Lin-Manuel Miranda's Warriors Album - Ghostbusters 2016 but with gangs

[The Hardest R]

LMM sucks and Hamilton was the right faggoty musical at the right place at the right time. It was the perfect soundtrack between the Hopey Changey era of the mid 2000s through the early 2010s and the searing hatred of Whites of the mid 2010s through today. There’s a pocket of millennials age 30-40 that will probably always go apeshit over whatever LMM pinches out but nobody else will get it.

 

[X-avier cuck]

From listening to the album (a painful experience) and reading Miranda's reviews, you really get the impression that he never grew up past that age four impression of the movie. He really, really doesn't seem to get the point. He talks about how he began to see gangs "as a way to gain control and protect a neighborhood" citing examples like the Black Panthers and BLM. The gangs in the album almost feel like Marvel superheroes and villains. The grim, painful reality of gang culture and the suffering around it is totally lost in translation. It definitely comes off like a sheltered theater kid trying to replicate something he thinks is cool without actually getting it.

It gets even more ridiculous when you read the original book and know it was written based on the author's horrible experiences as a social worker who counseled kids in gangs. The horrors of violent crime and the struggles of poverty are completely absent from his version.

Man that fucking Cat book series keeps coming up everywhere. So damn confusing when one series is about gangs fighting and the other is about cats fighting.

The way he views gangs is the way that most people living in non-white neighborhoods view them.

Gangs in those communities are viewed as a necessity to survive and in some cases are revered as heroes which is why many former gangsters turn rappers are now some of the biggest entertainers in Hollywood or pop culture in general.


For me though, an adaptation justifies itself based on what it either adds or expands upon when it comes to the original source material to give it a different edge.

Outside of the whole female gang thing, the main draw is expanding off of Cyrus's words and what they mean since he's basically forgotten after he's killed.

Outside of that though the album is incredibly faithful to the movie and even has Cleon living to the end like the book did.


It's far from the horrors of the 2016 Ghostbusters movie and has a lot of deep cuts that only somebody who actually watched the film would get.

 

[Mnutu]

lot of deep cuts that only somebody who actually watched the film would get.

In the original novel, there’s an entire scene where the Warriors gang rapes that one chick and leave her for dead.

 

[Smithfield Ham]

@X-avier cuck your take on gangs isn't correct. Sometimes gangs and gangster are glorified. However, this is usually just because they're "cool" and not because they're seen as helpful. I mean c'mon, we've all played San Andreas and loved it! People who think gangs are good, or even a "necessary evil" are the exception, not the rule. Most people in lower income communities fucking hate gangs because they're the primary victims of them. It's a lot harder to find gangs cool when you're the one dodging bullets and stepping over dead bodies.

Now, in fairness, The Warriors movie is a way watered down version of gang life, meant to be more entertaining. Although it hits a few key points that make you go "wow, living like this would fucking suck, actually."

In the original novel, there’s an entire scene where the Warriors gang rapes that one chick and leave her for dead.

That's why she's named "Mercy" in the film, because she's spared that fate in it.

The book is way more bleak, brutal and depressing. The writer, Sol Yurrick, based it on the horrible things he'd seen and heard while working as a social worker in the 1960s. It's also not nearly as entertaining and the plot just kind of stops halfway through. The movie watered down the original book, but it turned out to be a very good decision.

It's just funny to think about the game of telephone this story went through: first it was a grim and harrowing novel about the horrors of gang life, then it was an exciting 70s action movie with just enough grit and humanity to not feel cheapened, and now it's become a campy Disney Channel musical.

 

[Mnutu]

@X-avier cuck your take on gangs isn't correct. Sometimes gangs and gangster are glorified. However, this is usually just because they're "cool" and not because they're seen as helpful. I mean c'mon, we've all played San Andreas and loved it! People who think gangs are good, or even a "necessary evil" are the exception, not the rule. Most people in lower income communities fucking hate gangs because they're the primary victims of them. It's a lot harder to find gangs cool when you're the one dodging bullets and stepping over dead bodies.

Now, in fairness, The Warriors movie is a way watered down version of gang life, meant to be more entertaining. Although it hits a few key points that make you go "wow, living like this would fucking suck, actually."


That's why she's named "Mercy" in the film, because she's spared that fate in it.

The book is way more bleak, brutal and depressing. The writer, Sol Yurrick, based it on the horrible things he'd seen and heard while working as a social worker in the 1960s. It's also not nearly as entertaining and the plot just kind of stops halfway through. The movie watered down the original book, but it turned out to be a very good decision.

It's just funny to think about the game of telephone this story went through: first it was a grim and harrowing novel about the horrors of gang life, then it was an exciting 70s action movie with just enough grit and humanity to not feel cheapened, and now it's become a campy Disney Channel musical.

