I wish they had a single atom of any kind of personality whatsoever. The stage costumes may be irrevocably rooted in (somewhat cringey) 80s aesthetic with the spandex and leg warmers, but every single character had distinct features that lit up the stage—a design team worth their salt (and not mired in focus-group Hell, which I suspect was a serious problem here) could have held to that while updating the costumes’ fashion roots to be less dated. Instead, they just slathered every surface with a heavy coat of good ol’ 21st-century Hollywood generic grunge, and everything in the trailer therefore looks muddy and indistinct. The actors’ features even float on these indistinguishable CG frameworks like ill-constructed deepfakes sourced from footage of everyone being bored out of their minds. Every last visual aspect of this production is an utter embarrassment.
I lolz’d!
My dad’s oft-said shorthand for the above: “Remember. She [my Mom] is always right.”
It’s a survival thing. (But he loves it.)
Ditto. Nothing scary about the trailer, either.
Counterpoint: I say “Fuck yes” to the absolute weirdness of this Cats movie. It looks like Moulin Rouge combined with Avatar. I think the biggest weakness of the musical is that it’s all songs and dancing and no story, and it seems they might have injected some narrative into the movie based on some scenes in the trailer. Also, Tom Hooper. That guy’s been known to direct some right good movies.
When I first watched the trailer, I was like, “Tobe Hooper? That doesn’t make ANY sense, no matter how scary @jlw finds this.”
And then I was like, “Oh wait, Tobe Hooper’s dead.”
Tom Hooper makes much more sense.
I keep seeing people that take issue with the character design. Yes, they used CG, but you’ve essentially got humans, dressed like cats. Just like they did, and stay with me here, in the Broadway show. Is it the stupid “uncanny valley” thing that internet writers always bang on about? I thought they looked fine. They’re cat people. What on earth are they supposed to look like?
Ah yes. The backwards episode. Cat had just visited the litter box.
No gonna post the music video because parts of it make this look tame by comparison.
- The blending of cat and human was poorly thought out and poorly orchestrated. The bright red wet lips on some of the actors, for example. Someone else mentioned the big face small head problem as well. The stage production did the look better in every way I could possibly think of.
- bad CGI-- discussed earlier a few posts above. Makes the poor artistic choices even worse
There are combinations of features that look good together; these are not they.
Personally, I’m not a fan of the stage production either, but at least there it was obviously people dressed up in cat outfits.
I honestly can’t tell if this trailer would look less disturbing if the CGI was more convincing rather than looking like high-end video-game cut-scenes of cat people. Mostly I wonder how the cast felt when they finally saw what their motion-capture performances were transformed into.
To each their own, but I’ll certainly be skipping this one.
This is why you shouldn’t have non-furries direct movies with furries in it.
All anthropomorphic-animal movies should have a resident furry consultant. Or at least an FA login.
To my mind, the best version of Cats could have been the lost Amblimation/Bluth version. For years, Spielberg worked on concepts and ideas for an animated version with actual cats, first with Don Bluth, then with other concept artists.
I am largely indifferent to the movie itself, but my word, this trailer is inspiring some good material. Twinkling light in these dark times is a welcome thing.
I don’t seem to be finding links to this nearly as often as I would expect.
Yeah, we really need to put together a furry consulting group for Hollywood as they really are fucking this up badly these days: Sonic, Cats, Lion King etc…
Holly crap I can’t believe how much the new Lion King lacks any sort of performance. Just missing out of the basic shit like the shot of Simba when Mufassa is going to lecture him and asks Zazu to take Nala away. Simba just sits there staring when they could have had him flatten his ears and couch down a bit like in the original.
When Zazu bows to Mufassa at the beginning they didn’t have him look up at Mufassa. It’s a subtle thing but stuff like that sells it and they just couldn’t be bothered past some realistic moments but forgot there was supposed to be some performance in there.
GAH!
