Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let's Do The Time Warp (Yet) Again! (2016 Fox) - General Discussion

[ennui]

1 hour ago, peacheslatour said:

I wonder what the budget was for the original in comparison with this thing. Adjusted for inflation, of course.

The original was $1.4M, the tv tribute was $20M.

And yet, after reading the comments here, I feel like I want to watch it again. I watched the original a few times on LOGO.

[Goldmoon]

I must be the only one on the internet who hated the Usherette. I didn't mind the idea of someone moving through a movie theater instead of just seeing Lips O'Brien, but I didn't think she was that great of a singer and she kept twisting her own lips in weird ways.  I was optimistic at the after-wedding scene.  Both NewBrad and NewJanet can sing better than Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon.  I ended up thinking New Brad was the MVP though I must say, BB and SS brought more charm and energy to their roles in the original, even though SS had pneumonia while filming. 

I will also diverge in liking this time warp dance number because I did like it.  I thought the arrangement was interesting.  I wanted to like NewRiff, but the actor was trying SO HARD to imitate RO'B that I just couldn't stand him after a while.  When Magenta and Riff took off Brad and Janet's clothes, that felt much dirtier and more intrusive than in the movie.  I think it happened so quickly in the movie that I could roll on past it, but this director seemed to take his time stripping them and that squicked me.

As for Laverne Cox - Jesus, Joseph and Mary, what was that!?  She had her lips open the whole time so we could see her perfect teeth and posed a lot.  I thought she might have done better had she tried to imitate Tim Curry less than she did.  I will also break with you guys - I'm a rebel tonight - by saying that Ben Vereen was just so-so and Meat Loaf was so much better than Lambert.  That surprised me because I had high hopes for AL.  I think he gave it his all, but ML just belted out "Hot Patootie" from the gut like it was the performance of his life!

Finally, I haven't seen anyone else mention the timeline that they are trying to represent, if they are even trying.  I felt the original movie was really set in the mid-sixties in spite of the 1975 release date.  The wedding clothes fit that era, and Janet's over the top innocence would be in line with the expectation that women would be virgins on their wedding nights. The sexual revolution had barely gotten underway, and even in 1975, sexual freedom was still a newish idea.  The goth type clothes in the audience seem to be from the 90s, and the garish party clothes for the aliens in the castle seem very 21st-century.  I was surprised to see what I felt was a production that was supposed to be set in the current era, but with dozens of anachronisms.

I love Tim Curry.  It was so sad to see him unable to move his left hand and the left part of his mouth.  He has always, in every role, caressed words with gusto as he released them from his lips.  2016 has been so cruel in taking celebrities I am going to send positive energy his way.

[ennui]

3 minutes ago, Goldmoon said:

The wedding clothes fit that era, and Janet's over the top innocence would be in line with the expectation that women would be virgins on their wedding nights.

In the original, the car said "She got hers, now he'll get his," which I noticed they changed to something else in the new version. 

[voiceover]

On October 21, 2016 at 2:42 PM, ratgirlagogo said:

Nobody will ever top Tim Curry anyway in this but if we're casting a woman she has to be giving Bette Davis, not Greer Garson.

Ah, the TCM filter!  You are, of course, exactly right -- but that Garson link will be hard to get past the next time I watch Mrs. Miniver.

[peacheslatour]

39 minutes ago, ennui said:

The original was $1.4M, the tv tribute was $20M.

And yet, after reading the comments here, I feel like I want to watch it again. I watched the original a few times on LOGO.

 Thanks!  Inflation is  roughly 4 times, so $1.00 in 1975 is $4.40 now. So in today's money it would have cost, what around $6 mil? Shows what talent and originality can do.

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In the original, the car said "She got hers, now he'll get his," which I noticed they changed to something else in the new version. 

I was yelling my head off about that! Egregious.

[ennui]

9 minutes ago, peacheslatour said:

So in today's money it would have cost, what around $6 mil?

In today's money, you couldn't get Susan Sarandon.  :)

[Willowsmom]

2 hours ago, ennui said:

In the original, the car said "She got hers, now he'll get his," which I noticed they changed to something else in the new version. 

