not in love they're in lust and their teenage hormones cause death another complaint i hear maria just sounds annoying and admittedly i get it like a lot of sopranos she has a lot of very high very loud singing and i think a lot of performers tend to choose vocal quality over storytelling which personally i think you just can't afford to do especially when it comes to onge news or any other character that doesn't get a ton of development you gotta sing and tell the story maria and tony lack logic also like romeo and juliet not great problem solvers watching young people make poor decisions is like watching a train wreck not only is it horrifying and sad it's upsetting because it was completely preventable none of the kids in west side story had to die it's just sad and of course the number one reason people bring up when it comes to maria kind of being the worst she sleeps with tony right after he kills her brother like immediately after like his blood is on his clothes that are now on the floor that's pretty yikes so now that we've established all of that let's talk about why i love maria of course real quick let's get my bias out of the way i want to play her will i ever get to play her who knows but as a latina soprano she will always hold a special place in my heart but i think so much of why i like maria is directly correlated to steven spielberg's remake and specifically i think you've got two people who knew exactly what to do with maria how to update her and how to build her out into the woman she could be and for that i think we gotta thank tony kushner's screenplay and rachel zegler's performance rachel brought layers to maria she sounded gorgeous and prioritized the storytelling it's the first time i felt the excitement and sincerity of first love maria felt like a real teenager she was someone you wanted to root for and tony kushner's adaption gave her eons more material to work with they fully fleshed her out and turned her into a real heroine i did a whole video breaking down and reviewing the new west side story so if you haven't seen that and you want to i'll link it down below but the spielberg version added so much context to the story and i feel like society has almost updated the film separate from the filmmaker because of our current societal conversation for instance in the remake there is a much heavier and more explicit focus on gentrification xenophobia colorism the gravity of the situation is absolutely present from the get-go so maria choosing a different path for trying to find happiness against all odds it's not frivolous it's incredibly brave so let's touch on some of those other common grievances that people tend to have with maria for instance maria being pretty and nice this is the first time i've ever really loved the song i feel pretty because i feel like they really reframed it and expanded upon the original idea because it's not just i feel pretty it's i feel worthy i feel seen i feel hopeful and in this version maria is certainly not nice and i
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