Film Features

Why Tom Hooper Is the Defining Director of the 2010s

Love him or hate him, he is THE director of our generation.

Tom Hooper

Photo by Kristina Bumphrey/StarPix/Shutterstock

"Find you a man who can do both."

A bit of advice that began life as a meme, became general relationship advice, and finally settled in the culture as an identifier of any multi-talented individual. "A man who can do both" is what this generation demands of its lovers and heroes alike. It is the embodying cry of a generation that was forced via technology to adapt to multiple circumstances, to code-switch at will between professional and text speak, to lead a meaningful life in the midst of unavoidably-publicized global crises and catastrophe. We "do both" by necessity. We have built our culture around "doing both." This duality is what made Tom Hooper the perfect director for these times.

While Tom Hooper's name isn't exactly among household names like Steven Spielberg, Greta Gerwig, or Quentin Tarantino, he has been putting out critically and commercially acclaimed work for the last decade, enough to vault him into the same category as the aforementioned by any metric. His 2010 film, The King's Speech, cleaned up at the Oscars. Nominated for an astounding 12 awards, it won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Colin Firth) and Best Screenplay. He followed that up in 2012 with the best version of Les Miserables ever put to film, an enormously expensive production in which the actors sung live during each take, something that was previously unheard of for a movie musical. He finished his winning streak with The Danish Girl in 2015, a tragically under-seen powerhouse film that showcased two little-known actors who would go on to win Oscars: Eddie Redmayne and Alicia Vikander, the latter of whom won for Danish Girl.

Hooper became known in film circles for the performances he drew from his actors, his sweeping wide shots, his careful shot construction, and his intensely-purposeful plotting. He became quickly associated with other contemporary masters like Paul Thomas Anderson and David Fincher. After three consecutive films that garnered rave critical reviews and made their budgets back at the box office (Les Miserables made almost $500 million worldwide), the world waited with bated breath to see what Tom Hooper's next move would be. If you still hadn't heard of him after Danish Girl came out, you can be forgiven for your ignorance, because Hooper went into hibernation for the next four years. He emerged after all that time for one final masterwork, the film he is now most famous for, and the one he will undoubtedly be remembered for:

Cats!

In an unbelievable turn of events, Tom Hooper, who a decade earlier owned the Oscars, tried his hand again at making musicals, adapting Andrew Lloyd Webber's surrealist broadway smash-hit for the screen. It did not turn out well.

Cats!, released just last December, was an expensive disaster for a multitude of reasons. It was critically panned. It lost $25 million dollars on an estimated $100 million-dollar budget, much of which was invested in special-effects like "Digital Fur Technology" (i.e. digitally covering every actor in fur so they appeared more convincingly like anthropomorphic cats than if they were to wear costumes). Dame Judi Dench and Sir Ian Mckellen, British thespians of the highest-degree, shared scenes with Jason Derulo and Taylor Swift. But weird sometimes works. It just didn't work here.

At least during its wide release, it didn't. Although still under a year old, Cats is gaining new life in a cult-film scene that includes movies such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Room. There is a growing contingent of the population interested in watching and re-watching the objectively awful CatsCatsfor the sake of its unintended hilarity and for how well it mixes with drugs or alcohol. This is the great coup of Tom Hooper. This is why he embodies this generation's defining decade better than any other director: he can do both.

Tom Hooper spent the better part of the 2010s proving he was a director of the highest caliber, who could create compelling films with varied budgets, varied casts, and in varied genres. Tom Hooper also spent the final month of the 2010s proving he could screw up almost every part of a film and still find success in it. There is an unprecedented and exciting element in his career. While it's not at all uncommon for acclaimed directors to make career missteps, none of his caliber has ever made such an appalling dud of a film after such a profound string of successes. Regardless of where his movies will eventually settle in cinematographic academia or how they will age, you can't look away from them. What does it say about his work that Cats is probably his best known film? But watch any of his three earlier hits, and one can see they're obvious masterpieces, smart and funny and often heartbreaking, well-acted and well-shot and well-written.

Defining this decade of film is a really heartening endeavor. Careers like Greta Gerwig's (Lady Bird, Little Women) and Ari Aster's (Hereditary, Midsommar) and Damian Chazelle's (Whiplash, La La Land) thundered to life. The masters like Tarantino (Django Unchained, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) and Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman, The Revenant) made some of their best work. Female directors were criminally under-utilized and under-recognized (only Gerwig was even nominated for Best Director this decade, joining only five women, ever), and perhaps that is the defining story of the decade.

