Given this trailer for Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, it makes perfect sense that the Coen brothers’ True Grit remake was produced by the iconic director.
Spielberg’s West Side Story is not some community theater thing that asks what this old stage classic would look like set in another era or with whatever other gimmick. This is not Spielberg bringing his beloved Amblin ’80s style to the musical, even though that would have arguably been more interesting. This, like the Coens’ 2010 triumph, simply asks, “Can a top director of the last forty years do a straightforward improvement upon an existing classic of the ’60s.”
And since it’s Steve Spielberg (Hook) we’re talking about here, the answer is again, “Yeah, probably.”
West Side Spielberg will see Ansel Elgort update us on his awkward journey through variously-elongated puberty when it hits theaters December 10.
