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'Cats' Director Rushes Visual Effects Update Into Theaters After Disastrous Opening (engadget.com) 101

Posted by EditorDavid from the litter-box-office dept.
Though its poster promises "the most joyful event of the holiday season," the new movie Cats scored just 18% with professional critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and the $100 million adaptaton of the Broadway musical has so far earned just $6.5 million at the box office.

Its director apparently doesn't want that to be the last word. "You've seen movies receive visual touch-ups in special edition re-releases, but Universal is trying something new: it's updating a movie while it's still in the middle of its initial theatrical run," writes Engadget, on a move that the Hollywood Reporter calls "unheard of for a finished title already in release, according to cinema operators and Hollywood studio executives." Insiders talking to the publication said that director Tom Hooper wanted to alter some of the effects after rushing to get the movie ready in time for its December 16th premiere screening. Reportedly, the updated movie is available for theaters to download today (December 22nd) from a satellite server, while those theaters that can't download it will get a hard drive by December 24th...

The tweaks aren't likely to change the general outlook on the movie, which has been...less than favorable. Many viewers are still likely to experience the uncanny valley as they watch anthropomorphized felines dance on screen.
The Daily Beast even argues the film marks the day that Hollywood musicals became "about the perversion of the human body through technology": Nothing can prepare you for the faces. You can read a hundred pieces about Cats, director Tom Hooper's adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's beloved-ish musical about cats having a singing competition, and nothing, nothing you read about it could prepare you for the pure, unnerving spectacle of seeing a computer trying to affix human faces to a fucked up, motion-capture cat with human body parts, a tail, and a big human nose, sitting right there in the middle of a cat's head, sitting on human shoulders, doing dancing routines in a world scaled to cat size...

[T]he second anyone starts moving their body, the effect goes haywire. The face always seems a step or two behind the moving body -- a human visage temporarily displaced from the twisted cat demon. Especially in a movie theater, watching on a high-definition projector, your attention affixed to the horror show going on in front of you, you can't help but notice... It's honestly a miracle a movie this twisted got made, in a world where every movie that costs more than $50 million is engineered for maximum inoffensiveness...

[T]he attempt to bridge the gap between cat and man, to make human beings into dancing cats using computers, just transforms the whole thing into a freakish nightmare...
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'Cats' Director Rushes Visual Effects Update Into Theaters After Disastrous Opening More

'Cats' Director Rushes Visual Effects Update Into Theaters After Disastrous Opening

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  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday December 22, 2019 @08:43PM (#59548666)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Don't worry, the "improved" version will be just about as much of a train wreck as the original.

      It's a live-action movie where people sing and dance (and have their faces deep-faked onto CGI uncanny-valley furries) while competing to get run over by a car! That alone assures it is a disaster.

      I read one review where people were laughing at it like "Springtime For Hitler" in "The Producers". It could turn out being a hit for unintentional comedy.

      • We'll unless the producers were seducing little old ladies and planning on defrauding them and the IRS, this film is utterly inexplicable

        • utterly inexplicable

          They're called Furries.

          But they don't have a lot of collective purchasing power left after building their suits, so it is really no surprise.

    • Just looked at the trailer and it doesn't really seem that bad. I'm not going to rush out and watch it because it's not really my sort of movie, but it doesn't seem to be worthy of the reviewer invective it's attracting. Or is this another one of those movies that we're all supposed to hate without ever going to see it?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        Never saw the trailer until now, can see exactly what is fucked up, the nose, it's just so fucking wrong, like what the fuck were they thinking, ohh, that's right nepotism, I know what they were thinking, I am perfect, I love myself and no one else and only my opinion counts. That fucking nose is just so fucking wrong and the more you see it the worse it gets. So rather than anthropomorphised cats, you get poorly animalised humans that do not move like cats at all.

        • I just saw the trailer and thought "that's some high quality furry porn prelude". Sadly, it looks like it's a 2h long prelude and then it ends.

        • ohh, that's right nepotism, I know what they were thinking, I am perfect, I love myself and no one else and only my opinion counts.

