What if the Sound of Music was Made in Nollywood?

May 6, 2017

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One day, some of my friends and I, all lovers of the original Sound of Music movie, decided to brainstorm on what the plot of SOM would have looked like if given the Nollywood treatment. The following are some of our ideas for modifications and/or rewrites. What are yours?

Maria never marries the Captain. She is the strange woman that the Baroness sees as the interloper. The Baroness and her friend do naked fasting till Maria goes mad.
The thunder and lightning on that first night is a sign from the gods that the Captain must not embark on that journey to Berlin to pursue the Baroness.
The Captain agrees to fight alongside the Nazis (or the Nollywood political equivalent, probably party politics) because it means more power for him at the expense of common sense and in spite of his personal conviction. He crosses all the carpets many, many times and becomes immensely rich. Rolfe, the whistle-blower, is a whistle blower.
The plot is essentially redundant as the children live with their ancient but loving grandma in some village and even if Maria is needed, she does not come into actual contact with the Captain. The cast and the audience applaud the captain for remembering to send money for the children’s upkeep.
Related to the above suggestion, the Baroness does some juju to make the captain forget his children and they start suffering in the village. Cue that horrible instrumental they play when the children are fetching firewood and crying because they are starving and asking each other superfluous questions. To make matters worse, because that is how we roll, a snake bites one of them on the leg on the way from fetching the firewood and then there will be an exaggerated make up depicting the deterioration of the leg. This is no ordinary snake, it is sent by Baroness to kill the children off one by one.
The Baroness will attempt to poison Maria who will be saved because her mother appeared to her in a dream and tells her not to eat the food.
Liesl is pregnant, bringing shame on the family. Maria discovers her vomiting somewhere – the only tried and true Nollywood pregnancy test. Rolfe is the obvious suspect as fetal father. Turns out to be Franz the butler.
When the Nazis pursue the von Trapps to the abbey, the Reverend Mother speaks in tongues, casts and binds until the Nazis are visited by a mysterious fire that lasts long enough for the family to escape.
The Baroness ‘succeeds’ in killing all the children but 1 of them. That one will be paralyzed but prayerful, after interminable prayer sessions the Baroness confesses to wanting the children out of the way so that her own child would inherit the captain’s wealth. The captain weeps and wails in regret. The backing music to his tears is the ghosts of the children singing in mournful harmony. Then To God be the Glory. The end.
Alternative ending: Maria marries the Captain, but only after visiting babalawo for charms. Captain thinks he married a ‘good girl’ from the ‘Shursh’. One of the eldest children catches Maria in the night using said charms and tells the Captain. The Captain says many proverbs to himself and decides to keep quiet and goes to his own babalawo. In the process, two or three children die in the cross fire and Captain runs mad. The Baroness then comes, supposedly to take care of the children, but sells them as house girls when the Captain does not get better after all her ‘efforts’. At the end, we see random soldiers shooting and a caption that says, “war is fighting” – [This is not a typo]. Just like that. In the midst of random people throwing bangers at each other, the children escape and miraculously find each other. Then all you see is, ‘To God be the glory’…. The end.