ok so what I have to articulate RIGHT NOW before I see Cats and have my whole life fucking changed is that anyone who says “well they look just as creepy as they did in the stage show” is a liar and is avoiding some hard truths which I will detail below:
The cats in the STAGE MUSICAL Cats are very obviously not meant to look like real life cats. I would argue that some of them don’t even look like people-dressed-up-as-cats. They’re, like, an abstraction. A stylized 80s version of the sexy cat costume. You are meant to recognize them as human dancers wearing very pretty feline makeup and human clothes. The cat part is mostly portrayed through their movements and body language (it’s a ballet, it’s jazz, it’s interpretive dance—literally whatever, but you can tell they’re being cats)
There is no attempt to make their outfits look like extensions of their bodies, and I think this is what’s throwing people off. They don’t have fur all over them, they have patterned bodysuits. They don’t have paws, they have legs warmers. They don’t have tails coming out of their asses, they have cute belts with “tails” on them. Hell, they hardly have EARS, their very human haircuts are stylized to have TUFTS which kind of look like EARS. They don’t move, they don’t twitch, it doesn’t look like they have flesh and blood ears rotating on top of their craniums, it’s all diagetic.
Basically: the stage cats look like people dressed as cats, while the movie looks like cats dressed as humans. I get very strong skinwalker vibes from looking at it because there’s no attempt at makeup or costuming. There’s nothing there. These motherfuckers really went and tried to make them look like the Cat Homunculi that God Forgot when they were supposed to be stylized jazzercise dancers!!!!
above: a woman in a leotard, fashionably dressed for the 90s dance scene with her pixie cut and fingerless gloves
above: demon that eats human skin
i never particularly liked the Cats stage show costumes, but hot damn has the movie made me appreciate the hell out of them.