          You might want to consult a dictionary or a thesaurus or a nerd or something.

          • Gotta admit though, you knew what he was talking about.

            • No. In fact, intelligent people might say something other than the most obvious thing.

              Did he not know which word to use, or did he use the word he meant to but then fail to connect the correct context?

              There are a wide variety of ignorant mistakes that might have been responsible.

      • The trailer has too much of that fade to black cut scene shit, just as your eyes focus, let's cut to black because the audience loves being in the dark and irritated. This is exactly like the inception fart noise abuse, there's far too much of it in the hope it makes something seem poignant and artistic but really just pisses people off after the 100th time of suffering it. Can't imagine the film is any better.

    • Save yourself the cash and time. Once you get over the weirdness of it, the movie is boring.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )

      the plot is stupid/boring/not fit for a movie.

      it's just the musical part and makeup mask (or in this case effects) that you would go see it for.

    • Pretty sure that's the point of this news story. Keep people talking about how weird it is just to get curious patrons. All news - even bad news - helps.

      • All news - even bad news - helps.

        This presumes more curious people will show up to watch a bad performance on purpose than people will avoid it. Spurious assumption.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nwaack ( 3482871 )

      Don't you mean you kinda want to see it meow?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Not "just" the visual effects (Score:5, Insightful)

    by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Sunday December 22, 2019 @08:53PM (#59548702)

    Cats as a theater production is already very much avant-garde stretches of modern art on the stage, its story contrived, the only good thing would be very good people performing the piece.

    This movie however takes that and adds layers of SJW messaging, horrible mass production effects, mediocre set of actors, from some offshore studio, the singing is autotuned and yes, the uncanny valley in early 2000s quality.

  • Where is Tom Servo when the world needs him? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by paiute ( 550198 ) on Sunday December 22, 2019 @09:02PM (#59548728)
    Needs MST3K added to make it Hollywood profitable.

  • 100% thumbs up on the reviews (Score:5, Insightful)

    by az-saguaro ( 1231754 ) on Sunday December 22, 2019 @09:10PM (#59548734)

    I have not seen the movie, but coincidentally I spent time yesterday reading the Rotten Tomatoes reviews, professional and viewer supplied. The trailer for the film looks strange, and the reviews are mostly negative. I cannot recall recently a major studio release, heavily marketed, getting this low a score. Which means - the movie sucks, but the reviews are genuinely entertaining, especially if you love cynicism.

    To summarize the most cogent points for me:
    The CATS story itself is a non-story, based on individual poems of questionable merit. The idea makes for inherently bad drama and theater, but ...
    The original Broadway and touring productions were indeed popular, largely because of staging, costumes, and the A.L. Weber music.
    However, the new film lacks those merits, and instead, it is made freaky and Tim Burtonesque by the CGI.

    We have all seen the trend over 20-30 years that many film makers have abandoned story and character in favor of irrelevant special effects. Sometimes the effects are good, sometimes, stupid, often way overdone - visual tech for its own sake, film making be damned. And, "we" are all responsible, because we pay to see it. To be fair to the industry, there are also good movies using cgi and effects. And, to be fair to ourselves, there was a time when computer special effects were new, and we were thrilled to see them, even without much of a story. There is no better example than the original Tron. But, it is out of control these days, and many movies are now rightly criticized for their extravagant overuse of computer effects that serve no purpose or interfere with our ability to see and understand the action and the story. Recent Star Wars releases and Aquaman come to mind for me.

    So, now the studio or director are going to amend the movie "in real time". The are not likely to edit the sequences. They cannot change the dialogue. Perhaps, given that it is the holiday season, they will take off the cat overlays and put on reindeer and jolly elf skins. Do they honestly think that the 82% of reviewers who panned them will come back for a second look?

