by Nathaniel R
The first casting announcement has hit for Steven Spielberg's remake of West Side Story: Ansel Elgort will play doomed romantic Tony, a sensitive white boy who falls for Puerto Rican Maria in the mean streets of NYC. Tony can't quite extricate himself from his friendships with local gang The Jets in order to live happily ever after.
Elgort has definitely proved that he can move onscreen (Baby Driver was basically a musical without songs) and he sings, too. In fact he has already tried to start up a dual career as a singer and this might not be his only upcoming musical role as there was also talk of him headlining a Hans Christian Anderson bio earlier this year. But the West Side Story news will probably rankle a lot of people, if not me, because any remake of my favorite is suspect to begin with -- more after the jump...
Elgort's two music videos to date use a lot of vocal manipulation (as is the current style) so we don't know if he'll be able to do full justice to the Bernstein music. Still, it's already clear that they don't plan to dub the actors which will at least set apart the remake from the original in one obvious way (the other obvious way being the casting which won't be mixing white actors in brownface in with actual Latinos within The Sharks gang like the original did.
One of the main criticisms of Richard Beymer's Tony in the 1961 masterpiece, is that he didn't come across as intimidating or street-tough enough to sell Tony's exalted reputation among the gang he thinks he has left behind when the tragedy begins. At first glance, this will be a problem for Ansel as well. On the other hand maybe Elgort's tendency to POSE a lot -- well, perhaps his affectations might work in the role's favors since these kids are always trying to act out their toughness for each other and the rival gang.
What do you make of the casting?