The Top 5 Commercial Failures That Bialystock Should Have Counted On

It's the twentieth anniversary of the musical adaptation of The Producers, one of the greatest stage adaptations of a movie of all time (in fact I consider it to be the best, along with Waitress being a worthy contender) and a record breaker for the most Tonys won by a single musical. Both the musical and the film it's based on still crack me up and there are some classic songs to belt along to - whether it's songs from the original film like "Springtime For Hitler" and "Prisoners Or Love" or songs written for the musical such as "Betrayed" and "'Til Him".

Most people probably know the plot by now, but for those who don't, here's a small recap. Max Bialystock, a once-successful Broadway producer who has fallen on hard times, teams up with the highly anxious accountant Leo Bloom to put on the biggest flop on Broadway history, after hearing that some flops have actually made more money after closing on opening night. They find an atrocious script by a Neo-Nazi and hire a camp director who mainly specialises in light-hearted musicals to work on it, whilst also casting terrible actors in the roles of the Nazis. Alas for them, Springtime For Hitler turns into a surprise hit mistaken for satire and the plan to pull off a major scam falls through.

So by trying to hire the worst of the worst and blending it all together, Bialystock ended up with something that was actually good. But what if he did the opposite? What if the best of the best were hired and instead we ended up with a legitimate commercial bomb in the process? It seems bizarre, but it has happened in real life.

Consequently, today's article, being posted on the day that The Producers snagged all those Tony Awards, will be about the inverse Springtime For Hitlers. The works that tried to aim for success and ended up as colossal failures, all due to what the creators thought were recipes for success. These are the ideas that, had he chosen these instead (despite most of them coming out after the time period that The Producers is set in), would have guaranteed Bialystock the sure-fire flop he was hoping for in the first place. Most of these are movies, and two of them aren't musicals at all (though one of them does skirt the line) but I'm sure that trying to adapt them for stage would have made them even more of a disaster.

And keep in mind that this isn't just a list of failed magnum opuses. This is a list of projects that failed because of the factors that the creators thought would make them successful.

Max Bialystock, watch and learn...

Hopefully he doesn't jump on me and squish me like a bug...

5. Sucker Punch (2011).

Formula: Badass action girls + feminism + cool fight scenes + awesome scenery = confusing mess.

It was supposed to be a feminist's dream come true. A film that criticises perverts for only seeing women as sex objects whilst also depicting them as badass action girls? Awesome! Plus it would have amazing special effects and such awesome delights such as dragons, steampunk and even zombie German soldiers from World War 1. To be extra arty, the "real life" plotline would be set in an asylum, with another plotline being set in the fantasy action world and yet another being set in a seedy brothel in order to really deconstruct the male gaze. Add the fact that director Zack Snyder had worked on the surprisingly good Dawn of the Dead remake and the memetic 300 film adaptation, (sure, Watchmen sucked, but that was just a fluke right?), and it seemed that this would be an instant hit.

Except that in practice, Snyder's dream project did not achieve what it planned to. Trying to get across a message whilst also trying to create a spectacle ultimately caused the opposite of Snyder's intent to occur. The crossover between real life and the imaginary world mainly confused critics rather than wowed them. The special effects, rather than enhance the story, mainly served to distract from it and trick us into thinking that it was a straight-up action flick rather than a deconstruction of the male gaze. Worst of all, the action scenes involving badass girls wearing awesome yet somewhat skimpy outfits made people think that it was essentially sexualised pandering to the audiences rather than the complete opposite.

Overall, the film cost $82,000,000 to make and it grossed $89,792,502 worldwide. Sure, that's more money than the initial budget, but when you factor in promotion and other aspects, that amount was still not enough to save it from becoming a bomb. It may have been a criticism of chauvinism and male fantasies of women, but the feminists themselves saw it as chauvinism anyway. It has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 22% and a Metacritic rating of 33%, much less than what Watchmen received (at least that has a Fresh rating!). Overall, not something people would bother to see.

This following cartoon is edited for your safety. I'm somewhat fine with naked bodies on this post, but badly-drawn ones are a big no-no.

Of course, quite a bit of it can be blamed on executive meddling, since the director's cut was much better handled and allowed the viewer to get an idea of what the actual message was meant to be - this is ultimately why I put it at the bottom of the list. But the fact is, Snyder's best projects will still be Dawn of the Dead and 300 (sure, the latter has some rather racist attitudes in it, but that can be blamed on the original graphic novel).

4. Doctor Dolittle (1967).

Formula: Well-loved children's book + famous "gentleman" actor + real life animals = heart-attack inducing stress.

