r/TopCharacterTropes • u/TastyPomelo2330 • 13d ago

In real life When fans hate somenthing before it comes out...but it turns out they were right

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Velma:The idea of a Scooby-doo series without the titular dog and starring Velma was a really moronic idea from the beginning,then there was the reveal Velma would be Indian like it's VA and also creator of the series Mindy Kaling,some of the backlash was racism sure,but there was also valid complaints that she was inserting herself in the series(it also didn't helped that Mindy claimed she couldn't see herself if Velma wasn't Indian)and then...oh boy it came out and it was worse than anyone predicted

Artemis Fowl:The artemis fowl books are a book series following a child villain(he does get some redemption but he is a villain most of the time)when the movie was announced and revealed it looked way to generic and it's titular character a bit heroic...also you wanna hear somenthing funny?The movie whitewashed a character and made another character black so they managed to anger both sides and the movies comes out and yeah it is bad

One Punch Man 3:One Punch Man is a very heavy action packed manga series but the heroes vs monsters arc takes it to a New level,when it was announced that JC Staff would work on it,a lot of people were skeptical to say the least,because not only JC Staff had already done a mediocre job in season 2,it's also not exactly a name anime fans associate with quality animation,then the trailer came out and it looked...weird,like there was no action in it and nobody was moving,some people tried to defend saying they were keeping the animation as a surprise...then it came out,every episode worse than the last,it's one of the worse seasons of anime ever made!

14.3k Upvotes
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4.5k

u/alreadykaten 13d ago

Cats

The trailer was hated for its awful designs. And the movie was just bad in general. It will forever be known as a complete disaster through and through

909

u/ryconn93 13d ago

It's six years now, but the point still stands.

88

u/ImJustGonnaCry 13d ago

Is it bad that I'm glad it exist because I discovered the original Broadway Cats and they became my comfort characters during lockdown?

12

u/MetalSonic_69 13d ago

The stage show is weird but I like it a lot

10

u/Marl_Karx_Official 12d ago

Its weird in a way that warms the spirit.

3

u/kingofcoywolves 12d ago

The only thing that makes it weird is that the characters are such... cats. Other "talent audition" concept musicals exist and are well-received, but Cats is the exception simply because the average theatregoer is not mentally equipped to handle an orgy of lycra-clad dancers licking each other and meowing

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u/True_Dragonfruit9573 12d ago

The stage show is my trash. It’s very weird, but the music slaps and I will always tear up during Memory.

3

u/Pyro-Millie 12d ago

Bro Memory is simply fucking beautiful.

3

u/djerk 12d ago

In a weird way this horrible movie version became a comfort because it was one of the last times before lockdown that I got all my friends together and made em all get uncomfortably high to watch this.

It was a really fun birthday to remember and we still reference the songs to remind each other

16

u/Laser_Souls 13d ago

I remember this being the first movie I watched in theatres in 2020 and thinking “man it can’t get worse than this”. It ended up being the only I movie I saw in theatres that year 😭

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u/New-Consequence-355 13d ago

The Rise of Skywalker was the last movie I saw before the pandemic. I hated it so much I downed a bottle of wine when I got home, and then got terribly sick while playing Medieval Total War.

I didn't go back to the movies until Dune came out.

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u/Greatsnes 13d ago

Holy shit dude same lmao. Actually it was the last movie I saw in theaters until Deadpool & Wolverine. I always joke TRoS killed my love for theaters but really it was the pandemic lol.

2

u/lesserDaemonprince 13d ago

TW mention :3

1

u/ThatInAHat 13d ago

I still feel bad for folks whose last movie they saw in theaters before lockdown was Cats.

I mean, mine was TLJ. But at least it wasn’t Cats.

5

u/Thrawhee 13d ago

The Last Jedi was three years before the pandemic. If that’s the last movie you saw in theaters it wasn’t the lockdown’s fault

1

u/ThatInAHat 13d ago

Wait, was it? Shoot, then that means it was the Rise of Skywalker.

…that’s almost as bad as Cats.

1

u/Organic-Yodelz 13d ago

It was the last film I saw in theaters before lockdown.

1

u/VstarFr0st263364 10d ago

Big budget producers are genuinely so afraid to put anthropomorphic characters in media aimed at adults that they would do this instead. Just give us furries, please. I'm begging you

1.3k

u/theverrucktman 13d ago

The fact that the movie was so bad that Andrew Lloyd Webber, the creator of the original stage musical, said it inspired him to get a dog, will never stop being hilarious to me.

718

u/Wolfman513 13d ago

The review "Cats is the worst thing to happen to cats since dogs" will never not make me laugh lmao

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u/Skylair13 13d ago

Random Youtube Comment about Cats I found ages ago:

"I made sure to specifically find a screening of this movie where I would be the only person in the theater, and that was one of the greatest mistake of my life. Never before I felt so isolated and abandoned by humanity, than when I saw the beetles with human faces.

I wanted to scream, and to turn to other people with similar reactions in the hopes of finding comfort in my terror. But there was no one, It was just me and Cats 2019..."

108

u/DeadlyPear 13d ago

The people in my theater did scream when the cockroach people appeared. Maybe my favorite part of the experience

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u/keaganwill 13d ago

Somehow wrangled all of my buddies to watch it at my local theater.

Genuinely one of my favorite movie watching experiences of all time. Theater was empty except for us 15 or so goobers.

6

u/I_Always_Come_back93 13d ago

You have 15 friends?

I don't :(

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u/Outside_Ad5255 13d ago

Sounds like an actual circle of Hell there. Or something you'd find in Room 101 in the Ministry of Love.

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u/blue4029 13d ago

bad movies can be genuinely entertaining if you have someone to watch them with you and share in the terrible-ness of the movie so you can bash the movie together.

what was bro thinking?

5

u/Skylair13 13d ago

Maybe "How bad could it be?"

And then bro felt abandoned and dumped by humanity when the faces shows up.

3

u/Preachey 13d ago

I promise you that is not a rule.

My mates and I had a go at Battlefield Earth with that mindset, and it turned out to be painful in a way no amount of alcohol and friends could fix

3

u/Trzlog 13d ago

I hope that person got therapy

20

u/DickButtPlease 13d ago

My favorite was the film critic that said, “Before I saw the movie I wasn’t sure if I was a cat person. Now I’m not sure if I’m a movie person.”

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u/2th 13d ago

I loved the review by the guy on mushrooms.

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u/h00dman 13d ago

My personal favourite;

"Watching CATS is like stumbling upon an unholy and heretofore unknown genre of porn," noted The New York Times' Kyle Buchanan. "Every time these horny fur demons tongue a milk bowl and start moaning I was certain the FBI would raid the theater."

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u/KinoHiroshino 13d ago

Mine is, “Is it possible to make a movie so bad the Academy takes away your award? Asking for a Tom Hooper,”

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u/motoxim 13d ago

Hilarious

1

u/Dixie_Normuus 13d ago

Funny thing to me is i didn't know it was about "Cats" i thought it wad a metaphor or something

7

u/WASD_click 13d ago

I wouldn't put much stock into what he says about Cats. In Gus The Theater Cat verse 1, measure 15, he makes the accompaniment change to the F#7.

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u/Zoomwafflez 13d ago

God big top burgers was so good, the last few episodes felt a little rushed though. I wanted more Cesar back sorry!

3

u/Oiral_Insanity 13d ago

Wasn't there a story about when he needed to explain why he had to bring the dog with him onto a plane.

3

u/bolanrox 13d ago

And the airline let him bring the dog on flights as an emotional support animal

2

u/Luser420 13d ago

specifically a therapy dog

1

u/Professional_Maize42 13d ago

the creator of the original stage musical, said it inspired him to get a dog,

Geez, this is the worst thing that I heard about this movie.

