Expect to hear the haunting refrain of “Memory,” as performed by Jennifer Hudson, approximately 80 times in the office today: There’s a good chance your coworkers are all watching the “Cats” trailer, and there’s a very good chance they’re all horrified by it.
The trailer dropped Thursday for the live action adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd-Webber musical, starring Hudson alongside Taylor Swift, Idris Elba, James Corden, Jason Derulo, Judi Dench and the Royal Ballet’s Francesca Hayward among others. Alas, if Twitter’s anything to go by, the internet was more mystified than enchanted — and in some cases, downright terrified.
In a teaser clip released earlier this week, director Tom Hooper lauded the movie’s use of “digital fur technology” to create “the most perfect covering of fur.” When the cats were revealed, however — an uncanny amalgamation of the actors’ human faces and a feline-adjacent body — social media users were less than convinced.
Some were perplexed by the specifics of the cats’ anatomy: why the human/cat hybrids had breasts, for instance, or where exactly their tails protruded from.
The trailer raised another perturbing question: In a world where cats have human faces and loosely human physiques, where do actual humans, owners of the colossal beds and sofas and chandeliers the cats play on, fit in?
Others wondered how, exactly, names like Hudson, Swift, Elba and Corden could be attached to something quite so bizarre:
And some couldn’t see what all the fuss was about:
As is the internet’s wont, parody versions began to emerge soon after the trailer dropped. Some social media users replaced Hudson’s vocal performance with a more fittingly haunting score: the soundtrack to 2018 sci-fi horror movie “Annihilation,” for instance, or, in a Jordan Peele-approved effort, the music from this year’s horror film “Us.”
“Cats” will be released December 20, 2019 — and this actual cat will absolutely not be attending:
