Trailer Review of ‘Cats’

It’s very rare that a non-Marvel trailer gets everyone talking, setting the internet ablaze and even appearing on the news. The trailer for Cats, the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s T. S. Eliot-inspired musical, landed this week, and has proven to be a thing of total horror. Here’s an analysis of this most monstrous piece of marketing.

The trailer is only two minutes long, but the cats will haunt your dreams for long after that

It’s hard to know what to expect from Cats, because the trailer doesn’t convey too much of what the film is about (a sole positive, and a rarity in this day and age). It appears to be set in a human world, populated by humanoid cats that I think are meant to be the size of normal cats, but the trailer has very iffy scale. These cats are upsetting creations, half-CGI and half-practical effects but all horrific, some of whom seem to wear fur coats too. The trailer is only two minutes long, but the cats will haunt your dreams for long after that – once you’ve seen them, you can’t un-see them. This is uncanny valley at its frightening worst.

Cats really has two things going for it – an all-star cast and crew, and one good song – and this trailer really pushes them both. The only musical number anyone really knows from Cats is the lovely ballad ‘Memory’, so the trailer is scored with Jennifer Hudson’s rendition of the tune. It’s powerfully sung, and the obvious choice as the show’s only recognisable number, but using it in the trailer does beg the question of why you’d watch the film – it is clearly the highlight, and we’ve already seen it.

Cats really has two things going for it – an all-star cast and crew, and one good song – and this trailer really pushes them both

The trailer hopes to cover up this massive issue by throwing names at you – it has all the A-list celebrities you could possibly want to see (and James Corden). There’s Taylor Swift as a CGI cat with breasts, providing material for furries for years to come. Poor Judi Dench and Ian McKellen have been sucked into this, their features just about visible behind the make-up. Rebel Wilson rocks up, seemingly typecast yet again as the over-confident and overweight comic relief who falls over and thinks its funny. And, for some reason, there’s Jason Derulo, because why not?

It also really bigs-up the name of the director, Tom Hooper, and stresses that he directed Les Misérables and The King’s Speech, as if desperately begging audiences to think of those films instead of focusing on the weirdness of this one. There are some brief snippets of dancing in the trailer too, and it pushes the name of a choreographer, Andy Blankenbuehler. It puts Hamilton in big letters too – half of this trailer is the names of people involved, selling the film on that rather than its own merits. You like these actors, you like this director – think of them, and not the terrifying cats! The trailer then ends with a brief snippet, telling us that ‘this holiday season, you will believe’ – given the horrific nature of what we’ve seen, it feels more like a threat that a magical promise.

We thought that the Sonic the Hedgehog trailer earlier this year would offer the most nightmarish CGI and horrific visuals of the year – we were mistaken

The evocation of Les Mis is good here, because the comparisons between the two couldn’t be more obvious. People were clamouring for producers to bring Les Mis to the screens, because of its epic story and powerful songs – no-one wanted Cats and, based on the reaction to the trailer, it’s somehow even fewer now. We thought that the Sonic the Hedgehog trailer earlier this year would offer the most nightmarish CGI and horrific visuals of the year – we were mistaken.

A trailer is meant to get people talking, and encourage you to come and watch the film. Fair play to the Cats trailer – it certainly manages one of these things beautifully.