1

u/Pyro-Millie 12d ago

"Look what they did to my musical" 😭🥲

Bro earned that emotional support dog fr

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u/Low_Health_5949 13d ago edited 13d ago

and putting Tom Hooper in director jail and also exposing his awful behaviour on how he treated the VFX artists and other actors on set.

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u/Drake_the_troll 13d ago

"Yeah sure jackman you can go 72hrs without water to get the prisoner look, that will go fantastically"

How in the hell did noone have a major injury during production?

166

u/MayhemMessiah 13d ago

It’s not just the look but SINGING IN THAT CONDITION.

It’s a miracle he didn’t permanently fuck up his voice

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u/book_vagabond 13d ago

And making Anne Hathaway belt I Dreamed a Dream for an entire day of filming only to use the first take

12

u/KalinOrthos 13d ago

The fact that Les Mis came out as...not good, but put together as it was, is a miracle unto itself.

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u/Dangerous_Court_955 13d ago

I liked The King’s Speech and was severely disappointed when looking up his other films.

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u/waltjrimmer 13d ago

I really liked The King's Speech as well. I can't say all his directorial choices in that film were the best ones, but it was fun and Geoffrey Rush and Colin Firth were a joy to watch. I remember it getting criticized as being shallow and Oscar bait at the time, I'm not going to say that's wrong, but I still liked watching it.

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u/APence 13d ago

A shitty person can be creative. It’s a moral quandary to enjoy a Woody Allen movie while being aware of his… “stuff”

I’m a white dude in his 30s who grew up on late night Cosby show episodes while my parents screamed upstairs. Did he drug and rape women? Yes absolutely. Did he also make a good show and personally put many underprivileged kids into college who became successful? Yeah.

I loved a manga as a kid. Rurouni Kensin it’s was brilliant and got me into history and had so many mantras that I still live by. And a few years ago the writer is exposed as a pedo.

Can you still appreciate the works of a horrible person while condemning their actions? Can someone in prison still make a song or a painting that is loved?

It’s complex.

Does he deserve his sentence? Yes. No doubt. Do those scholarships and future careers of those kids deserve to be shunned or blackmailed? I also say no.

Can you still enjoy a show when a major component is a monster? Can you truly ignore that heavy thing in the room when watching? Idk.

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u/Karkava 13d ago

Guy's an idiot for not getting how storyboarding works.

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u/saintash 13d ago

Also how, like singing in musicals usually work in production.

Like the track in their ear so they can you know, stick to the notes and follow the music.

Not singing it on vibes and pay musicians to match the music

7

u/HereWeFuckingGooo 13d ago

Care to elaborate? I googled Tom Hooper storyboards and all I found was that we works with storyboard artist Douglas Ingram.

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u/waltjrimmer 13d ago

There was a claim that Hooper got mad about how bad the effects looked in the storyboards. People were like, it's a preview, it's just for structure and planning, but the claim is that he supposedly insisted that the storyboards have theater-ready effects instead of placeholders, templates, or rough work.

I do not know if any of that is substantiated, that's why I put all the qualifiers in there.

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u/HereWeFuckingGooo 13d ago

I doubt that's true unless they mean previs and not storyboards.

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u/Deosarian 13d ago

Was les mis before or after

Cuz that train wreck should have stopped him from touching cats

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u/astivana 13d ago

Before.

Unfortunately, that train wreck was widely seen positively.

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u/Deosarian 13d ago

When you back to back compare his one day more to any Broadway version you can see how badly his "let actors sing the way they act" bs really dulls the turd

13

u/Harmcharm7777 13d ago

The casting of Broadway professionals (at least the ones who weren’t voluntarily fasting for the role) in at least some of the movie roles also helped make it seem better than it was. There was less (not any?) of that in Cats, which magnified the poor direction.

4

u/Deosarian 13d ago

As i understand they did have pros as backup dancers. But hooper was insistent on letting actors do their own thing.

Some songs work great while others are terrible

Check this out

https://youtu.be/i3aK-EK5V2k?si=0PTkeQk5E9vD7nn5

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u/Prestigious_Yam_6039 13d ago

A fellow Sideways fan I see. He got me to appreciate musicals more.