    These expensive failed escapades often get their producers or directors fired. That too will be the entertaining second chapter in this. But, maybe something good will come of this. Maybe some studios or producers will start to grow up and finally realize that you cannot shine a turd with computer graphics. Story and character, or a message or a thought or a laugh - maybe they can start to produce movies like that again, using a camera, an actor, and an intelligent script.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      The poems are of great merit, being TS Elliot. It is just that he has a reputation of being extremely obtuse so people do not read them. The world would be a much better place if Old Possums Guide to Practical Cats, as well as Children Gardeb of Versus were added to the bedtime ritual.

      I do however think the production is largely without merit and people originally went to see it just so they could say they are cultured and read things like Elliot, and then it snowballed.

      I also believe that not all movi

      • I do however think the production is largely without merit and people originally went to see it just so they could say they are cultured and read things like Elliot, and then it snowballed.

        Maybe. There's also the ballet aspect, which seems extra cultured. I think that most people who really hated it were musical theatre people, who had the mistaken impression that it was a musical, as opposed to poems + ballet.

        It seems kind of obvious to me that Andrew Lloyd Webber didn't write many musicals in his early career. Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat was a cantata which got extended. Jesus Christ Superstar was an oratorio. Evita was a concept album that got staged. Song and Dance was a

    • I haven't seen the play or the movie, and probably won't. But I did have the vinyl from the play, and listened to it when I was a tween. (Yeah, I'm weird. I didn't buy it though, I'm not that weird.) Being familiar with it has been culturally useful, so I guess that's good. But my takeaway is that a play can get away with being a lot of different things, but a film has to have a plot. So even if they made the CG look good, they wouldn't have fixed the problem that the movie doesn't have one.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Tron was indeed awesome!
        Every story has a story. For Tron, the story was rather direct, not terribly convoluted, not too many characters or "chapters". But that is just what that movie needed. It was a simple story, but a good sci-fi story, and that benefited the computer graphics, because you did not have to focus on too much intrigue or deep thinking, just enjoy the spectacle.
        They meant to showcase the computer wizardry, and they did it well by keeping the plot credible and engaging while not being com

  • My first reaction to seeing an ad for this was awful as these cats were too much human looking. Didn't they learn after the Sonic the Hedgehog movie debacle that they redid and made much better by making Sonic much less human looking?
    • I find the the cats are rather good looking, well made. Too bad the rest is a disaster.

    • I think they did learn from Sonic. Someone burned the master, and the FX guys kept tweaking it, knowing they can do better.

      Moving on to another film, then back to this, and making more progress in a few days, does not make sense, unless all they had to do was re-render a new master. Shit tons of data.

      So I think they actively watched Sonic. Everyone but the guy who decided not to rush it. He didn't.

  • Zero plot line, no memorable songs, no emotion. I'd be surprised if it actually did well on film

  • After the wooden rabbit failed... (Score:5, Funny)

    by glitch! ( 57276 ) on Sunday December 22, 2019 @09:34PM (#59548770)

    This reminds me of the Holy Grail scene where the wooden rabbit failed, and then Bedevere suggests, "Look, if we were to build a large wooden badger..."

    Okay, maybe I should not be critical and give postive advice instead. Maybe if you enlisted John Cameron to create a movie that blends Avatar and Cats? If he could add aspects of Transformers or Fast and Furious, that would be great.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The Fast and the Furriest, I'd watch that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Blue23 ( 197186 )

      Maybe if you enlisted John Cameron to create a movie that blends Avatar and Cats? If he could add aspects of Transformers or Fast and Furious, that would be great.

      I think you're onto something. Maybe Michael Bey and we add explosions.

    • John Cameron to create a movie that blends Avatar and Cats

      John Cameron. Oh. I read that as John Carmack, and was thinking -- what, Avatar? Don't you mean Doom or Quake?

      I'd pay to go see that one.

    • What? Is James Cameron not available?
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Did anyone want to see a film adaptation of Cats at all? I'm not sure it's the use of digital effects that is causing the problem. It's a bit like saying that the Titanic should have been painted a different color. Maybe it makes it better in the minds of many, but it doesn't really solve the actual problem.

  • Everything I wanted to say is in the subject.

