Un-fur-gettable: is that ‘Cats’ trailer endangering musical theatre?

Has CGI gone too far? Has God left us? If you’ve watched the trailer for Cats, the new movie musical directed by Tom Hooper, your answers are more than likely to be yes and yes.

Cats is a musical that premiered in 1981, written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and based on the poetry of T.S. Eliot. The story follows the Jellicles, a group of – you guessed it – cats, with names like Mr. Mistoffelees, Bombalurina and Rum Tum Tugger. The overall plot is nothing more complicated than the audience meeting each cat one by one until one of them is permitted to ‘ascend to the afterlife’.

Are you still with me?

The musical was one of Webber’s biggest successes, grossing more than £1.7 billion worldwide and – at the time of closing – holding the record for the longest running musical on both Broadway and the West End. So, when Tom Hooper, fresh off his own success with an adaptation of Les Misérables, decided to give us his own take on Cats, it came as no surprise. Fans of the musical were excited and the rest of the world was, for the most part, indifferent.

Everyone is still digesting the trailer, but in the way that one digests uncooked chicken

All of that has changed since we were introduced to the first trailer for the film, which is scheduled for release in December. Hooper could have chosen to represent the titular cats in so many ways on the big screen. He could have gone down the route of the musical and dressed his actors in Lycra, fake fur and makeup. He could have animated and stylised the cats in something reminiscent of The Aristocats, or used the hyperrealism seen in The Lion King. The reaction of the world seems to suggest that any one of these choices would seem like a godsend when compared to the real thing. Everyone is still digesting the trailer, but in the way that one digests uncooked chicken.

To say the cats are alarming is the understatement of the century. A combination of CGI, motion capture and ‘digital fur technology’ has created the human cat hybrid creatures that we see in the trailer for Cats. They have whiskers and fur just as much as they have human hands, feet, and – strangely – bosoms. These creatures are undoubtedly from the uncanny valley and that is definitely where they should crawl back to. But what is this film doing to the legacy of its musical predecessor, and what is it doing to musical theatre as a whole?

The Cats trailer dominated discussion on the internet for weeks after it appeared, with #CatsMovie trending worldwide on almost every social media platform. People were comparing it to the Sonic The Hedgehog movie, The Cat in The Hat, and there were way too many references to the furry community. Everyone had something to say.

Tom Hooper may have succeeded in getting the world talking about his film but he may have also succeeded in jeopardising the future of the movie musicals that are following in his pawprints

When Cats premiered in 1981, it got people talking in the same way; they rebuffed the cat costuming and ridiculed the paper-thin plot. The difference between these two premieres is their timing. In 1981, the people who were criticising Cats were the small majority that had the opportunity to see it in a theatre. Without the internet, the world neither had access to the source material nor the reaction.

A cast full of stars like Judi Dench, Idris Elba, Taylor Swift bring Cats into the mainstream. Universal is producing the film, Hooper is directing it, and in this age of technology it will be hard to escape the marketing. Millions of people have viewed the trailer on YouTube, and millions more have seen it reposted and screenshotted across the internet.

Tom Hooper may have succeeded in getting the world talking about his film – bad publicity is better than no publicity – but he may have also succeeded in jeopardising the future of the movie musicals that are following in his pawprints.

Musical theatre, as a genre, is intrinsically restrictive. If you don’t live in the right city or don’t earn the right amount, you cannot see certain productions. Theatre fans of the digital generation have been begging directors and production teams to film their shows and release them in cinemas to make musical theatre more accessible. Cats, ironically, is one of the only musicals that has done this, filming productions in 1998 and releasing them on VHS.

If Cats is a flop, producers in theatres and film studios will think twice about giving a musical the go ahead

This Cats movie is setting musical theatre up to be ridiculed on an international stage. The musical theatre community are excited for a number of movie musicals to come to cinemas soon, including Stephen Spielberg’s West Side Story, Lin Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights, a potential Wicked movie and a Netflix adaptation of The Prom. If Cats is a flop, producers in theatres and film studios will think twice about giving a musical the go ahead.

Perhaps the most saddening part of the Cats movie is the reaction that came from the superfans of the musical. Cats on a stage is all about the suspension of disbelief. The costumes are not real enough that people are unsettled by them, and people already walk into a theatre hoping to be whisked – whiskered? – away.

The world of Cats is supposed to be bizarre and ethereal because it is first and foremost about escapism. The trailer is universally hated by both fans of the musical and people who have never seen it before, but the fans are more upset to see the show they’re passionate about misrepresented, especially when it could have been an opportunity to invite all of us into the strange and magical world of the Jellicle cats. We’re watching this space to see what the world thinks of the film in its entirety, but it is safe to say that Cats has made one hell of a first impression.