The ‘Cats’ Movie and its Abominable CGI
When the trailer for Cats was released, many people were not too happy with the overall design of the movie. Cats is such a popular musical that people simply had a lot of hope for the movie. When it finally came out, people’s worst fears came true. The movie is filled with both directorial and design flaws, and CGI is just abominable. Let’s take a look at why Cats didn’t live up to people’s expectations.
The idea was bad in the first place
Universal Studios had a lot of luck with turning musicals into amazing movies. Nevertheless, just because the musical is great doesn’t necessarily mean that the movie will be too. The musical Cats never insisted on making a realistic version of the story, in fact, it was almost ridiculing it. Moreover, the musical is a very interactive experience and if you are in the audience you can expect actors to run around you and even crawl into your lap. On the other hand, you don’t get that same experience with the movie. Plus, because they didn’t want to make a parody of it, they decided to take a realistic approach to Cats, which just didn’t work out.
The story is not great
When you are watching a movie, even if it is a musical, you want the storyline to be engaging and gripping. This is just another huge reason why Cats should have never become a movie – the story just isn’t great. That is why so much effort is put into the dances and the songs, and not that much on the actual plot. The story is about a group of cats who all dance and sing. In the end, one of them is chosen and that cat gets a new life and goes to the Heaviside Layer. This might be a great thing to see if you are watching the musical since you will be seeing the performances live, but for a movie plot, it is simply boring.
The CGI was bad
When the news broke out that Cats was going to become a movie, people wondered how they were going to make good-looking realistic felines. The director of Cats, Tom Hooper, endlessly hyped the digital fur technology which they used to turn the actors into realistic looking cats. However, the end product was an abomination – humans covered with fur, with human-like hands, that moved both like people and like cats. Viewers in theatres did not know whether to laugh or be scared, but they knew that this was not a good look for neither the cats nor the actors. Even though the cast is filled with some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry, we just cannot get over how awful everything looked on screen.