The new one said " She said I do Now he's doing" not so clever.

1 hour ago, peacheslatour said:

[Zanne]

This may seem random, but I'm rewatching this to give it another chance and noticed something odd. Is NewBrad wearing dance pants beneath his underwear? Because in that lab scene his groin is front and center and it's like a Ken doll. I wasn't purposefully looking, I promise! But it was (or wasn't) right there and I wondered if they had made him wear the dance pants to smooth him out so as not to offend the 8-10 PM prime-time audience with too much bulge in the tighty whities.

I'm not trying to body shame, but it made me wonder how far the production went to sanitize this performance since, as many of you have said, it felt far less sexual, titillating, slightly menacing, and fun than the original did.

Edited October 23, 2016 by Zanne

[Mabinogia]

14 hours ago, Goldmoon said:

I think he gave it his all, but ML just belted out "Hot Patootie" from the gut like it was the performance of his life!

I think this right here pretty much sums up the difference between the old and the new. The old cast, Susan, Barry, Time, Meat, they really put their all into their roles, sure they weren't the best singers/performers, but I felt like they were giving it their all. This cast, being from this era, seem like they were doing it for the twitter buzz, because it would beef up their fame, and it was a paycheck. Also, I think they were hired for their singing moreso than their acting or fitting the characters. They were also mostly imitating performances that were far better rather than putting their own spin on it. If you're going to imitate someone you have to do it perfectly.

Admittedly I didn't watch the whole thing, I couldn't. I tried, and I kept coming back to it hoping it got better so maybe I missed all the really good moments but what I saw was a terrible high school play version from a high school that bought into it's own hype.

[aradia22]

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This cast, being from this era, seem like they were doing it for the twitter buzz, because it would beef up their fame, and it was a paycheck. 

I may just be reading into it because he did the Heathers musical, but I think Ryan (NewBrad) was genuinely into it. I think the theater people (Annaleigh/Columbia and Reeve/Riff Raff) were along for the ride and doing their jobs. I get the sense that Victoria wanted to do something a little risque to break out of the Nickelodeon image but not anything actually scandalous or tawdry in real life. But because it felt like Glee, I don't think it would end up being that shocking to anyone because she didn't know how to play it. 

I have no idea what Christina Milan thought she was doing. 

[DAngelus]

Struggling through this on DVR, but I really just can't with the casting of Reeve Carney as Riff Raff. Yes, he's 33, the same age Richard O'Brien was in the original, but he feels so wispy, like he's still in that Taylor Swift video ("I Knew You Were Trouble") when Riff is essentially a colleague of Frank'N'Furter's, who's ultimately glad to perform Frank's execution when he feels Dr. Furter has let the mission slide into pointless decadence.

Also, I question the whole project. In 1975, it might have seemed groundbreaking to do a movie whose essential purpose is to have Brad Majors, stereotypical '50s movie "heart-throb", take it up the ass, but now that seems pretty homophobic. And "Time Warp" is a satire of all those scripted dances from the '50s and '60s, where RHPS is saying that they were all about sex ("but it's the pelvic thrust that really drives you insane") but nobody has done scripted dances for decades now; the last time they were a "thing" was with the Macarena in the '90s. And before that, there was the country line-dancing thing, which made a star out of…Miley Cyrus's dad. It's one thing for a 1975 movie to satirize the 1950s and 1960s, but four decades later? We.Get.It.Already. Sheesh.

So all that's left is the music, which has been so very sanitized. I mean, "Damn It, Janet" was always a satire of doo-wop, so that's fine, and "There's a Light" came out well enough (Victoria Justice is a better singer than Susan Sarandon, obviously), but "Time Warp" was originally contemporary rock, with the chukka-chukka intro chords on the guitar. Here it almost sounds like a soft honky-tonk beginning, with the piano as prominent as the guitar. A world of "no".

Finally, the original Riff Raff, O'Brien, wrote the whole thing, including the music. O'Brien is a baritone. Reeve Carney won't be a baritone until his nuts finally drop, and who knows when that will be. Seriously, no weak tenors for Riff, ever, okay? Thanks.