  • The visual FX studio that re-designed Sonic the Hedgehog for the movie (very successfully!) worked extreme hours and then got shut down as a reward for their efforts: https://www.playstationlifesty... [playstationlifestyle.net]

    Anyone who goes to see "Cats 2.0" is feeding dollars into the same system. Just let them crash and burn.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by rldp ( 6381096 )
      Those are the people who fucked up in the first place and added millions onto the movie budget, what reward do you think they deserved?
      • I don’t have the back story of it but I suspect that the VFX artists didn’t have 100% control of how the movie looked. It would take serious negligence on the part of the studio not to have stepped in during production when it was obvious it didn’t look good. I suspect that the VFX studio got multiple approvals from the studio by people who didn’t know or care how Sonic appeared

  • It's people in cat makeup (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday December 22, 2019 @10:20PM (#59548846)
    it was always a train wreck. But when you were sitting a good distance away from a stage you couldn't get a good look at it. Now that it's a movie there's up close shots of cat people. Uncanny valley kicks in (well, for everyone who isn't a furry, NTTAWWT).

    Why do you think nobody every adapted it in the first place. It was always a fool's errand.

    • Yeah, that Tchaikovsky. What was he thinking having people dancing as fucking swans, amirite?

      Of course, there's a reason why nobody has ever tried to adapt a ballet into film before, if you don't count literally filming a ballet performance. It doesn't translate well.

    • Errr... I'm not sure what plays you were watching that could trigger uncanny valley. You realise people have dressed as animals to perform plays from long before we had the ability to record them doing it right?
      The play (critically acclaimed) has nothing at all to do with the failure of this movie (critically slammed).

  • You put James Corden and Rebel Wilson in this and expected a box office success? Everything I have seen them in I always feel uncomfortable as long as they are on screen. The first thing I saw Cordon in was an episode of Dr. Who. [imdb.com] I hated that episode because James felt completely out of place.

  • ...would be Victor Salva.

    Oh, never mind. I forgot, he wouldn't have gotten rid of the crotch bulges.

  • So is Cats the Rocky Horror Picture Show or Little Shop of Horrors for a new generation?

    It [cats] probably just needed more roombas or laser pointers to score well on RT's.

  • How'd this get released? (Score:3)

    by smoot123 ( 1027084 ) on Sunday December 22, 2019 @11:07PM (#59548914)

    I was only vaguely aware Cats was a new movie. Shows how much I'm paying attention.

    What surprises me is the movie made it to theaters before someone took notice. I mean, it's not like there isn't a crew of hundreds working on this, plus the suits at the studio, test audiences, and on and on. Surely someone would have hesitantly mentioned the Emperor had no clothes? Or fur?

    Ah well. This will be an object lesson to producers that they need to hold their directors just a little more accountable.

    • The CG happens in post-processing after everything is filmed. So it's quite possible only the VFX team and the editor would see it. The VFX team spent months staring at the scary cats and probably became immune to the uncanny valley. The editor might just be one guy.

      • Really? The director and producer don't review the results? And no one ran a test screening and asked the test audiences?

        Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty sure the director is included in your "spent so much time watching the process they became immune" group. And perhaps the director was also the producer so they lost that check. It highlights the danger of giving one artist too much control, a lesson I'm sure the suits will remember.

        • Not all directors has a say in the final cut of the movie. That’s why there is the saying that a movie is made three times: first time when it is written, second time when it is filmed, and the third time when it is edited. Also there might be interference from the studio/producers in every stage. I feel this is the reason why the Star Wars prequels were so bad. George Lucas had full control as he was all three of those roles if I remember correctly, and no one could really challenge him or suggest ch

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by _merlin ( 160982 )

      I have no idea how it got released. I first found out about it by the massive negative reaction to the trailer a few months ago. Surely that should have warned them?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The problem is that the basic premise is broken. People in fur suits we accept because we know what they are, but CGI cat-human hybrids are freakish.

      They already filmed and mo capped it though so unless they go back and re do massive amounts of work the best they can do is tinker.

    • This will be an object lesson to producers that they need to hold their directors just a little more accountable.