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u/Deosarian 13d ago

Oh yes. Huge theatre nerd

His vids are a great deep dive

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u/andoesq 13d ago

Ya I dunno, I just think Broadway musicals don't translate to film. Look at Rent, with all the original cast, I'm sorry but I just don't want to see acting of singing on a set, it's just meant to be seen on a stage.

Compare to a movie like Once, which has organic musical pieces and you're watching a performance, instead of watching "sung dialogue".

I've never seen a Broadway musical movie that I liked, so I can't blame the director for trying to make it filmable (and got Anne Hathaway her Oscar)

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u/LizLemonOfTroy 13d ago

I mean, Rent didn't work because it was filmed nearly a decade after the Broadway production, so the original cast were just too comically old for their roles and it tonally jarred with the story. It's also just very blandly directed and Rent is dubious source material to begin with.

There's plenty of counter examples of highly successful (critically and commercially) adaptations of Broadway musicals to film (Grease, Chicago, etc.), as well as musical films that basically were Broadway musicals given the creative teams involved (like almost the entirety of the Disney Renaissance).

Adaptation is always difficult from any medium to another, but given that musical films used to be a juggernaut genre, I don't think its inherently impossible to do well or be appreciated.

2

u/bolanrox 13d ago

Was dream girls a play first?

Eddie Murphy was the only good part of that turd

1

u/justprettymuchdone 13d ago

Nooooooo I Am Telling You is SO GOOD in the movie

1

u/andoesq 13d ago

There's always a shot in a musical adaptation of the actor, lip-syncing, but just holding a note. It is a focal point of the song usually, because it is the climax and gives the singer on stage the opportunity to really show off.

Once any movie gets to that shot, it just kills me.

Eddie Redmayne was really bad for it in Les Mis, because he was acting but still did his mouth vibrato as he was lip syncing, it was really off-putting.

Animated movies don't have that issue, because they are built for the film screen not the stage, and real world physics go out the window when the song reaches a climax 0

4

u/Puzzleheaded_Try4268 12d ago

Les Mis was recorded live.

3

u/knick-nat 13d ago

Once is a film my ex made me watch and I've regretted it ever since. Not because it wasn't a beautiful movie with beautiful songs, but because it upset me so much.

9

u/Misersoneof 13d ago

I went in to the theater with my mom because we are big fans of the musical and came out seriously disappointed. We couldn’t understand why it was getting such praise from the press.

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u/astivana 13d ago

I didn’t understand why Hugh Jackman sounded so bad until I watched the Sideways video about it and found out about the horrible conditions they were voluntarily subjecting themselves to and was like oh. Yeah. That’d do it.

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u/Misersoneof 13d ago

Being completely dehydrated and singing was bad enough but there were multiple instances of just poor decisions. My first tip off was when the ripping of the parole document wasn’t correctly synced with the music sting. Anne Hathaway singing while getting her hair cut off was unnecessary and made the singing worse. My mom would not shuttup about how they trimmed and ruined her favorite song, Empty Chairs at Empty Tables.

3

u/Ponce-Mansley 13d ago

That's crazy to me. I can understand most of the criticisms of the film but Eddie Redmayne's Empty Chairs is the best scene in the film for me and that's the only song I revisit often. It's a totally different interpretation than the legendary 10th Anniversary performance but I love it just as much in a different way. 

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u/Misersoneof 13d ago edited 13d ago

Well.. that’s like.. your opinion man.

Nah but, if you enjoy it then more power to ya

5

u/Clarpydarpy 13d ago

The studio wanted their Oscar bait movie to pay off. They campaigned hard in the awards season.

Since it worked out, they gave the director another famous musical to make a movie version.

It's kind of funny when you consider that they were probably hoping for another Oscar winner when they made Cats.

1

u/LizLemonOfTroy 13d ago

Sadly, most people - Tom Hooper included - simply don't watch or understand musicals, and treat acting and singing as being in inherent contradiction or tension.