Don’t forget the kickass game, which is way better than it ever had the right to be. The movie hit the right balance of really campy and silly, while still balancing it out with the Ancient Greek iconography and the grittiness and harrowing life of the time. At the time they filmed it, it was probably harder to keep a light-hearted tone than establish its grittiness. As bleak as the novel is, I liked the ending a lot. It’s really fitting and way more impactful than any other ending you could make.

Of course, no one is going to understand that that is the most important part to adapt, and get lost in the trappings of “Baseball Furies? How sick!”

 

[Smithfield Ham]

I got into the franchise so hard because of the game. One of the coolest things about it is that it actually portrays the Warriors doing gang-like stuff. In the movie they're mostly just a group of muscle dudes. In the game, they actually get to commit crimes, do drugs and steal stuff, so it feels heavier.

The novel did a few things I like. Focusing on Rembrandt's character (or his version in the novel) was very interesting, seeing things from the eyes of a younger, weaker and less experienced member, and the ending where he returns to his sad, difficult life really hits you hard. LMM missed a big opportunity: he could've made a musical from the perspective of Rembrandt, his struggles with being young and gay and getting mixed up in a gang.

I'm hard on LMM's adaptation, because it sucks ass. But I have to say, there are at least a few things I like about it. The Orphans song is fucking hilarious, and the way he uses cameos from the original in ways that mirror their original roles is actually very clever, a good way to make it more interesting than straight-up memberberries. Like having Ajax's original actor voicing the undercover cop that arrests this adaptation's Ajax.

But it's genuinely not good, and I dread the idea of this becoming the "definitive" version of The Warriors because of the cult of LMM pushing it. I desperately hope it remains just one spinoff of a larger concept, something in its own separate place.

In fairness, Emilia Perez lowered the bar so fucking hard for musicals to me that I retroactively hate this one less.

 

[X-avier cuck]

@X-avier cuck your take on gangs isn't correct. Sometimes gangs and gangster are glorified. However, this is usually just because they're "cool" and not because they're seen as helpful. I mean c'mon, we've all played San Andreas and loved it! People who think gangs are good, or even a "necessary evil" are the exception, not the rule. Most people in lower income communities fucking hate gangs because they're the primary victims of them. It's a lot harder to find gangs cool when you're the one dodging bullets and stepping over dead bodies.

Now, in fairness, The Warriors movie is a way watered down version of gang life, meant to be more entertaining. Although it hits a few key points that make you go "wow, living like this would fucking suck, actually."


That's why she's named "Mercy" in the film, because she's spared that fate in it.

The book is way more bleak, brutal and depressing. The writer, Sol Yurrick, based it on the horrible things he'd seen and heard while working as a social worker in the 1960s. It's also not nearly as entertaining and the plot just kind of stops halfway through. The movie watered down the original book, but it turned out to be a very good decision.

It's just funny to think about the game of telephone this story went through: first it was a grim and harrowing novel about the horrors of gang life, then it was an exciting 70s action movie with just enough grit and humanity to not feel cheapened, and now it's become a campy Disney Channel musical.

I can only really speak from my own experiences being that negro from the hood, but there was a lot of reverence for gangs to the point that a lot of them ended up becoming successful family entertainers.

It's sort of to the point that most millennials and even zoomers believe this to be the case which is why it's so much of Broadway and theater have been about reinterpreting that environment from a different lens.

The funny thing I found out about the movie A couple of years ago, is that Paramount was horrified of having a predominantly non-white cast so Walter Hill had to literally reassess everything so that they would at least allow it to enter production.

The musical is more or less a straight adaptation of the movie but their female with very minimal changes outside of the obvious gender-specific dialogue that the orphans or the Acs at them.

It's kind of like a reverse outsiders in that way which is also a Broadway musical now

I don't think this is going to for you was meant to sort of replace the original but just kind of exist within its own space like a lot of Broadway adaptations.

Musicals are incredibly corny by nature so I'm not surprised that it seems even more camping than the movie but I do think it avoids being a Ghostbusters 2016 IMHO.

 

[Smithfield Ham]

Well, I disagree with you, but respectfully so. I think it makes the same mistakes as GB2016 but I won't belabor it.

 

[X-avier cuck]

Well, I disagree with you, but respectfully so. I think it makes the same mistakes as GB2016 but I won't belabor it.

The thing about Ghostbusters 2016 is that it was incredibly spiteful and went out of its way to more or less disavow not only the original but to treat the original male Ghostbusters as a bunch of pansies be it in marketing or the actual movie.

This concept album is more or less the same story but they're women with a few things tweaked to represent that.

It's nerdy, and very theatrical, but I think it comes from a pret.ty genuine place as sappy as that sounds.

That and it caused some of my students to get into the franchise as a whole which I guess is probably affecting my bias