      As long as the producer's check successfully cashes, well, You Look Marvelous. [youtu.be] If you stop and actually come to your senses you'll stop paying ALL of us, so ... It's Great! Just Ask Anyone!

    • Three words on how it made it to release: Andrew Lloyd Webber. He has money and clout to make any terrible adaptation he wants. He didn’t take learn from the criticisms of his last movie, Phantom of the Opera directed by Joel Schumacher. Yes the same Schumacher of Batman fame. Others like Lindsay Ellis have done in-depth analysis [youtube.com] of why Phantom didn’t work but the main points are 1) some ideas in live musicals don’t translate to film, 2) using mediocre signing talent is bad idea for a film

  • Once upon a time... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sabt-pestnu ( 967671 ) on Sunday December 22, 2019 @11:42PM (#59548946)

    Once upon a time, you bought software, and maybe it had some bugs, but what you bought is what you got. These days, you buy a license for software, and have to download the software. There are going to be bugs, maybe crippling ones. And the company is going to force you to update your software to correct those bugs, because the always-online DRM ensures they will always be available. (And hey, they can cancel your license at any time...)

    Once upon a time, you went to a theater...

  • So we officially have a replacement for Battlefield Earth. that was a movie so bad, the cashier told us we could get a refund, no questions asked, if we left in the first half hour. We stupidly stayed.

    Cats is sounding like it wants to compete for that title.

  • Excerpts (Score:3)

    by az-saguaro ( 1231754 ) on Monday December 23, 2019 @12:18AM (#59548988)

    I posted a comment earlier.
    Since then, I have read the incoming posts here on Slashdot, and I am enjoying them every bit as much as the many reviews - many clever, insightful comments.

    For fun, I have cut-and-pasted excerpts from various reviews:

    ===

    The biggest disaster of the decade

    How did so many big-name celebrities agree to be part of this? Did anyone ask for this movie to be made? No, really: Who thought this $95 million spectacle was a good idea?

    inspire a wave of absolutely scathing, especially creative reviews from critics, who were apparently as perplexed by the film as everyone else was by the trailer.

    “To call Cats a cinematic experience unlike any other does not do justice to precisely how mind-meltingly bizarre Cats is. To say it must be seen to be believed is to undersell just how hard it is to believe it even once you’ve seen it.

    It was a “half-digested hair of a movie,” a “cinematic disaster of epic proportions,”

    Critics claimed they had to “resist the urge to remove a shoe to throw at the screen” or wanted to pray “for the sweet release of death”

    ‘Oh God, my eyes’: Ty Burr, Boston Globe

    I truly believe our divided nation can be healed and brought together as one by “Cats” — the musical, the movie, the disaster.

    My eyes are burning. Oh God, my eyes.

    In fact, there are moments in “Cats” I would gladly pay to unsee, including the baby mice with faces of young girls and the tiny chorus line of cockroach Rockettes — again, with human faces — that Jennyanydots gleefully swallows with a crunch. Anyone who takes small children to this movie is setting them up for winged-monkey levels of night terrors.

    ‘Cats’: A Broadway Musical Adaptation Straight Outta the Litter Box: Peter Travers, Rolling Stone

    Let the sheer grinding monotony of Cats stand as a measuring stick for future cinematic takes on Broadway musicals that hope to match its unparalleled, bottom-feeding dreadfulness.

    Cats Review: I Have Seen Sights No Human Should See: Alex Cranz, i09

    I have been processing this movie for the last 24 hours trying to understand anything as terrifying and visceral a trainwreck as Cats.

    Cats undermines itself in both editing and musical arrangement, barely has a plot to hang its hat on, and is CGI-ed into oblivion. Cats also serves as a fitting end to 2019, as a death knell to irony.

    Nine may not be enough lives for some of the stars to live down their involvement in this poorly conceived and executed adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s hit musical.

    Director Tom Hooper’s outlandishly tacky interpretation seems destined to become one of those once-in-a-blue-moon embarrassments that mars the résumés of great actors (poor Idris Elba) and trips up the careers of promising newcomers.

    that movie is such a monument to directorial malpractice that Hooper should get a life sentence in director jail.