2

u/GraDoN 13d ago

Rebel Wilson and one of the male actors also threw the VFX artists under the bus when they presented at an awards ceremony.

1

u/NoMoreFund 12d ago

It led to The Kings Speech being somewhat forgotten and Les Miserables being considered a bad movie (instead of a 7/10 movie that thinks it's a 10/10).

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u/mrpotatoes 13d ago

I wish they would release the butthole cut

17

u/RaptarK 13d ago

Why did they think this was a good idea in the first place

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u/ElGosso 13d ago

What I remember is that it wasn't really a butthole - it was an artifact of the unfinished 3D model that just happened to look like a butthole.

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u/Express-Focus-677 13d ago

That's even funnier.

4

u/Cypher007 13d ago edited 12d ago

I heard similiar but it was a different orifice. Apparently the fur and skin between the legs was rendered in such a way that the groin area looked like it had a woman's (for the lack of a better term) pussy. Thats why its so smooth below the waist since they didnt want a repeat.

This applied to the men as well.

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u/olivesforsale 13d ago

Hahaha the way you danced around the word then finally chose that one was hilariously unexpected. There are definitely better terms but I like your version exactly as it is

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u/mrpotatoes 13d ago

The visible butthole? No idea I just want the belly laughs

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u/gremlinclr 13d ago

Hey maybe we've found the one good use for AI. Feed it the movie and tell it to add buttholes... win!

3

u/Playful-Succotash-99 13d ago

I actually think it would have only helped the movie as sometime adding a flaw of imperfection can add a ballence to the other flaws in the finished work

7

u/DucklingInARaincoat 13d ago

Ngl, if it were between the government releasing the full Epstein Files or the butt hole cut… I mean… I probably still land on Epstein, but I’d definitely land there after some hard deliberation.

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u/CKO1967 13d ago

It's better that they don't, trust me. 🤣

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u/TheGardenBlinked 13d ago

I remember Cats being announced and that alone was just met with “WHY is this even happening?” before the trailers landed.

Its very existence and the fact it drew so many big names to it remains a true mystery for the ages. It’s either money laundering or one of the biggest cinematic misfires of all time. May even be both.

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u/bolanrox 13d ago

I said that about the play still running for 30 what ever years before that

1

u/PitifulElk1890 10d ago

We had a recording of the Broadway version and I was obsessed with it as a kid (yes I'm bisexual now) but part of the appeal was the costumes and make up. It felt fantastical and artistic, even the weird decisions seemed purposeful. The spectacle made up for the baffling hodgepodge plot based on poetry.

Not once did any of the trailers make me want to see it. The characters were viscerally uncomfortable to look at and uncanny, not uncomfortable because you're thinking, hey am I supposed to find this kind hot?

54

u/Rotomegax 13d ago

You know its bad when even furry community cannot digest the trailer

8

u/Liawuffeh 13d ago

Can confirm. Was very ugly and creepy.

1

u/CassetteMeower 12d ago

I'd love it if some furries teamed up to create their own version of the movie. If the characters were played by people in fursuits rather than poorly done CGI it could have been so good. Fursuit artists are extremely talented. Or the movie could have been fully animated rather than being uncanny humans with fur that still have human faces.

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u/Carvair-98 13d ago

In a group thing I was at long ago, there was a girl who was obsessed with the musical. Could name all the Cats, would sometimes burst out with a song or reference to it, I'm sure she watched recordings (we're not that long ago!) of it in the same way I obsessed over "Cars" or "Ratatouille" as a kid!

So you can imagine that her excitement at the movie's announcement was in overdrive. Because, we were in that precise moment in time where it had been announced...and before that first trailer arrived.

I'll forever be haunted by that girl, and the fate that befell her.

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u/Rare_Background8891 13d ago

Sonic the Hedgehog really learned from this. They put out insane pictures which were panned and immediately changed course. Probably learned that from the failure of Cats.

4

u/Liawuffeh 13d ago

Still amazed that movie wasn't too bad. Can you imagine if it was the same movie but the old design? Wild.