Just seven years late for Bialystock to think about this idea. Producer Arthur P. Jacobs and Fox Studios had teamed up for the next "big thing", which was a big-budget musical adaptation of Hugh Lofting's beloved Doctor Dolittle book series. Planning to start a movie franchise, they pulled out all the stops on this one. For the titular character himself, they hired the talented actor Rex Harrison, famous for other gentleman characters such as My Fair Lady's Henry Higgins (his personality in real life however was anything but gentleman-like). Additionally, the use of real life animals would be an outright spectacle. Sounds like it would be a success, right?

Oh how wrong they were. The production was an absolute nightmare, going overbudget and tensions rising high between everyone involved. The animals, due to being real ones, were obviously hard to control - some ducks even nearly drowned on-set for some bizarre reason and had to be rescued. Harrison, as he usually was on-set, was such a tyrannical nightmare that he gained the fitting nickname "T-Rex".

The fact that Jacobs even suffered a heart attack due to the stress of working on the film should be a warning sign where this is going.

When the film came out, critical reviews were average at best and downright scathing at worst. The only reason it was able to get Oscar nominations at all was because of the studio's intense lobbying, yet again reminding me why I never cared about that award show in the first place (at least it didn't win Best Picture). Additionally, the movie only ended up grossing $9 million against a $17 million budget. No sequels for that film after all.

This was only one of three films in the late 60s (the other two being Camelot and Hello, Dolly!) that killed off interest in big-budget blockbuster musical films for quite some time, with the only critically and/or commercially successful movie musicals in the 70s being ones that either went for a more realistic tone such as Fiddler on the Roof and Cabaret or reveled in their campiness like The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It was also the beginning of the end of Harrison's acting career, and his attitude as always did not help to redeem him at all - nowadays his brilliant acting is offset by this nasty little titbit.

But hey, at least Jacobs and Fox redeemed themselves with the successful Planet of the Apes adaptation afterwards, so there was a happy ending to this nightmare. Plus, the "Talk to the Animals" song was an instant Oscar winner, though I personally preferred Dusty Springfield's "The Look of Love" from that godawful Casino Royale film with Woody Allen (saying that sentence sounds rather off). Little wonder than some people have nostalgic memories for it, despite the absolute mess it was otherwise.

3. Heaven's Gate (1980).

Formula: Oscar-winning director + all-star cast + auteur licence = New Hollywood killer.

This is the epitome of what TV Tropes refers to as "magnum opus dissonance". Michael Cimino had achieved success with The Deer Hunter but this was his true dream project. He would have complete control over it without any pesky executive meddling. It would be a sweeping epic based (loosely) on the real life Johnson County War. Plus, there was Kris Kristofferson, one of the biggest country singers at the time, in the lead role. This would be the film that would show New Hollywood at its best.

Here's the main problem. Every single aspect caused the film's budget to get even more bloated overtime. The all-star cast was probably one of the aspects - besides the fact that hiring a major country star requires a lot of money, other actors such as Christopher Walken, Jeff Bridges and John Hurt, despite being superb, probably cost a lot due to their A-list nature. Trying to make the plot more epic also required some rather bizarre historical liberties to be taken, such as European immigrants killing cattle. Speaking of cattle, the use of actual animals (possibly for realism) and special effects led to rather horrifying alleged cases of animal abuse, such as the rumour that a horse had been blown up by dynamite.

The worst aspect though was Cimino's directing style. Being allowed to do whatever he wanted, he was described as way too authoritarian in his vision. He spend more time on the project than others felt necessary and pushed the film to four times its original budget. United Artists considered firing him at least twice, but ultimately chose not to, probably because they'd been the ones to popularise the auteur film in the first place and it would be hypocritical if they tried to have more authority.

The final result was essentially a mediocre film that became one of the biggest box office bombs of all time. Costing $44 million to make, it only managed to gross $3.5 million worldwide. Most critics were unimpressed and it received five Razzie nominations, ultimately winning for Worst Director. Most damningly of all, more people were talking about the terrible box office intakes and Cimino's primadonna nature than the actual plot of the film itself.

The fallout from this film not only put Cimino's directing career on ice (he would proceed to release more duds until retiring in 1996), but pretty much killed off United Artists. Plus, it ended the New Hollywood era of auteur films, leading into a temporary period where the producers had the main control over movies (until the troubled production of Days of Thunder killed that period off). Obviously, the initial box office failure of The Deer Hunter for going overbudget and the mess that was the production of Apocalypse Now, another New Hollywood movie, should have been warning signs that something like this would happen, but at least the latter film made money and both films were critical successes. Let that be a tragic lesson to us all - sometimes the executives do have a point after all, as much as some of us prefer not to believe.

