The 'Cats' trailer is here and it's horrifying the internet

[brooklynite]

Expect to hear the haunting refrain of "Memory," as performed by Jennifer Hudson, approximately 80 times in the office today: There's a good chance your coworkers are all watching the "Cats" trailer, and there's a very good chance they're all horrified by it.

The trailer dropped Thursday for the live action adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical, starring Hudson alongside Taylor Swift, Idris Elba, James Corden, Jason Derulo, Judi Dench and the Royal Ballet's Francesca Hayward among others. Alas, if Twitter's anything to go by, the internet was more mystified than enchanted -- and in some cases, downright terrified.

In a teaser clip released earlier this week, director Tom Hooper lauded the movie's use of "digital fur technology" to create "the most perfect covering of fur." When the cats were revealed, however -- an uncanny amalgamation of the actors' human faces and a feline-adjacent body -- social media users were less than convinced.

Link to tweet

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/19/movies/cats-trailer-reaction-scli-intl/index.html

[Fla Dem]

1. That's one person's opinion. No better or worse just because she's a film critic.

[tulipsandroses]

2. I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Something good to look forward to for a change in this crappy year of dreadful realities.

[bitterross]

3. Looks good to me. Critics are odd people. Some feel the must diss everything.

I watched a documentary about the Broadway season the year Avenue Q and Wicked both debuted. The documentary had a bunch of critics talking about the shows over dinner together and at various other places. It showed me just how useless the critics really are. They were all pretty pretentious people with their very hard biases.

I'll go see this. The cast is great and the trailer makes me want to see it.

[brooklynite]

4. Let me state two points:

1. I have never seen CATS.

2. I didn't know they had made a movie.

When I saw the trailer (with no introduction), my first reaction was: "what the heck am I watching?"

[Mme. Defarge]

9. I'm a lifelong cat lover and saw the Broadway touring

company production of the musical back in the day.
Hated it!

[Thomas Hurt]

5. I looked at this on youtube this morning the comments are almost uniformly bad.

I am not certain the commenters even know what CATS was and is, where it came from.

[Guilded Lilly]

6. I'll go see it. No problem. No anxiety. N/T

[Dave Starsky]

7. This trailer is the creepiest thing I will see all day.

Outside of anything Trump does.

It rests in the bottom of the "uncanny valley".

I can't believe anyone thought this was a good idea. It's like a 21st Century version of the old animated series Clutch Cargo, which scared me when I was a kid.

[NBachers]

8. Is Tom Hooper related to Tobe Hooper?

[Midnight Writer]

11. Now Tobe Hooper directing CATS would be something to see.

[Docreed2003]

10. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting

...until it showed Rebel Wilson. I find her act annoying.

[WePurrsevere]

12. "Horrified by it?" Well, my friends & family all seem to be excited...

To see it. Many of us have seen either the Broadway or touring version of the musical in the theatre and have been hoping for this for many years.

[Archae]

13. 3 years ago, many of these same people jumped all over "Zootopia."

They were particularly critical of "furrys," people who enjoy anthropomorphic animals.

I confess to being one of them to a degree, I enjoy good pin-up art.

One good example here, the artist Michele Light.
She's been drawing pin-up art for literally decades.

http://www.michelelight.com/

As to this movie?
I won't go to it, but I might watch it on DVD.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

14. The "cats" are kinda strange.

They've got the cat-like moves down pretty well, but it's hard to turn a human into a creature that really looks like a cat. The humans' cat-ears and eyes are too small and their noses are too big, and they don't seem to have proper fangs. Real cats have tails that are extensions of their spines, not some sort of appendage that seems to issue from their buttholes. Cats have eight nipples, not two breasts (it wouldn't have been that hard to stick a bunch of nipples on the actors). And the fur is all wrong. Real cats have much thicker fur; if you shave a cat there's a whole lot less cat underneath than you'd expect. These cat-people have fur that looks more like peach fuzz stuck onto naked skin. I guess they were going for a look more human than feline (they could have done it with CGI cats like the remake of The Lion King).

[hunter]

15. Yeah, I'll pay to watch that.

My uncanny valley is elsewhere.

I avoid radio and television for fear of hearing Trump or Pence.

They are clearly hell spawn not of this good earth.

[sinkingfeeling]

16. I've seen 'Cats' performed several times by various tour companies. The movie

cats look similar to those in stage productions. I'm not sure I love Hudson's version of "Memory".

I'll go see it.