Great plays don't always translate into great movies — and I say that with peace and love for Glengarry Glen Ross — and music videos also seem to lose something when you strip it down to a stage performance. That's not to say young Maddie Ziegler isn't impressive dancing her way through the "Chandelier" routine on a lookalike set for Ellen — she is — and that this isn't way more memorable and creative than most TV show performances — it is, especially for a camera-shy singer — but it's not just the dance that makes the "Chandelier" video great. It's everything all together, from the grade to the blocking to the edit and on and on. And stripping all those elements down for a recreation is like substituting a hologram for the real thing. It's cool and it's close, but it's not the same.
