Anna Daniels
Shortly after Cats hit theaters, Universal pulled a stunning move when it announced that the film had to be re-released due to very obvious CGI blunders – like the generally unsettling look of human faces pasted on digital cat bodies, and the shot of a clearly visible wedding ring on the very human hand of Dame Judi Dench’s cat, Old Deuteronomy. That particular mistake was publicized by Variety‘s Jenelle Riley, who wrote on Twitter, “This isn’t a joke: CATS was rushed into theaters before being finished so a new version is being sent to theaters with updated effects. How do you know if you have the old version? Look for Judi Dench’s human hand, wedding ring and all.” Riley is correct: Cats was rushed quickly into theaters, leaving Hooper to finish the original cut just before its premiere, and clearly, an impossibly fast turnaround just wasn’t doable.
On the Reddit thread, users who reportedly worked on Cats relayed stories from behind the scenes, claiming that Hooper collaborated with a new VFX firm called MPC Technicolor in the wake of Cats‘ highly unpopular full-length trailer to improve the film’s visuals. It’s understandable that the VFX specialists behind Cats couldn’t make things perfect under a tight deadline (the first official trailer dropped in November 2019, one month before Cats was due out in theaters), and one user on the thread said that Hooper should be the one to blame for a “lack of realistic requests.”
According to another user, “Often cats were missing layers, lights, and cryptos were unusably broken. But you couldn’t ask for a rerender unless there was something egregious like a whole cat missing. The show was one uphill battle for every artist and sup[ervisor] involved, with a client that could only identify what they don’t like and not offer any clues as to how to get to what they did like. We did what we could.”
Despite these reported best efforts from MPC Technicolor and original VFX firm Mill Film, Cats looks completely bizarre: the size of the cats is wildly inconsistent, and the cat-human hybrids on screen are pretty terrifying.
Written by: Looper