    Hooper also feels the need to make it gross by having them dig through trash and play up their animal instincts. Cats always feels like it’s two seconds away from turning into a furry orgy in a dumpster.

    Let’s start with the positive: the costumes and makeup are pretty good? In a weird, body-horror, human-feline-dysmorphia kind-of-way. But that’s the best that can be said about “Cats,” ... an astonishing misfire on every other conceivable level. Forget worst movie of the year: “Cats” is the biggest disaster of the decade, and possibly thus far in the millennium.

    As I can think of no more culturally resonant image for the end of 2019 than James Corden diving face-first into a dumpster containing CGI garbage and rooting around for five agonizing minutes, I’m tempted to call Cats an accidental masterpiece.

    While the CATS movie is not the unmitigated disaster that trailers

  • Every decade must have one terrible film that earns a place in cinematic history for all the wrong reasons, the 1990s had several and we've waited and waited for a "disaster movie" for some time and finally it's here...CATS - The Movie.

    Just like all the worst movies it'll do so badly at the cinema but give it a few years and the guys who made it will be laughing all the way to the bank ( wearing dark glasses and a fake beard when they go obviously! ) as people rent it from Netflix just for something hilario

  • And the only vibe I got from it was the merging of Toy Story with the real world. I just didn't feel horrified by it. But then, I have seen so much real world horror, stuff like this does not faze me.

  • Just saw this and was very disappointed. The dialog was too quiet most of the time. Music overrode it, and the story made little sense. Especially without a lot of the dialog! There was 1 spot where the volume finally was uncomfortably loud...I'm guessing the volume level was set based on that single point in the movie.

    I can't imagine any special effects changes making a difference at all. No idea which version I just saw.

    • So in addition to a terrible screenplay and CGI, the sound mixing was also terrible. In a musical. I mean this film had train wreck written all over it when I saw the trailer.

  • Needs more ZEF! https://www.youtube.com/watch [youtube.com]?... [youtube.com]

    Of course, the narcissistic 'stars' in Cats would never have agreed to having their faces obscured. However, swapping the CGI and real bits around would probably have made it look a whole lot better.

    Probably wouldn't have helped with the plot though.

  • It must be a baffling ordeal to be a Hollywood filmmaker. 99.9% of the time the public is perfectly happy to sit through two or even three hours of utter dreck which future generations will regard with abject horror. Then, suddenly, for no definite reason, mix in the social media hive mind and some unlucky singular production garners the wrath of all.
  • The furries are having orgasms. Literally.

  • Since when have professional critics ever been right.. It seems they try to write their article as offensive as possible so it gets noticed by the internet which receives them a lot of extra hits (and therefore money).. When reading most reviews of these critics you really wonder if they have seen the same movie as you did.. In this case, the trailer already prepared you for the visuals so if you were surprised by the visuals you hadn't seen the trailer yet (or the actual play).
    And what do you expect from a

  • did they even read the reviews?
    the cgi is only one little part of the problem, but the WHOLE movie is basically bad in every way.
    fixing up the cgi will do little to improve it, scores will go up from 18% to, what, 20% maybe?

  • They might be missing the point in the positive 18% critical part if they truly think it would have scored significantly better if only they CGI effects were _______________.

    (Fill in the blank - less creepy, toned down, less furry etc...)

    I think most people think the changes, the script, the choreography as compared to the the broadway version is just bad.

    The CGI part was the icing/nail in the coffin.

  • ...lick their assholes and fur like real cats?

  • Saw the trailer for this on TV and said to my wife, "What lunatics would throw away millions upon millions of dollars to fund this. I'm sure it wasn't entirely crowdfunded by rabid fans so how could you even begin to successfully pitch something like this to an investor?"

    Just the fact it was Cats, with not even a pretense of a story, and which only ever succeeded because it was a live musical concert, was enough to guarantee it could not recoup even a fraction of what it must have cost.

  • Sounding like it was a good thing I saw it at the National back in the 1980s.

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