On the bright side though, Heaven's Gate is not a complete trainwreck in quality. Some people actually see the film as a masterpiece nowadays, though it's still unlikely to be seen on a general list of greatest movies of all time (except for the one that the BBC composed that one time). Still doesn't excuse the exploding horses though.

2. Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark (2011).

Formula: Famous comic book character + innovative creator + wire battles + famous rock band = accident-ridden laughing stock.

Now for something that actually matches up with what Bialystock was producing - a stage musical. You'd think that, having been the head of the successful stage adaptation of The Lion King, Julie Taymor could work the same magic with Sam Raimi's money-making Spider-Man movies. You could use plenty of cutting-edge technology for it, particularly if it involved wires to fly around on! Plus, famous rock band U2 were onboard to write the songs for it, and scriptwriter Glen Berger had plenty of experience writing plays and working on family-friendly projects. Surely this would be just as much of a hit as Lion King was?

Except apparently not. First of all, the producer Tony Adams died from a stroke early in production, all during a meeting with U2's The Edge. Then there was the matter than Spider-Man fans were baffled about the fact that their favourite comic book character was being used in a stage musical of all things. Next up and most notably, the normally creative and talented Taymor had so many controversial ideas (such as making the Mary-Sueish Arachne the villain) and was so adamant about keeping them that she got kicked off her own project. Additionally, most of the songs sounded like second-rate versions of better U2 songs (with one of them basically sounding like a "Thertigo" knock-off if not for different lyrics), all because they had no experience with musical theatre and didn't really want that experience.

But the worst part was the special effects. Actors infamously injured themselves due to snapping wires or collapsing scenery, including the Spider-Man actor himself. In one particularly embarrassing moment, the actor was injured when rolling off the prop building he was on (or at least it looked like it, supposedly he was trying to swing off the building to save Mary-Jane). In another case, the actor was not injured, but got stuck on the wire during a curtain call and had to be prodded with a stick by the tech team.

"One of the crew members fetched a stick to prod him with, but that didn’t help. It was like a live Spider-Man piñata." - Actual quote from Glen Berger.

Overall, five cast members received injuries and at least one left the production permanently due to them.

Nowadays, the musical is more famous (well, infamous is the more accurate term) for the whopping amount of previews shows it had, which added up to a whopping 182. As for the final product itself, it finally opened on the 14th June 2011...and then closed in January 2014 with a loss of $60 million. That's right, it was the most expensive Broadway production in history with a budget of $75 million, and it never made that budget back.

That said, the project that everyone received in the end was still considered better than the original vision, especially since the beloved villain Green Goblin was the main antagonist rather than the unwanted and pretentious choice of Arachne. They even managed to clean up their act with the special effects in the end. Besides, it's probably less offensive compared to the work that takes the #1 spot...

1. Cats (2019).

Formula: Oscar-winning director + famous musical + all-star cast + "cutting-edge" technology = ultimate Razzie award winner.

Oh boy, it's this trainwreck again. You thought I'd already talked enough about it on some of my other blog posts, but I've always had a soft spot for tearing this hairball to pieces. Having had moderate success with the Les Mis film adaptation (hey, it made money and got some Oscars), Tom Hooper decided to make another Oscar bait movie musical, this time using the hit megamusical Cats as his source material. He would hire famous celebrities such as James Corden, Taylor Swift and Jennifer Hudson and utilise "cutting-edge" special effects. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, the first mistake in general was just having Tom Hooper on the project. Sure, he directed the critically-adored Oscar winner The King's Speech and had done well with Les Mis and The Danish Girl, but a director specialising in "realistic" Oscar bait was not a good choice to direct a film based on a surreal and fantastical megamusical that relied more on spectacle and commercial success than critical success and a strong plotline in the first place. Additionally, interviews with the special effects team months after the film's release revealed that he was not only unfamiliar with the idea of special effects at all, but also pretty snobbish about the whole thing.

The celebrity cast was the second mistake. As stated by Lindsay Ellis in her video on the subject, this led to songs originally performed by an ensemble turning into solo numbers, just to give the actors more time in the spotlight. Some of these actors were not suited for the roles given to them at all (I mean seriously, Rebel Wilson applying her "crude" stage persona to the motherly Jennyanydots?!) and the singing was not always good. It also screwed over the special effects used for the movie. The celebrities had packed schedules and couldn't shoot their roles everyday.

Oh, and who can forget the CGI as well? They could have had the film animated or had the actors wear realistic outfits, but nooo, it wouldn't be "realistic" enough. If anything, the whole experience is a hell of a lot more surreal due to tiny CGI monstrosities running about everywhere onscreen. They're not cats at all. They're just humans with cat ears and fur.