[DAngelus]

Also, can we talk about the blocking for "Time Warp"? In the original, Riff Raff and Magenta lurk behind Brad/Janet for the first third of the song, essentially trapping them with the Partygoers; here Carney and Christina Milian immediately hit the dance floor, which begs the question of why B/J don't just leave, already? No sense of claustrophobia at all. Janet doesn't even faint…but then, why would she?

And then there's the bit where the partygoers are rolling on the floor and Brad and Janet have to hop over them. And Ryan McCartan (Brad) leaps and lands in this sort of martial-arts crouch where Victoria Justice basically just hops up and lands on her heels. Hey, director? Pick on or the other and have them seem synchronized; that just looked sloppy. The ghost of Busby Berkeley spits on you.

Annaleigh Ashford's Columbia comes off as fat and clunky compared to Nell Campbell's hyper and stylized original. I suppose there's no reason the part can't be played that way, but it's another discordant element.

And wtf is with that funk jam that transitions us from "Time Warp" into "Sweet Transvestite"?? Where's the horror theme in that? Why should Janet be scared? The music here is about as "threatening" as a jazz club on the Upper East Side. Which, given that there are so many more PoC in this version than the original, basically makes Janet's fears seem racist. Ugh. (And Victoria is half-Latina, herself.)

"Don't get strung out by the way I look
Don't judge a book by its cover" …sings FrankVerne, while covered almost entirely head to toe by a cape. Are we seeing the problem here, people? On a rewatch of the original, Tim Curry hasn't doffed his cape yet, either, but he's not so wrapped up and his face was already striking.  

Actually, I think I'm judging FrankVerne because the outfit is just a bland monochromatic black. I've seen restaurant linens with more pizzazz, never mind sexual undercurrent. Are we sure this isn't a remake of The Mummy, instead?

Edited October 24, 2016 by DAngelus

[DAngelus]

[Deleted as unnecessary, now.]

Edited October 24, 2016 by DAngelus

[DAngelus]

Okay, I'm stopping, but FrankVerne is still more covered up than Tim was, "Sweet Transvestite" sounds ridiculous with all the horns and piano, and it doesn't even make any lyrical sense, as LaVerne is, as far as can be observed here, a biological female, so how does a woman in women's clothing qualify as a "transvestite", anyhow? Is Brad supposed to somehow know that FrankVerne is a trans woman? Is FrankVerne even a trans woman, at all? "Transexual" is the name of the planet, not an adjective Frank ever applies to him (her?) self, in either version.

And, with LaVerne's tits nicely propped up, the line about the Steve Reeves movie doesn't really seem like a GAY come-on any more, you know? Likewise, the idea that Frank's "making a man" who is "good at relieving my…tension" comes out awfully hetero coming from a character that looks pretty female up on the screen. To quote an audience bit that wasn't in this version: "BORING! BORING! BORING!"

I swear, I'm thinking the Glee version was better. And that well deserved the "F" it got. Sigh.

[DAngelus]

All right, just one more.

I like lesbianism as much as the next dude, but the gender-flip on Frank blows the narrative flow on both the subsequent encounters after Frank/Janet (Frank/Brad and Janet/Rocky).

No longer are we going from "Janet's surrendering her virginity" to "Brad discovers bisexuality" on the taboo scale, now it's "Janet goes lesbian" which makes the following "Brad cheats on Janet" encounter seem pedestrian by comparison. (Not to mention rendering Brad's new fondness for sassy kimonos and Frank's description of him as "adaptable" rather random.)

Likewise, in the original, Janet goes from repressed virgin to being tearfully seduced (and, kind of raped, sorry) to being an actively horny seductress with Rocky. (Although, given his limited intelligence, that could be classed as rape, too.) Here, it's rather a step backward from her busting out of heternomativity with Frankette to her just grabbing a side of beef with Rocky, IMO.

Not to mention how weird it is that "Frank" is noticeably larger than Rocky, too. Maybe it takes 14 days to make a "real" man?

