Love Never Dies - pros and cons

I'm not sure if I'm completely correct, but from what I can gather from the soundtrack to the phantom sequel last night, Erik and Christine end up together for about two seconds before Meg goes mad and shoots Christine. Christine gets shot and killed in the Phantom of Manhattan as well. It makes no sense to me, I guess that it would be done to create some action, but in my opinion it's a poor choice on the writer's part to have Christine die just for some action.

I was ranting to my sister and one friend last night after hearing the soundtrack, my sister asked a perfectly good question that I'm sure many phans are asking. Why did ALW make a sequel anyway? Personally I think the original musical makes enough money, I am pretty sure ALW did it for monetary reasons only. So far to me this sequel seems half @ss, yet I will go see it and I have already purchased the soundtrack, so he has gotten the main thing he wanted when he wrote the sequel which in my opinion is money. I don't understand it, there are many other people like me out there, who love the phantom so much, I have gone to see the show 4o times, and I have bought so many friends, family members, and ex-boyfriends with me. I don't know how many people have gone to see phantom with me, that would not have ever gone if they didn't meet me, so if there are other people out there like me (and I know that there are) we can still bring people into the original musical, we can still keep the original musical alive, so there was no need for this sequel that may very well be a piece of c*ap.

There are two positive aspects I can think of regarding the sequel. Number one Christine and Erik do sort of end up together (even if it's only for about two minutes), number two this is finally a chance for myself and other phans to witness the birth of a phantom incarnation and follow it. I don't know about other phans but I didn't become a phan until the show was already on Broadway for 6 years, I didn't get to see Michael Crawford or Sarah Brightman perform the principal roles, I didn't get to peruse the newspaper articles about the show right away when they came out, this show gives me a chance to do that, at least I get to be there from the beginning.

Here's a review for Love Never Dies published in today's New York Times
Love Never Dies Review - March 10, 2010