The result? One of the biggest cinematic catastrophes (no pun intended) in recent history, receiving little money at the box office but plenty of Razzie awards - Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Supporting Actor, Worst Supporting Actress and Worst Screenplay. Costing $95,000,000 to make, it only managed to receive $73,835,438 worldwide, and the only reason it probably that much was because some people were probably curious at how bad it truly was. How bad? At best, it's an enjoyable trainwreck. At worst, it's outright offensive.

Why did I put this at #1, despite it being more recent that some of the other disasters listed here? Because it embodies the inverse-Springtime For Hitler aspects perfectly. Rather than a terrible director, terrible actors and a terrible script becoming a critical and commercial success, a Oscar-winning director, "ambitious" special effects and a star-studded cast come together to create one of the biggest critical and commercial turds of all time. Even Heaven's Gate is seen as a classic by some people nowadays and the Spider-Man musical could have easily been worst considering the nightmarish development process. With Cats...there is nothing really to save it. This is the worst that it can get with how it handles the original source material.

I don't have much faith in Hooper recovering from this one - he could potentially release another film that actually does well, but all this film did was expose the flaws with his directing techniques. Add the fact that the special effects team found him downright awful to work with and he's pretty much the laughing stock of cinema fans during this current time.

And there you have it! Five supposed dream projects that became absolute turds due to the factors that would supposedly help them out. Most of them happened later than 1960, meaning that it may have been too late for Bialystock to copy them, but hey, he could have made a Superman musical back in the day, right?

As for The Producers itself, once again I have to state how much I love it, whether it's the original film itself or the stage adaptation celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year. Bialystock is such a larger-than-life character and excellently portrayed, whether it's Zero Mostel in the original film or Nathan Lane in the stage musical (the latter even does a brilliant job in the otherwise not so successful movie remake). Same goes with his co-star Bloom, whether he's portrayed by Gene Wilder in the original movie, Matthew Broderick in the Broadway debut or Lee Evans in the West End debut. The songs are great, the humour on-point and it successfully shows up Hitler and the Nazis as the idiots they truly were.

Anyway, that's all I can say now (though there will be a follow-up to this article at some point). In the words of the last song in the Producers musical, adios, au revoir, wiedersehen, ta-ta-ta, goodbye...get lost...get out!

Megamusicals - Fun Spectacle Or Commercial Pap?

At the moment, I'm in one of those particular moods in which I get utterly fixated on something and then go completely into depth on it, even if it's something that I'm normally not engaged in otherwise. For some reason, possibly because of researching the original Cats to compare it with the abysmal film adaptation, I recently became fascinated by megamusicals.

These are a particularly controversial type of musical. Critics who dislike them accuse them of being "McMusicals", only being released to gain as much profit as usual and establish franchises. However, they have been hugely successful with audiences over the years, often gaining big fandoms and becoming ingrained as part of pop culture and memes.

This article's main aim will be to explore the brief history of the megamusical genre, both its format in the 1980s and its format in the 21st century. Its main traits will be identified and I will state my overall opinion of them at the end. I will also identify examples that match the genre's requirements and discuss the highs and lows.

The 1980s - The Beginning

Most people agree that it was Andrew Lloyd Webber who first made megamusicals a thing. He had a few hit musicals such as Joseph And The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat (1968) and Jesus Christ Superstar (1971) in the seventies that had some megamusical traits, but it was Cats (1981) that ultimately codified the traits that would be associated with them. He would then really made a name for himself with The Phantom of the Opera (1986), based on the Gaston Leroux gothic novel of the same name. These megamusicals would define the format associated with them at the time.

Most eighties megamusicals tend to be sung-through with maybe a few spoken lines every now and then. The sets are big, the casts are big (often focusing on an ensemble cast rather than a single protagonist) and the costumes stand out big time. Often there will be a story that explores certain universal themes, but it lacks a lot of depth and is only a minor feature when compared to the spectacle. The music is very catchy and consists of modern pop and rock songs, often including power ballads and big orchestrations. Commercially, they will be very successful and popular with audiences, though critics will be more mixed about them.

To explain these points in further detail, I will be briefly analysing Starlight Express (1984), the megamusical Lloyd Webster very loosely based on Thomas The Tank Engine. Whilst it is not as famous as Lloyd Webber's other works such as Cats and Phantom, it's still pretty enjoyable and it puts these aspects to good use.