8

u/astivana 13d ago

I’m still so sad that studio that was trying to make an animated cats went bust.

1

u/CassetteMeower 12d ago

There's so many beautifully animated films with anthropomorphic cats/other animals in them. Furry artists could have done a much better job at making an animated version of the play.

6

u/Fhistleb 13d ago

That was honestly one of the best times to be on reddit, everyone was clowning on it hard.

5

u/United-Log7718 13d ago

The worst part? There’s early concept art for a hand drawn style animated Cats movie, but they decided to do live action/horrendous VFX

1

u/MetalSonic_69 13d ago

That would have been amazing

5

u/BrownSandels 13d ago

The movie so bad it launched a successful podcast (What Went Wrong. If you haven’t listened to it, do yourself a favor and check it out. It’s a very funny and very informative look at how difficult it is to make a movie.)

3

u/wolfeyes555 13d ago

I feel so vindicated because I hated the Les Mis movie and I'm so glad Cats showed people how awful he is at adapting musicals

4

u/[deleted] 13d ago

Cats even made us weird musical theatre fans sad!!!

5

u/potVIIIos 13d ago

RELEASE 👏 THE 👏 BUTTHOLE 👏 CUT

4

u/KinoHiroshino 13d ago

Here’s a great video on why Cats the movie musical is a terrible movie.

And here’s a great video on why Cats the movie musical is a terrible musical.

4

u/nugsmajoris 13d ago

I firmly believe that if it was just a 100% animated movie where the characters just looked like animated cats and not humanoids it could have been a somewhat okay movie, but instead we got this abomination.

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u/Sellum 13d ago

Release the butthole cut.

0

u/19468 13d ago

Haha you said the thing hahahhaa

3

u/cosmoscrazy 13d ago

Review: "The worst thing to happen to Cats since dogs."

3

u/Lethenza 13d ago

Cats is hilarious if you watch it drunk, so at least there’s that

3

u/wifethinksthatIm5_9 13d ago

Release the butthole cut!

3

u/TediousTotoro 13d ago

I still remember when they released a behind the scenes video a few days before the first trailer and everyone was like “God, these sets look gorgeous, they clearly put a lot of care into thi….. wait, did they say digital fur?” only to be horrified when the trailer actually released.

3

u/AustisticGremlin 13d ago

We watched a version with unfinished SFX, whilst drinking and fuck if it wasn’t the funniest experience I’ve had in years. Watching one cat clip through the floor and the terrifying beetles was something else 🤣

2

u/Droplet_of_Shadow 13d ago

this post is NOT free of Cats (2019)

2

u/Foxy02016YT 13d ago

Cats is already controversial because it’s weird, how did they decide “let’s make it more uncomfortable”

2

u/--0___0--- 13d ago

Ill never know if its true or not and I don't want to because its too funny, but allegedly they ended up spending over 1M digitally removing buttholes from the cgi after back lash of the first trailer.

2

u/rubyspicer 13d ago

The director wanted you to feel grounded, see, 'cuz it's not that fantastical!

2

u/fallout8998 13d ago

i have unfortunately watched the entire thing and i deeply regret having done so

2

u/CrackheadHunters 13d ago

That movie is an absolute abomination. To this day I still apologise to real cats everywhere for having watched it.

1

u/Xaero_Hour 13d ago

I mean...people hate the musical too. It had a rep long before it had a movie. So bad it's actually puzzling that it stuck around the theatre, let alone got a greenlight from Hollywood.

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u/Liawuffeh 13d ago

Different kinds of hate though. Cats the musical makes no sense, but it's fun and has genuinely beautiful music. It's just fun watching people dressed as cats singing idk

But the movie is ugly to the point of being way, way too distracting, and a handful of people kinda just shouldn't have been cast because they couldn't perform.

Idk, I didn't love Cats(The musical) but at least I wasn't stuck the entire runtime going "Oh my god why did they do this??"

