A filmed version of Hamilton is streaming on Disney+, and the movie does have a few important differences from the experience of watching the Broadway musical live in a theater. Created by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who also stars as the show's titular character, one of America's Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton, the musical debuted off-Broadway in early-2015, before shortly making the leap to Broadway itself later that year. Playing to constantly sold-out audiences, Hamilton has proved to be a non-stop major hit ever since.
Given its success, it's hardly a surprise that a way has been found to immortalize the experience of seeing the original Broadway production, which comes in the form of a Hamilton movie on Disney+ (one that the Mouse House paid around $75 million for the rights to). Rather than a new take, this was filmed across three nights at the Richard Rogers Theater, NYC, back in 2016, with a mix of performances including those with and without audiences.
Having Hamilton, one of the biggest musicals of all time, available on Disney+ is great of accessibility, given the difficulty of acquiring tickets even before a global pandemic broke out, and grants people the rare opportunity of seeing the incredible original cast of the show too. But while Hamilton on Disney+ is the same show but filmed, the format does mean that what you see, and how you see it, changes from stage to screen.
The Scale of the Production
One of the most impressive aspects of Hamilton is the sheer scale of the production. Hamilton, with an estimated budget of $12.5 million for its stage production, is far from the most expensive musical ever produced (a dubious honor that belongs to Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark's $75m) it certainly packs a punch well above its weight in terms of its staging and design. The musical features large, expansive sets that allow for its vast cast of characters to take the stage together; the background structures, designed to evoke the very foundations of the country, including the ships that brought so many immigrants to its shore, with its ropes and brick walls, include catwalks for the characters to move around on a higher level, and the scaffolding is huge (and grows even larger in the second act, to signify the building of the country). Seeing Hamilton from the seats of a theater only serves to make it loom even larger; as befits a story that covers so much ground, it really does feel epic in size as well as scope.
This is particularly true in some of Hamilton's bigger, more action-orientated songs, such as the booming "Guns and Ships" or "Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)". These are live-wire productions suited for a live audience, with impressive displays of lighting and sound accompanying the performers. Hamilton on Disney+ is unable to fully capture the scale of the show. In part, that's simply due to the fact it's a recording, and so something will inevitably be lost from seeing it in person. But it's also the choice of framing; director Thomas Kail tends to stay close on the actors, and there are far too few times he goes wide with his shots. That's great in some of the slower, more personal musical numbers, but it means the sheer size of Hamilton's production is rarely fully shown-off on the streaming service.
The Choreography is Backgrounded On Disney+
Like with the scale of production, the way Hamilton is shot for the Disney+ movie means that its incredible choreography isn't properly captured like it would be seeing it live and in person. Hamilton features a double turntable, allowing its performers to stand still and rotate around in different directions, and that combined with its large set means that the stage is often filled with performers, and since you have a full view of the stage, you're able to take in everything that's going on at once. It's all done to dazzling effect as performers spin around and twirl in and out of each other, or alternatively perform in rows of perfectly timed moves.
Kail certainly knows how to block his performers, but then the camera angles and decision to largely stay close, rather than big wide shots or lingering overhead ones, mean the focus remains on the central performers rather than the full cast. This means the ensemble can tend to flicker in and out of view as if from nowhere, rather than blending into the performance more seamlessly as they do in the Broadway production, and so you don't fully get a sense of what's going on outside of the central figures of any given song. That means some of the more subtle aspects of Hamilton, like The Bullet appearing as a secret character throughout, can become even harder to notice on Disney+, or when the stage is packed with performers then it again doesn't necessarily get the right balance of focus and scope.
Hamilton Is Censored By Disney+
A relatively smaller way the musical is different in its filmed version, but nonetheless an important one, is the fact that Hamilton is censored on Disney+. While there are still some swear words, such as "s**t", and plenty of the implication in songs like "Say No To This" is left as is, there are two instances of the F-word being censored in the version of Hamilton on Disney+. The first comes during "Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down)", as part of Hercules Mulligan's barnstorming re-entrance to the story, where he sings: "Hercules Mulligan / I need no introduction / When you knock me down I get the f**k back up again." While the moment is more impactful with the curse in, the way Disney+ mutes it is rather well done.
The second instance of censorship comes during "Washington on Your Side", when Thomas Jefferson, James Maddison, and Aaron Burr sing: "Southern motherf**king Democratic-Republicans." Here they try to cover it with sound, and the result is a much clunkier lyric that doesn't fit with the rhythm of the song. It's far from a ruinous moment for the musical, but there likely could have been neater ways of cleaning up the musical than that.
Disney+'s Hamilton Movie Brings Out The Nuances Of The Performances
While Hamilton on Disney+ may lose something in terms of capturing the epic scale of the musical's production, that trade-off does come with a significant upside too, which is that the intimacy of the performances is captured far better than it is from seats in a theater. While in the Broadway production viewers get a good sense of Hamilton's cast as performers - their singing and dancing abilities on full display, no matter where you're sitting - what Disney+'s movie gives a better appreciation of is them as actors. The aforementioned close-ups mean audiences really get to see the facial expressions of the cast, which only heightens their performances: the way Lin-Manuel Miranda's Alexander looks at Philip, both when his son is both and as he lays dying; the pain and anguish that alights on Eliza's face during "Burn"; the emotion in "It's Quiet Uptown"; the interplay between the Schuyler sisters and much more.
That goes for some other details that might otherwise be missed too: most notably, of course, is the way Jonathan Groff's King George spits so much. It's caught a lot of attention since Hamilton released on Disney+ because it's so noticable, but that isn't true in a theater, where it's much harder to see unless you're sat in the front row (and probably getting covered in #Groffsauce). That goes for the rest of the cast too; getting up close gives a more personal and intimate experience, really capturing everything these characters go through. It's not necessarily better or worse than the Broadway play, but allows for a suitably different, yet similarly great, Hamilton experience.