The "Dr. VON Scott" line makes no sense, given that Dr. Scott can hardly be a resettled Nazi on this timeline. Not to mention the fact that Ben Vereen is kind of, you know, black. And I don't think Hitler was very big on that. Just cut it.

"A mental mindGAME can be nice"?? Kill.Me.Now.

The reference to Magenta as Riff's sister is a little odd, given that they're such diverse ethnic types now.

JFC, I just realized that Magenta has magenta hair. Be more obvious, why don't you?

Oh, and now that Frank has been specified as female (various "she" references) that means the only transvestite in the cast is…Brad. (In the "Floor Show" sequence. Well, that and Dr. Scott's stockings.) And what exactly has "come over him", after all? All he's done is had sex with a woman. Even if Frank was his "first", too, that shouldn't be as transformative as it's being portrayed; as a presumably het dude, heterosexual sex should have at least factored into his fantasies before this.

Frank's confession of lust for Fay Wray's…dress isn't exactly groundbreaking now that she's a woman, either. So "give yourself over to absolute pleasure" now equates to women wearing fancy dresses, is that it? How revolutionary. Not.

How does Frank get out of the pool entirely bone dry? The hell?

Yes, Magenta does yawn during the original "I'm Going Home" (which btw, Tim sang much better than LaVerne does…she's weak sauce here), but O'Brien's Riff remained appropriately stony-faced. Which makes sense, given that he's on the edge of murdering Frank. Carney nearly nodding off in the seats is a bit of a strange take on it.

And we take one more commercial break between Columbia's death (which happened too fast…how am I supposed to go "The blink of an eye, the twitch of a lip; the first one to cry gets shot in the tits!" that quickly, I ask you?) and Frank's? How tacky. But hardly unexpected.

Rocky doesn't even try to climb the Empire State building? How lame. And the castle doesn't even really leave. Oy.

And "Superheroes" gets transposed into a too-high key. Although it's cool to see Curry sing the last verse where Charles Gray only spoke it. But overall, what a flop. "Grease: Live!" this wasn't, I'm just saying.

Okay, time to say goodbye to all this. Oblivion is looking pretty sweet, right about now. Don't dream it, delete it.

Edited October 24, 2016 by DAngelus

[aradia22]

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As more solid ratings begin to come in,Deadline reports that FOX ROCKY HORROR delivered a 1.7/6 rating among adults 18-49, representing a 60% drop in the demographic from what the network's GREASE LIVE had delivered back in January. The pre-recorded musical placed third among the 18-49's in the 8 PM time period.

In viewers, the Laverne Cox-led movie delivered an audience of 4.95 million, down 59% from Grease Live. 

http://www.broadwayworld.com/article/UPDATE-Ratings-for-FOXs-ROCKY-HORROR-Drop-60-from-Grease-Live-20161021

I wonder how they feel about this. 4.95 million wouldn't be bad for a cable network perhaps but given how much they spent on it, these seem like OK numbers at best. I also wonder how it was counted if someone started watching and then turned it off. 

[Notwisconsin]

Okay, the usherette beginning was from the PLAY. (I saw it in the early '80s, at a mafia-owned theater in Westchester decades ago soon after the film became a phenom). She was played by the same person who played Columbia and Dr. Scott was played by the same person who played Eddie. It might have been nice if they did that.

There were some complaints about the audience in the theater. I think there wasn't enough of that and they should have had the entire "audience participation" script done, that's what made this thing a classic in the first place, not the film which is okay, but not great.

The "lips" tribute at the end was awful. The reprise was supposed to be subdued and depressing and in keeping with the narrator's closing speech. That is why they cut that and "Superheroes" out of the 1975 version that played for years and years.

[peacheslatour]

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And wtf is with that funk jam that transitions us from "Time Warp" into "Sweet Transvestite"?? Where's the horror theme in that? Why should Janet be scared? The music here is about as "threatening" as a jazz club on the Upper East Side. Which, given that there are so many more PoC in this version than the original, basically makes Janet's fears seem racist. Ugh. (And Victoria is half-Latina, herself.)

