted to appreciate it probably isn’t helping the box office either.

    1. They aren’t now and who knows when they will come back.

      “The Greatest Showman” was very successful, but it was a made-for-the-big-screen musical. I’ll never understand how it lost to “Coco” (another musical though animated and a ripoff of “The Book of Life” from 3 years earlier) for best original song, other than Disney influence on the voting. I don’t think most people even remember “Coco” as a thing, much less its music. While “The Greatest Showman” had a bestselling album (of any genre) for months, and then came out with a remade album with songs sung by popular artists, and it was a success too.

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