1. Major focus on spectacle and visuals? Check. The musical is performed on rollerskates and there are train tracks designed to go around the audience so that actors can skate around them. It's a very immersive experience to say the least. Additionally, the costumes themselves look really nice and accurately portray the trains that they are imitating as well as the character's personalities.
2. Storyline that explores universal themes but is only second nature to the spectacle? Check. The main plotline is about a steam train called Rusty who wants to win the big race and impress the aloof Pearl, but must compete against the bullying diesel engine Greaseball (who is essentially Elvis as a train) and the arrogant electric train Electra (very apt). It's essentially the classic underdog story that we all know about and explores the idea of not giving up on your dreams and having more confidence in yourself, so not anything new here (of course, maybe the fact that it's applied to trains could be classified as original).
3. Large ensemble cast? Check. Though Rusty is the main protagonist, there's quite a lot of focus on other characters and their own subplots as well, such as Pearl's search for her ideal partner,  Greaseball and Electra's rivalry and the dining car Dinah's turbulent relationship with and undying devotion for Greaseball. There are also groups of similar characters such as the National Trains and the Rockies who don't have single members stand out, but they are still memorable as groups.
4. Soundtrack with catchy pop songs and power ballads? Check. For example, Greaseball is inspired by Elvis Presley and Electra gets a song called "AC/DC" as a reference to the famous Australian rock band.
5. Does very well commercially? I'll definitely say check on this one. It's had a decent run in the West End, and then there's Germany's obsession with it. Not only is it the longest running musical in Germany so far, but they even made their own theatre specifically to put on that show. Complete with the classic train tracks around the audience for crying out loud! And family events that are held backstage too!

I mean, LOOK AT IT! And that's just the standing ovation we're looking at here! (Note: This was a 2018 production of Starlight Express at the Starlight Express Theatre in Bochum, Germany.)

Starlight Express is an interesting megamusical. Sure, the plot has some weird themes and messages (seriously, steam engines being more efficient than diesel or electric?) and Pearl is a complete bitch at times. But it's fun and engaging with a brilliant set, lavish costumes, catchy music and memorable characters, and I was rooting for Rusty throughout that show the whole time.

I'd also like to point out that the spectacle of Starlight Express is partly the reason why this would not work as a movie. Not only would there be a loss of audience immersion, but the way that the characters are portrayed onstage means that it would be hard to find a way to properly depict them on the silver screen. Keep them in costumes and on roller-skates, and it just looks like people in costumes and on roller-skates. Turn them into actual trains, and it loses the dancing from the original show (unless they tried to have dancing trains, and that would just look stupid). The best they could possibly do is try and go for the Chicago film root of showing them as trains in "reality" and as people during the "fantasy" segments, but that would just get confusing quickly, even if the events of the show are implied to be in the head of a young train fanatic.

Sometimes, some of the megamusicals such as Phantom, Les Misérables and Miss Saigon do have serious stories that play an important role in the show. But the spectacle is still grand and the script is still sung-through. For instance, Phantom has the famous chandelier scene, Les Mis had the turning stage (which was sadly removed from recent productions) and Miss Saigon has the helicopter.

This format doesn't really get used much anymore. Blame is usually placed on the Broadway failure of Lloyd-Webber's Aspects of Love, but that wasn't actually a megamusical in the first place - it was just advertised as one despite being more of a soap opera. The most recent users of this format are the critically-reviled Love Never Dies (the Phantom sequel that we never asked for) and the critically and commercially successful Hamilton. Hamilton plays around with the format though - it's sung-through, features modern music, has a grand plot that focuses on themes of social justice and the rise of fall of the titular character and has impressive lighting, but it doesn't really have grand sets and scenery.

The 21st Century - The Highs And The Lows

The format of megamusicals changed in the 2000s, starting with the shows The Lion King (1997) and Wicked (2003). The sung-through format was mostly dropped and more spoken dialogue was used instead, and the plots started to have an equal role to the spectacle. The sets and costumes were still flashy though, such as the Indonesian puppetry in The Lion King and the dresses that Elphaba and Glinda wear in Wicked.

Keep in mind that The Lion King was not the first successful Disney megamusical. That would be the stage version of Beauty and the Beast, but that one barely had any success in the United Kingdom due to being seen as a "sentimentalised big-budget pantomine". Additionally, The Lion King and Wicked were what started the 21st century trend of adapting famous works for the stage and advertising them for families and tourists, similar to the megamusicals of the eighties.

Either way, Disney is a good example of the 21st century megamusical in action. Aside from the works I've just mentioned, they've also adapted Aladdin, Frozen, Mary Poppins and The Little Mermaid. Frequently, these musicals will use songs that were planned for the original films but never made it in for some reason, with the use of Jafar's song "Why Me?" in Aladdin being a good example. They also make changes to make the plot and characters work better onstage, such as when they turned the parrot Iago from Aladdin into a human. Nevertheless, the plots are still mostly faithful to the original stories and you can expect the same lavish scenery and costumes that they had in the films and other megamusicals.

Results vary each time. Disney is nearly always successful with their stage adaptations of their films (Britain seems to be the only exception of where they do well, and even then we like The Lion King), though reception to the Frozen stage adaptation has been more mixed. Wicked is also very successful and has fully integrated pop culture, up to the point in which it arguably overshadows the (much darker) book it was based on. The Shrek musical adaptation is more of a mixed bag - some people love it, some people hate it and some people like myself are in-between. But it still does well commercially, as indicated by the many times I've seen it promoted over in my home country.

Of course, sometimes it goes wrong. Like with the Spider-Man musical (2011). Yes, we all know it was a thing.

If by "famous", they mean the reputation it received for the turbulent production, the injuries the actors suffered on the set, the fact that its creator was fired and had her career killed, and the fact that it had numerous preview showings...yeah, I guess you're right in a sense.

The full title is actually Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, but I never got what the subtitle was supposed to mean. Besides, given the infamous reputation this musical gained for the injuries the actors suffered due to faulty wires and sets, other people were right to name it Spider-Man: Notify Next Of Kin instead.

What makes this particularly depressing is that the idea for it came from Julie Taymor, the same woman who brought us The Lion King musical. Due to her primadonna attitude on set and her bizarre ideas for Spider-Man, she was ultimately fired from the production. Still didn't stop it from flopping. It holds the world records for most previews shows for a musical, and I'm pretty sure that they could have outweighed the actual amount of shows that were put on when it finally had a proper release, had it not ultimately finished in 2014 instead.

The main problem with the Spider-Man musical, appalling safety conditions aside, is that it doesn't really bring anything new to the megamusical genre. Cats essentially popularised said genre in the first place. Starlight Express obviously had the roller-skates and the train tracks. The Lion King featured the Indonesian puppetry. Wicked was based on a much darker story that served as a retelling of The Wizard Of Oz and explored the backstory of the witches. The Spider-Man musical however...is just an adaptation of the comics and Sam Raimi movies. Even the stunts on the wires have been performed in other shows beforehand.

My Conclusive Thoughts

So my overall opinion on megamusicals? Well, as someone who's not a massive musical expert or fangirl, but shows an interest for them anyway, it ultimately depends on the production and the mood you're in. I desire a good story in a musical most of all, but I have a deep interest in spectacle too. The Lloyd-Webber ones are always fun to watch for instance (Love Never Dies being the only exception), even if the plots can be weak at times. The Disney ones can also be pretty good at times, though The Lion King is clearly the best.

I feel that in order for a megamusical to be successful, it has to be innovative. The spectacle has to be unique and it shouldn't take away from the emotional impact that it's supposed to have on the audience. I have a field day watching the roller-blade stunts in Starlight Express, admiring the puppets in The Lion King and witnessing the different musical styles in Cats, but the Spider-Man musical and Love Never Dies do nothing for me. We shouldn't have a massive glut of megamusicals, but it's nice to see one once in a while.

How Les Misérables Predicted The Main Problems With Cats: A Study In Film Flaws And Musical Adaptations

I mean, it's certainly joyful for those who like cinematic garbage.

So, the Cats movie adaptation was a thing. It got slated by almost everybody as soon as the first teasers dropped, received even more negative reviews as soon as it actually got released, it bombed at the box office big time, it got nominated for nine Razzies and won six of them, including Worst Picture. Everyone now remembers it for being one thing - a cautionary tale about how NOT to adapt a stage musical for the silver screen.

Most people agree that the director Tom Hooper is to blame. He was the one who came up with the idea of the cats being CGI humans, after all. Sure, the fact that the studio rushed Cats for a Christmas release made things worse, but it's likely that it would have still been a trainwreck even without factoring that in.

So exactly went wrong? How did one of the most beloved (if also polarising) musicals end up being turned into a cinematic abomination?

To find the answer, I'll be looking back at Les Misérables, another musical adaptation that Tom Hooper directed back in 2012. Despite winning several awards and doing much better at the box office than his recent venture, I feel that it contains what we identify as the "original sins" (a term used by TV Tropes) of his directory work.

So What Is A Franchise Original Sin?

I'm a massive fan of TV Tropes terms, and this is one of my favourite. The "franchise original sin" is defined as being an issue that started in previous works, but only became apparently and unbearable in later works. For example, Joss Whedon works such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer tended to have a strong female characters getting broken down by tragic events. Sometimes they weren't even action girls, but genuinely sweet girls such as Penny from Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog (I highly recommend you check this one out, it's both hilarious and genuinely depressing at the same time). This was perfectly fine when it was just his own characters (it helps that in Doctor Horrible, the male protagonist became even more broken that Penny did), but people finally lost it when he tried to do the same to Black Widow (a character he did not create himself) in Avengers: Age Of Ultron. As a result, he now has a reputation for being someone with outdated views on feminism that originally seemed revolutionary in the nineties.