Right? There is supposed to be a ominous back beat and bass line as the elevator descends (where the hell was the elevator???) to build the tension so that Janet fainting was an understandable reaction. They blew Frank's whole entrance big time.

Edited October 24, 2016 by peacheslatour

[Tara Ariano]

In case you missed it, here's the Previously.TV post on the episode!

The Rocky Horror Picture Show Is Simulated Sleaze

But what's wrong with simulated sleaze? It prepares children for the real thing.

[methodwriter85]

It wasn't good, but it also wasn't bad enough to be hate-watching like Sound of Music Live. It was just...there. The biggest problem is that it just lacked fun and campiness, not to mention the total lack of sexiness. I had hopes in the beginning with the usherette, but it just didn't work well enough for me. I think a lot of people have nailed the reason- FrankVerne seemed more interested in making Goddess Beyonce poses than actually having chemistry with the cast. The cast in general just didn't seem to let themselves go and have fun- they were all just so awkward. It might have been understandable in a live showing, but this was pre-filmed, and these problems should have been worked out.

Eh. The relative failure of this should definitely put off any big-screen remake of the show, which is a good thing,

Edited October 25, 2016 by methodwriter85

[peacheslatour]

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The relative failure of this should definitely put off any big-screen remake of the show, which is a good thing,

Gus Van Sant said that was the reason he made that shot for shot remake of Psycho. So no one else would try to do another one- Ever.

[ennui]

On 10/25/2016 at 11:55 AM, peacheslatour said:

Gus Van Sant said that was the reason he made that shot for shot remake of Psycho. So no one else would try to do another one- Ever.

Did he say that before or after audiences hated it?  ;)

[Jamoche]

On 10/24/2016 at 6:54 PM, methodwriter85 said:

It might have been understandable in a live showing, but this was pre-filmed, and these problems should have been worked out.

So much this.

[WhosThatGirl]

When I heard this was first happening, I assumed it was going to be a live musical event and I was kind of excited about that. But then I heard it was pre taped and I was bummed. I felt like I would have found a preferred live version, I don't know, this felt like it was missing an injection of life or something in it and maybe a live version would have brought that?

[Hanahope]

Finally got around to watching this over the weekend.  I have to agree with others that while the performances were ok, and some pretty decent, the production of a whole just didn't feel right.  The timing was off at several points (certainly with trying to do the audience response bits).  Laverne Cox did a good job, but again, it just didn't feel right for the part.  I know she's transgender, but that's different from transvestite, and the difference is important for the show.

Why was Columbia dressed so differently for the floor show?  Rocky was too, but at least his costume was, at least a bit, sexy.  Columbia's was just, real "meh."

Adam Lambert was ok as Eddie, except that I got more of a 'deranged' rocker vibe from him instead of the mean/dirty rocker vibe that Meatloaf did in the movie.  He sang well though.

Reeve definitely made for a more sexy Riff Raff, I approve.  His voice was just very different from what I'm used to with O'Brien.

Milian was ok as Magenta, but like others, just wasn't quite right for the part.  She looked a lot like she was just going through the moves, whereas Quinn really inhabited the part.

I didn't mind showing the audience, since that is such a huge part of what makes RHPS so fun.

I have to say, its been years since I saw the original RHPS and really all this performance made me want to do was see if I can find the original movie on Netflix or Amazon.  I'm looking forward to the time my kids are ready to see the movie in the theater.  I can already tell that one's going to love it, and the other is going to be looking around her and wondering wtf is going on.

[Browncoat]

Oh my god, why didn't I listen to y'all?  I made the mistake of trying to watch this today, and just couldn't.  I got as far as Eddie's entrance, but that was it.  Not sure what LaVerne Cox was even trying to do, but she was so so wrong for Frank.

Tim Curry just made me sad. 

[mustbekarma]

It was Halloween, and it's on Hulu. I didn't like it as much as I did the first time. There just wasn't any energy. I must have been in a really good when I was it the first time. I really agree Laverne Cox was too pretty, too tame, and too bland for Frank, especially since I'm watching the original right now. The original also happens to be on Hulu.