Hollywood’s film productions have made audiences around the world aware of an obvious problem: they feel like products produced on a film industry assembly line.
The Hollywood adaptation of a series of anime or game adaptations is also disappointing to fans of the original works.
The most recent example of this is The Great Detective Pikachu, a film spin-off from the Pokémon franchise that has had a big impact on general audiences around the world. Yes, very much so, but is it really a competent live-action game to game film?
It’s not as if the characters in the film are designed to appeal to the public aesthetic, and presenting some of the Pokémon in a role that is merely instrumental will please the original’s loyal fans; the film’s plot doesn’t touch the spirit of the original, and it’s just a popcorn-quality industrial product.
Hollywood will continue to make movies like “Pikachu”, and it seems that Hollywood is not listening to the complaints of the original’s loyal fans.
Recently, another Hollywood live-action adaptation was criticised by many foreign netizens from the moment the trailer was released. This live-action movie is Cats, and yes, the original is the same musical of the same name that is world-renowned.
I’m not a big fan of the original musical, but I’ve heard a lot about it, and when I look at the cast list for the live-action adaptation, it’s really a star-studded cast, and for me, just seeing Jennifer Hudson and Taylor Swift’s names makes me think that the cast of the live-action movie is really luxurious.
However, after the official trailer was released, many people were shocked by the look of the actors in the film.
As the title suggests, the cast of the live action movie are all anthropomorphic cats, with the exception of their faces, which are still human, and the rest of their bodies are covered in cat-like skin.
When the rest of the actors’ bodies look more like cats, except for their faces, which are real human faces, I think many viewers will start to focus on the non-human parts of the characters, such as the cat ears on top of their heads and the furry the cat’s body ……
This is what the “Valley of Terror Theory”, which has been quoted by many people, is all about.
Many viewers who watched the trailer for the live-action version of Cats were reminded of the previous live-action Sonic the Hedgehog movie that caused a worldwide furore, which made a similarly uncomfortable appearance when Sonic’s look was first announced.
As a hedgehog character, Sonic was also “overly anthropomorphic” in the live action film, most notably in the form of Sonic’s teeth, and audiences were equally uncomfortable to see the realistic hairy hedgehog character with even more realistic teeth in his mouth.
For anthropomorphic characters, Japanese 2D animation is more accessible to audiences. A more recent example is the fox anthropomorphic character in Miss Fairy Fox, which audiences find very cute, especially with her furry ears and large tail.
This is because she is a very flat character, and many of her facial features are simplified and symbolic. Compared to a real person, such a beautiful girl lacks a lot of detail, but because of this lack of detail and lack of anthropomorphism, viewers will pay more attention to the human-like parts of Miss Fairy Fox, such as her personality traits and body parts such as her limbs.
Gleaner really doesn’t quite understand why Hollywood did this to the character’s look in the live-action film of Cats. For the original musical, the characters on stage were more likely to be dressed in somewhat cat-like costumes, which was acceptable in terms of the overall effect.
But the special effects and the look of the live-action film are so realistic that Gleaner wonders if it would be more comfortable if the characters’ faces were still cat faces rather than human faces, given that they are anthropomorphic cats, or if the producers of the film felt that they had to show the faces of these superstars in order to get a bigger commercial hit after spending so much money on such a lavish cast?
Will loyal fans of the original “Cats” musical be disappointed when they see the trailer for the live-action movie as well?