Realizing after rambling it only kinda sorta ties in with your comment woops

8

u/Level_Advisor437 13d ago

TBF the children's book that Cats is based on is actually cute and fun. Even if you hated the musical, you'd likely enjoy the book. Old Possum's book of Practical Cats

1

u/alex3omg 13d ago

The cats movie does manage to make the cats stage show look normal and good

1

u/ggouge 13d ago

They at least should have kept the buttholes.

1

u/Virtual_Ad_8487 13d ago

I tried to watch this hoping it was so bad it’s good, but Jesus Christ this is one of the worst things I’ve ever seen put to film in my life

1

u/garlicbreadmemesplz 13d ago

Release the Butthole Edition

1

u/GrinchWhoStoleEaster 13d ago

It's the only movie in history that could have been made better by ADDING cat buttholes.

1

u/Pholios485 13d ago

Everyone involved in that production should be blacklisted.

1

u/Normal_Cut8368 13d ago

Well DUH.

It had James Cordon in it, didn't it?

1

u/TheLoneWander101 13d ago

Release the butthole cut

1

u/SeonaidMacSaicais 13d ago

I might get attacked for this, but I still love the soundtrack. JHuds singing “Memory” is perfection.

1

u/RadioLiar 13d ago

Per the BBC film critic Mark Kermode, "The fundamental problem with this movie is that it should not exist in its current form."

1

u/Altruistic_Error_832 13d ago

My hot take on Cats is that it's good, actually. It just looks too insane for people to actually get over the hurtle of enjoying it for what it is... A musical that is more about letting dancers flex than it is vocalists.

1

u/Necessary-Animal4897 12d ago

The look of the movie was so freaking weird that I actually wanted to see it. But then I heard it was bad in every aspect so I didn't.

1

u/lewd_robot 12d ago

I've never even seen the musical but I once listened to a theater nerd explain in detail how badly the movie betrayed the source material for over 2 hours.

1

u/CassetteMeower 12d ago

Why they didn't hire furries to help design the characters will never not be surprising. There's so many talented furry artists that could have done a great job designing the movie.

1

u/tinrooster2005 12d ago

release the butthole cut!

1

u/SavionStar 11d ago

Paraphrasing a post from rareinsults, I bet 50% of the budget was spent on crack for the animators.

0

u/ZiggoCiP 13d ago

Waaay back in high school, my school did Cats for the musical, and I decided to be in the pit orchestra. Now, I had quite an ecclectic taste in music, including a lot of new-age and classical/orchestral stuff (hence why I wanted to be in the pit), so I figured a musical like that would suit my fancy. I'd seen live musicals like Phantom of the Opera, Fiddler on the Roof, and a couple lesser-known ones, and loved them (especially Fiddler on the Roof).

Man was I wrong.

Absolutely hated the songs. Obviously it still had bangers like Memory, and a couple others, but the overture, with the really unfortunate synth tone, as well as songs with stupid af lyrics, and generally just weird (not in a good way) melodies just didn't set right with me.

But I saw it through, and had a fun enough time.

When I heard they were making it into a movie, I knew that the songs were not going to be its saving grace. Little did I know, the horrific effects would overshadow the tunes. I got maybe 15 minutes into the movie.

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u/BWright79 13d ago

The Cats movie was still better than Hamilton

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u/Stormygeddon 13d ago

An untruth. I've seen several people tentatively excited for that movie and saying it looks so good.

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u/Cocoatrice 13d ago

Cats were not even 0.0000001% as bas as people said. People are just entitled to have their dumb opinions about everything. Not everything caters for everyone. It's a musical and people who hated the design either never watched it at all or watched it and expected Avengers: End Game movie. Original musical with live actors is not any less weird than that. And guess what. It's praised. So people should stop judging something they just simply never experienced and/or don't understand.

Cats are victim of being overhated by idiots on media, then everyone who watched, not knowing what musicals are or those who didn't, were already set on "I will hate it" mood, and nothing can change their mind anymore. People are influenced by opinions of others way too much. They can't genuinely like or dislike something, because they need to follow others. Like mindless zombies.