Now you may wonder why I chose Tom Hooper's musical adaptations for applying this term to. Well, first of all, it's something I've noticed being brought up in other online articles and videos and I wanted to expand on it further (especially since there isn't a TV Tropes article about it yet). Secondly, it's a topic that will still be relevant at the moment but will be outdated if I were to release this blog post later.

And thirdly, I was originally going to apply the term to the Ice Age films. But that would take up too many blog posts for now. So I'll deal with that later and stick with this for now.

Comparing The Films

So a bit about the Les Misérables movie. It is obviously based on the musical of the same name, which in turn was based on the novel by Victor Hugo. It tells both the story of a failed French uprising (which happened before the proper French revolution) and the story of Jean Valjean, a former crook who is trying to live a new life but is pursued by the determined Inspector Javert. It is what would be classified as a megamusical - it is entirely sung-through with barely any spoken lines, it has a grandiose stage set and a large cast and it makes a lot of money. To adapt something like that, Hooper had to make quite a few changes in order to make it better fit the feature film format.

The most iconic of the Les Mis movie posters.

When the film was released, it gained a worldwide gross of $441,809,770 ($148,809,770 domestically and $293,000,000 internationally) against a $61,000,000 budget. Not only did it snag the world record for the highest opening day gross for a musical film, but it also beat Mamma Mia! for the highest-grossing opening weekend for a musical film in the United Kingdom. It was nominated for many awards, most notably helping Anne Hathaway to win the Oscar, the BAFTA and the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.

Les Misérables was a success, but it had its problems. People who disliked the movie criticised the bizarre use of cinematic techniques (the shaking cameras and close-ups were among some of the main issues) and some of the casting choices such as Russell Crowe's infamous stint as Inspector Javert. Now, I'm currently not a huge fan of Doug Walker (a.k.a. The Nostalgia Critic) and his works, especially after the whole "Channel Awful" controversy, but I have to admit that he does a very good review on the film that explores the main point about critical reactions - either people loved it or they hated it.

These issues would then carry onto Cats. Like Les Misérables, the cinematic techniques and special effects were absurd, and it was more intent on having as many famous actors and celebrities as possible without worrying about whether they would be well-suited for their roles or not. Sometimes, well-established characterisations of characters were altered in questionable ways just to reflect the personality of their actors more clearly. Many people even brought up the problems of Les Mis in order to further emphasise their criticisms of Cats. But unlike Les Mis, Cats would only dominate the Razzies rather than anything designed to show it a little bit of respect.

So what saved Les Misérables? Simple. A combination of some genuinely brilliant actors and the lack of crappy CGI, as well as source material with a strong plotline.

The casting.

To go in depth on casting, many of the stars of Les Mis are recognisable actors such as Hugh Jackman, Amanda Seyfried and the previously mentioned Hathaway and Crowe. And whilst some of them have experience in musical theatre, some of them don't. With Crowe, he only had experience in folk rock. I also did some quick research on the casting choices and although the brilliant Samantha Barks ultimately got the role of Éponine, two of the stars being considered for the role included Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift (though the latter went on to be in Cats).

Taking the final cast and the original casting choices into accounts, it's clear to me that there was more concern for big names that people could "relate" to than actors who had musical theatre experience. But aside from Crowe, most of us were willing to push that flaw aside. Jackman and Barks were highly praised, along with newcomer Eddie Redmayne, and Hathaway stole the show with her award-bait performance as the fallen woman Fantine.

Even if we were to remove the crappy CGI from Cats, none of the performances in the latter film are truly Oscar-worthy. Sure, plenty of the actors seemed to be having a fun time and apparently wanted to do this for a while (Swift really hams it up and steals the show as Bombularina despite said character having her characterisation butchered), but that's about it. And even if there was potential for an award-bait performance, the CGI makes it harder to notice, as we're too focused on that and the faces are covered up by that weird fur stuff.

And then there was the casting of Rebel Wilson as Jennyanydots, which was hated by even the most die-hard defenders of the film. Her crude stage personality did not fit the character well and quite rightly. This isn't anything new though. In Les Mis, Sacha Baron-Cohen and Helena Bonham-Carter are cast are the wily Thénardiers, and their quirky and risque stage personalities are associated with the characters. Most notably is the moment when Monsieur Thénardier steals money from a man dressed as Santa Claus being humped by a prostitute, a scene curiously described in the Nostalgia Critic review as "Santa rape". I have looked up to see if that scene was in the original show - apparently it wasn't.