But the defining director still must be decided, and Tom Hooper is the one with the most range, who created a classic Oscar darling, revolutionized movie-musicals, and crafted the next great midnight cult film. The defining director of the decade is the one who can and did do both. Tom Hooper may not be the best director, but his whiplashing career reflects the chaos of the 2010s, and the generation of millennials who claimed it as their own.

CULTURE

Suggestions for Celebrity New Year's Resolutions in 2020

It's not the advice they want, but it's the advice that they need

Photo by: Kelly Sikkema / Unsplash

With the year coming to an end, the annual announcement of New Year's resolutions are kicking off.

People want to make changes in their lives, and a new calendar gives people the occasion to rethink their habits and try to live better in 2020. But so often we are not the best judges of our own problems. Like the friend who announces that he's going to start eating more kale as he downs his eighth shot of tequila, it's sometimes necessary to get some outside perspective from the people who love you most. With that in mind, it's time to take a cold, critical look at our best celebrity friends, and give them the advice they need for the new year—whether they want it or not.

Kanye West: Don't Start a Cult

Kanye West attends the Manus x Machina Fashion in an Age of Technology Costume Institute Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Photo by: By Ovidiu Hrubaru / Unsplash

Kanye, you've never been the kind of person who does things the easy way. You could have stuck with being a musical genius, but you decided to be a fashion icon too, and you created the Yeezy. When they gave a Grammy to Taylor Swift instead of Beyonce, you didn't tweet something passive aggressive—you got up on stage and did something about it. When you were in debt, you didn't talk to your bank, you asked Mark Zuckerberg for $50 million. And more than a decade after you said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people," when it seemed like the whole world was finally ready to stand up and condemn a Republican president's bigotry, you declared that Donald Trump was your brother because you're both "dragon energy."

So now that you've started your Sunday Services, released an album of spirituals, and produced a Christian Opera—Oratorio?—you are fully set up to devote the rest of your life to developing and running the cult of Yeezus. But is that really how the greatest artist of all time should be focusing his energy? Sure you could convert your fans into an insular flock of devout followers who would die for you. But at this point, that would honestly be too easy. It's time to shake things up. It's probably not too late to decide to be the most influential sculptor of our generation, or the greatest therapy patient of all time. Even if you decide to focus your energy on your 2024 presidential run, that's cool, as long as you avoid taking the easy path: Don't start a cult. Also, please don't tell T.I. that investigating his daughter's hymen is "god approved..."

Kim Kardashian West: Fix the American Justice System

Kim Kardashian attends the CFDA Fashion Awards at Cipriani South Street, in New York

Photo by: Evan Agostini/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

Kim, you've honestly been doing some amazing stuff in the past couple years, and we all kind of feel like we were underestimating you. For too long we thought of you as just a reality show star and a fashion model—an artifact of America's vapid celebrity obsession. But you are so much more than that. Since 2017 you have helped free dozens of prisoners who were falsely convicted or hit with overly punitive sentences. In 2020, we're going to start setting our expectations higher to really help you reach your full potential. Starting January 1st, you have twelve months to fully fix the problems with the American justice system. If you finish early, maybe try to solve climate change too. And maybe check on your husband—seems like he's trying to start a cult.

Tom Hooper: Don't Make Any More Musicals

Tom, after you directed The King's Speech, you won the Oscars for both Best Picture and Best Director in 2010, and you clearly felt empowered to pursue your true passion—making star-studded movie versions of classic musicals. Les Miserables was a hit at the box office, and it even won some awards, but the reviews were mixed. You could have asked yourself why you cast Russel Crowe in a movie that required him to sing, or you could have taken that as a sign that your passion for musicals may not be aligned with your particular talents as a filmmaker, but you were undeterred, and we admire your perseverance. That said, with the selection of your second musical adaptation, you revealed something important about yourself: You have terrible taste in musicals.

Cats has always been a bad musical, and there was probably no way you could have made it into a good movie. You may have misunderstood the appeal that allowed the show to run for 18 years on Broadway—people liked the wild costumes, and the way the performers moved through the audience. The music itself was only ever decent at best, and your ambitious plan to put Idris Elba, Ian McKellen, and Dame Judi Dench in motion capture suits, and digitally convert them into cat creatures would have been misguided even if the result hadn't turned out so deeply unsettling. So, while you've scrambled to recover something watchable from the ashes of this disastrous movie (please don't—it's better as a disaster), we want to make sure you go into 2020 with this important lesson: never again.

