In An Unprecedented Move, Universal Is Sending Theatres A Patched Version Of Cats

In An Unprecedented Move, Universal Is Sending Theatres A Patched Version Of Cats

Cats, Tom Hooper’s memetic hazard of a musical, is receiving unprecedented treatment from its distributors at Universal. As shared by the Hollywood Reporter, the company is sending theatres an updated version of the Ozymandias-like monument to hubris and toxoplasmosis. This new version of the film, according to a memo sent to thousands of theatres across the United States—the film’s release day—will include “some improved visual effects.”

[referenced url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2019/12/cats-review-i-have-seen-sights-no-human-should-see/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/g92zhgja9kkadrpetkaq.jpg” title=”Cats Review: I Have Seen Sights No Human Should See” excerpt=”I have been processing this movie for the last 24 hours trying to understand anything as terrifying and visceral a trainwreck as Cats. You have to see Cats.”]

Improved, there, probably being an understatement, considering what we know about the effects in the “finished” version of the film seen by critics. As explained by our own Alex Cranz, who called Cats a film that, if all were just in God’s heaven and man’s earth, “should not exist”:

I witnessed an entire man, knit cap and coat, just standing in a scene among a gathering of cats. I saw a terrifying grey statue looming over a character, only for it to blink and realise it’s a woman who is a cat, but they coloured her and then forgot to add fur. In one scene, nearly all of Judi Dench’s hand is a fluffy blond like her the coat of her cat character, Deuteronomy. In another, it’s just her regular hand, replete with what appears to be a wedding ring. Most cats have human feet, but some cats wear shoes. Except for newcomer Francesca Hayward, a ballerina who does a long and gorgeous dance number on pointe. It’s a beautiful skill and the kind of thing you’d normally need to pay to see in a theatre. Here you see it for the price of a single movie ticket! But they CGI’d out her ballet shoes and gave her digital toes that skitter weightlessly across the floor, engendering a powerful feeling as wrong as that Pixar baby 30 years ago.

So, yeah, the effects had some problems, is the takeaway here, and appear to have been in a variety of states of unfinished when the film was initially released. And by unfinished, we mean less that the film has some rough patches and more that the whole social fabric of cinema is undone in the failures of Cat’s CGI, that the Satanic bargain of imagination is itself unfurled before us like a forbidden scroll, that we may see the cost of it and know man’s folly.

So it’s getting patched. Which is not something that films do. It’s something video games do, because finishing video games on time is impossible and video games are always lurching forward in a terminal state of unfinished chaos, one stray glance away from breaking entirely. Movies are not supposed to be like this. Movies are supposed to be one and done affairs, legitimately completed and then released and then placed on a shelf until such time as the director gets cranky and decides to re-edit the damn thing. But Cats isn’t like other movies. No movie is supposed to be like Cats.

If you want to see the mind-bending brokenness of Dame Judi Dench as a half-CGI furry/half-regular person chimera before it gets the Day One Patch treatment, you should probably get a move on, and maybe pick somewhere rural: THR says that the film’s update will be rolled out today via a satellite server, with theatres not able to access the online infrastructure receiving it via hard drive by Tuesday.

While they’re at it, I hope Universal nerfs Idris Elba’s Macavity. He’s just too powerful.

Cats version, uh, let’s say 1.2, is in theatres now, or soon will be. You have been warned.

[referenced url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2019/09/cats-really-do-bond-with-their-humans-study-finds/” thumb=”https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-large/t8horzgxsstdpxsjacif.jpg” title=”Cats Really Do Bond With Their Humans, Study Finds” excerpt=”It’s a widely held assumption, even by some cat owners, that domestic felines don’t get much socially from being our pets. But a new study out Monday is the latest to suggest that many cats form healthy bonds with their humans, in much the same way as dogs and human babies do.”]