And if you expect me to post a picture of the offending scene...urgh, you really disgust me.

The Thénardiers are nasty pieces of work anyway. They swindle people out of money and mistreat Cosette when she's a child. Plus, they were always a twisted form of comic relief anyway. So that weird sex scene can be somewhat forgiven, especially since the Thénardiers weren't the ones having sex with Santa themselves. But Jennyanydots is a motherly if stern matron who teaches mice and cockroaches to improve their habits. With Wilson playing her, she becomes a more ghastly figure who tortures them rather than looks after them. It is her alone who strips off her fur to reveal a tacky dance outfit similar to ones from the 1940s underneath it, her alone who eats the cockroaches that happen to have kid's faces CGI-imposed on to them.

The same goes with the Bustopher Jones segment, where he gets played by James Corden. Bustopher is meant to be a high-class cat with refined manners and taste...and yet in his segment, the cats are eating from rubbish bins. Um, I'm sorry, does that scream "high-class" to you? I don't think so.

The worst part of the Bustopher segment is that Corden only uses that stage persona for the crappy films he appears in. When he's doing television in Britain, such as on Gavin & Stacy and The Wrong Mans, he doesn't have that particular image. Makes you wonder why it changes for the big screen.

The plots.

Another notable difference between both films was the story that they adapted. The original musicals are part of the "megamusical" genre, which features musicals with entirely sung dialogue and impressive spectacle. Sometimes in megamusicals, the plot is only given secondary focus so that the audiences can focus on the music and technology instead. However, due to the original Les Mis being based on a novel rich with plot and characterisation, this was not a problem at all. With musicals like that, all that needs to be done for the silver screen is maybe some expansion on the plot (possibly even adding spoken dialogue if necessary) and the adaptation's good to go.

With the original Cats however, that musical was based on Old Possum's Book Of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot, a selection of poems that only linked together due to the theme of cats in them and some minor references characters from other poems. The plot itself is simply about members of the Jellicle tribe trying to get a chance to go of a journey to the "Heaviside Layer" and be reincarnated, even though it seems that many of the cats (excluding Grizabella and Gus) are still young and healthy and could possibly do with sticking around a bit more. The plot itself is not that much in depth and some people have come up with some interesting interpretations of it (my favourite one possibly being that the cats are all dead and in the afterlife anyway). Consequently, trying to expand upon it resulted in new issues, such as trying to expand the role of the very minor character Victoria and have her replace the more prominent Jemina, and turning the sexually-confident yet ultimately well-meaning Bombularina into a devious supporter of the villain Macavity (um, slut-shaming much?).

Summing It All Up

I think by now I've summed up what I feel were the main comparisons with both films. They're adapted from sung-through megamusicals that may or may not work better onstage, they feature all-star casts involving actors that may or may not be suited for the characters they have been assigned for. But in general, Les Mis is at least able to distract us from some of those flaws with its good points, something that Cats was unable to do.

Overall, this just goes to reveal Hooper's biggest flaw. He has several grandiose and ambitious ideas for adapting musicals, but he doesn't know how to put them to proper use. Cats just made said flaw more obvious.

Think of Cats as the inverse Springtime For Hitler from the comedy classic The Producers. With the latter, the titular characters try and put on the worst show possible with an offensive script and terrible actors, but ultimately they create an accidental success that is seen as a satire of the Nazi regime. With Cats, it's the opposite. Hooper clearly thought that he had found the "perfect" special effects and the "perfect " cast for a film based on a well-loved musical, but combined together, they ended up creating an absolute trainwreck.

Looking back, it's easy to track down Hooper's decline in cinema. He had massive success with The King's Speech, did okay with Les Mis and The Danish Girl and then sucked with Cats. He could potentially have a comeback if he does a better film afterwards, but given the points that I've brought up, it's unlikely that he will completely be able to cover up the flaws in his film-making style again. Which is not a completely bad thing, but it's still something to keep in mind.


[10th April UPDATE: Coincidentally at the same time that I uploaded this article, online reviewer Lindsay Ellis uploaded the video "Why Cats?" that brings up some of the same points that I do. I did not know this until the 9th April, and I am so happy that she has explored this topic as well. This one actually goes further into the analysis of "Oscar-bait" musical adaptations such as their origins. Seriously, she does really good videos and I've feel they're gotten even better over the years, especially with the increasing emphasis on film theory and analysing details. I'll put the link here so that you can check it out - it's a really interesting analysis and a fun one too. Remember to check out her other videos as well. ;)]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6iqAip-ZNo