Jeremy Renner: Make a "Cats" Movie

Jeremy, no one appreciates your genius. People spent much of 2019 mocking your musical ambitions and using your personal app to embarrass you. It's time for you to show the world that you have nothing to be embarrassed of. Take your incredible singing voice and your untamed energy to a project that truly deserves you: Cats.

We know it's not what people expect, but you're unpredictable, we gotta tell you. And sure, they tried to make a Cats movie this year, but they forgot the secret ingredient—that certain, special Rennergy. You could play every role! And also, all the characters names could be changed to Jeremy Renner, and instead of CGI, you could just be buck naked, covered in body paint. All us Renner heads would go crazy for it. It's a good idea, and it's how you should spend 2020.

Eddie Murphy: Don't Leave Us Again

Eddie, you were gone too long, and your comeback has been too good. Don't be a Mickey Rourke. Be a Michael Keaton—come back for good. Dolemite Is My Name is an amazing movie, and your recent appearance on SNL destroyed their usual ratings. So don't just tease us that you might get back into stand-up or you're thinking about another movie. Make 2020 your year. That is all.

Bill Maher: Lose a Lot of Weight

Bill, you made headlines in September by advocating for fat shaming saying that "it needs to make a comeback" and, "Shame is the first step to reform," and you couched it in terms that made it sound like you were helping people get healthy. You seemed to be implying that people who struggle with obesity don't even realize there's an issue, and they need your bullying in order to see themselves clearly. We were shocked, not because you were ignoring the fact that a shame spiral of yo-yo dieting is actually more detrimental to cardiovascular health than obesity itself, but because you delivered your proclamation with such the smug sense of superiority. It meant that you were absolutely right—that you can't even see what a disgusting pig you are.

Bill, you may think that you are as slim and svelte as ever, but the jowls beginning to form on your cheeks tell a different story. We have to wonder what you even see when you look in the mirror, because for must of us it's hard to even stomach looking at you. To put it bluntly, if you don't have the decency to be ashamed of yourself, we'll have to shame you into dropping some of the excess weight you're lugging around. An adult male skeleton typically weighs around 25 pounds, so our best estimate suggests that you should aim to lose about 135 pounds in 2020. That might sound like overkill, but trust us, no one will miss it when it's gone.

Elon Musk: Get Off the Internet

Elon Musk at the Rihanna's First Annual Diamond Ball at the The Vineyard on December 11, 2014 in Beverly Hills, CA

Photo by: Kathy Hutchins / Shutterstock

Elon, remember last summer in the aftermath of the Thai soccer team cave rescue, when people were criticizing your ill-conceived submarine plan, so you called that rescue worker "pedo guy?" And remember how now he's suing you? Or what about the people who have taken issue with your "mass transit" plan that involves drilling a new, single-lane car-tunnel every time traffic gets backed up? Remember how you called your critics "subway stalinists," and dismissed the recognized phenomenon of induced demand as "irrational?" And that's not even getting into all the abuse you took over the botched Cybertruck demo. That must have been hard for you, but not as hard as it was for the rest of the world when you tweeted that image of Tesla stock reaching 420.69...

The point is, you just don't seem to be mature enough to handle the internet. You are not alone, a lot of billionaires—and even "billionaires"—seem to have trouble controlling themselves on Twitter. The good news is, you can still have an active, vibrant life. By all means, keep developing new battery tech and launching free-internet satellites for the world to use. Just don't use the Internet yourself. Make 2020 the year of Elon unplugged. You'll be much happier without being confronted by all the people trying to poke holes in your genius, and we can maybe go back to thinking you're kind of cool.

Grimes: Leave Elon Musk

You're way too cool for him, and you know it.

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders: Please Save Us

Just in case Kim can't fix all our problems alone, could you two please team up and save the world from the people who are so afraid of you? Kthanksbye.

Screenshot from Cats – Official Trailer (Universal Pictures) HD / Universal Pictures UK / YouTube.com

Every serious Broadway enthusiast knows two things: 1.) All of the lyrics to "The Confrontation" from Les Misérables (both Jean Valjean and Javert's parts) and 2.) The fact that movie adaptations of musicals will always, always, always be massive disappointments.

The latter was proven beyond a shadow of a doubt when Tom Hooper, the Academy Award-winning director behind The King's Speech, tackled Les Misérables, resulting in perhaps the worst musical movie adaptation ever made. From the absurd number of claustrophobic close-ups to Russell Crowe's butchering of Stars, Hooper, despite all his accolades, failed his source material with gusto. But now, seven years after his first musical movie disaster, Hooper is trying again. And this time he has Cats.

