Cats Director Tom Hooper Says He Found Criticism of the Movie's Effects ‘Entertaining’

While the first trailer for Cats may have caused an internet frenzy, director Tom Hooper recently admitted that all the attention was somewhat of a shock to him.

In a November interview with UK magazine Empire, the 47-year-old filmmaker opened up about the online criticism of the movie’s initial trailer — which dropped on July 18 and quickly turned into a worldwide internet phenomenon — and said he found it “entertaining.”

“I was just so fascinated because I didn’t think it was controversial at all,” he told the outlet in his first-ever interview about the screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s famous musical.

He continued, “So it was quite entertaining. Cats was apparently the number-one trending topic in the world, for a good few hours at least.”

The director also pointed out that the movie had “only finished shooting in March” when the initial trailer was released in July and many of the visual effects have since been updated.

“All the visual effects were at quite an early stage,” he explained. “Possibly there were, in the extremity in some of the responses, some clues in how to keep evolving [the production]. When you watch the finished film, you’ll see that some of the designs of the cats have moved on since then, and certainly, our understanding of how to use the technology to make them work has gone up, too.”

After the first glimpse into the star-studded remake of the classical musical dropped this summer, confused viewers did not hold back when it came to voicing their opinions on Twitter.

“The #Cats trailer goes deep into the Uncanny Valley and discovers there is no bottom. Pure, straight-up nightmare fuel,” one user wrote.

“To whom does one report an abomination? A priest?” another user tweeted alongside the trailer.

“The Cats trailer cursed the next four generations of my bloodline,” author Victoria Aveyard expressed.

“The cats trailer was frightening! I was so scared. I might not see it as a musical, but I will definately [sic] go see it as a scary movie!” a different user said on Twitter.

Comedian Ian Abramson also got in on the fun and emphasized the eeriness of the Cats trailer by editing the song “I Got Five On It” used in Jordan Peele‘s Us onto the feline film clip.

Some users went into detail with their criticism, questioning why the cast (Taylor Swift, Jennifer Hudson, Idris Elba, Rebel Wilson, Judi Dench and James Corden) had such human-like features, including breasts.

“I don’t know why you’re all freaking out over miniature yet huge cats with human celebrity faces and sexy breasts performing a demented dream ballet for kids,” one tweet read.

Cats debuts in theaters on Dec. 20.

Source: Read Full Article