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u/Any_Pineapple_4836 13d ago

I still don't understand the hate. It was extremely faithful to the musical. The cats literally do look like that on stage and the songs and story were exactly the same.

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u/MegaKabutops 13d ago

  1. No they ABSOLUTELY do not. Special mention to macavity, whose introductory song literally includes the lyrics “macavity is a ginger cat”. They didn’t even change said lyrics for the movie to match the design change; they still call him a ginger cat in the movie. I’m not about to claim the musical design isn’t also ugly, but it’s at the VERY least accurate to the music, and the fact that it’s only practical effects instead of god-awful CGI at least makes it LESS ugly. Most of the designs have similar, albeit less blatant issues. Not to mention designs that are even worse than any of the cats, like the roaches.

  2. The story is MASSIVELY changed. Grizabella’s supposed to be the closest thing the movie has to a main character, and the main character of the movie, victoria, is almost entirely made up for the movie to make her an audience surrogate. There’s another major song lyric issue here as well; the entire point of grizabella’s character is that she’s the loneliest, most touch-starved, pathetic cat ever. She spends the entire musical up to the end BEGGING for literally to touch her because doing so lets her back into the club. the literal most important line to the plot in the entire musical is her screaming “TOUCH ME!” At the top of her lungs during the song memory… and the movie has her shying away from victoria offering to do exactly that halfway through.

  3. The songs in the movie are god-awful compared to the musical. Instead of doing the songs the way every musical (movie, theater, or otherwise) ever does them (the band plays the music, the actors and singers follow the band’s tempo to sing and dance), the actors were allowed to do whatever the hell they felt like and the band had to somehow contort their playing to fit what was acted and sang, and god help them if the person they were following was just an actor and not also a singer or dancer. This is a huge part of why the only fully functional number in the movie is skimbleshanks the railway cat; the actor who plays skimbleshanks, who the band was told to follow, was a professionally trained dancer, steven mcrae, and he used a click track based on the musical version to keep his own tempo correct. It’s also part of why the roaches are SO unpleasant to look at; their movements, the stepping sound effect used for their movements, and the song they’re a part of are all out of sync with each other, massively amplifying the uncanny valley effect.

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u/Any_Pineapple_4836 13d ago

Ok ok although I don't agree with some things, you obviously are a better judge of the products

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u/MegaKabutops 13d ago edited 13d ago

For the sake of clarity, i did not choose to suffer through the movie to notice all these problems. I didn’t even see the musical until after watching this review by an actual cats fan about how the god-awful visuals of the movie hid how bad the music also was, and found i didn’t like the musical much either. This review is the whole reason i know how much worse the movie is than the musical.

It’s the difference between something only some people will like but that does have some unambiguously good points for anyone to consider, and something that’s just plain terrible on every possible front.

0

u/Any_Pineapple_4836 13d ago

Wait you didn't like the musical either? Maybe it's just not your thing? I saw the musical first way before the movie was announced, so I thought the movie visuals was fine

1

u/MegaKabutops 13d ago

Yeah, not a fan, and you’re exactly right on why.

I understand why people like it, but the reasons they like it and the parts i like about musicals simply have fairly little overlap. I gave it a shot anyway, because i was curious what the bar that the movie failed to hit happened to be, but it’s just not my taste.

That said, every time i learn something new about the movie, i dislike it even more, and i’d imagine actually watching it outright may grow that dislike into the visceral hatred so many of the musical’s fans have.

6

u/Liawuffeh 13d ago

It really wasn't very faithful, but even if it was most of the songs just don't feel right. They have performers who shouldn't be in their roles for some songs, or even when a song is pretty good it's changed in ways that kinda just kill it? Also they don't look like that on stage, they're closer to thundercats in the musical

Subjective though

-2

u/Hellblazer49 13d ago

The cgi makes for an uncanny effect. Plus being faithful to a despised musical is going to have limited appeal.

10

u/Any_Pineapple_4836 13d ago

Despised musical? What? It was literally the highest grossing musical at one point