As a movie reviewer with integrity, it's important for me to reveal my biases when I believe they might have affected my reading of a material. So here it is: I've seen Cats three times on Broadway, and it is consistently awful. With the exception of "Memory" and "Mr. Mistoffelees," every song in Cats is borderline unlistenable. The plot is nonexistent, mistaking an endless series of character introductions for a narrative. The costumes are stupid, and when you see Cats live, you're basically watching a bunch of horny actors roll on a stage and sniff each other's genitals. In other words, I hate Cats the musical.

Also, I had seen the abomination of a trailer, so I entered my viewing of Cats the movie with the express intent to laugh at it. Also, I was drunk and continued to drink smuggled alcohol throughout the screening. I think that covers all my biases.

Anyways, I f*cking loved Cats the movie. I give it a perfect 100%, 10/10, standing ovation. No, I am not being facetious. Tom Hooper's Cats was genuinely one of the greatest movie viewing experiences of my life. Allow me to explain.

After years of seeking out the worst movies ever made, I've learned that there's a distinct gap between a filmmaker who creates something intended to be schlocky and a filmmaker who makes baffling choices because they are genuinely insane. If a director set out with the express intent to make the most egregious, horrifying adaptation of Cats imaginable, I don't think they could accomplish anything close to what Tom Hooper created. In fact, I am convinced that Tom Hooper is genuinely insane.

With every scene, every shot even, Cats shocked, surprised, and repulsed me in ways that I didn't even know were possible. I can't even begin to organize all of my disparate, frankly worrying notes that I wrote down about this movie, so here is a list of some of them, mostly verbatim:

-Why do the Cats have fully human faces except with whiskers? Shouldn't Tom Hooper have at least painted the Cats' noses like they do on Broadway? Why did Tom Hooper possibly think this design was okay, and why didn't anybody stop him?

-Why do the Cats have human hands?

-Why do the Cats have human feet?

-Why do these Cats have human breasts?

-It's no wonder that people in this universe put their Cats in bags and literally hurl them off bridges. These things are abominations.

-Am I attracted to these Cats?

-DEAR GOD, THEY GAVE RATS THE FACES OF HUMAN CHILDREN.

-THEY GAVE COCKROACHES HUMAN FACES TOO, AND NOW CAT REBEL WILSON IS EATING THEM.

-Cat Jason Derulo is almost grosser than real Jason Derulo.

-Why do these cats not have buttholes?

-The slow motion effect they used when that one cat jumped a short distance in the opening number and then never used again for the entire movie, was very jarring.

-Why do Victoria and Magical Mr. Mistoffelees keep coming so close to making out?

-Do Cats make out?

-No, of course not. Jesus Christ, this is sick.

-Why did Tom Hooper add a romantic relationship between Victoria and Magical Mr. Mistoffelees in the first place? Who possibly wanted that?



-Was Tom Hooper only interested in making Cats so he could self-insert Magical Mr. Mistoffelees fan-faction?

-That actually makes sense.

-How does Cat Idris Elba have both cat hair and human facial stubble? Could such an atrocity actually occur in nature?

-What even is the difference between human hair and cat hair? Is it just a matter of thickness? If I shaved the hair around my cat's face would the stubble look like Idris Elba's stubble? If I let my facial hair grow out enough, could I become a Cat?

-How does Cat Idris Elba have human pectoral muscles?

-Why are two Cats wearing shoes but the rest aren't?

-Who put that Cat in special Cat pants? What the f*ck is happening?

-HOW BIG ARE THESE F*CKING CATS? First they seem to be normal Cat size, but now there's like 80 of them on a single train track. Did nobody care about consistency?

-Sir Ian McKellen lapped milk out of a bowl and said, "Meow Meow Meow." This could be the last movie he ever does. Is this the world we want to live in?

-Cat Rebel Wilson can apparently unzip her fur to reveal a dress over more fur, and I actually don't want to think about this any further.

-Cat Rebel Wilson is actually kind of hot.

-Oh God, am I attracted to these Cats?

-Cat Dame Judy Dench wears a cat fur coat. At one point, her tail is coming out through a hole in the back. At another point, there is no hole in the back for her tail. Does this mean Cat Dame Judy Dench owns two cat fur coats? Where does she keep the spare?

-There is a lot of snot around Cat Jennifer Hudson's upper lip. Like, a lot.

-Is Cat Jennifer Hudson's snot real? It looks pretty real. Was it someone's job on set to maintain Cat Jennifer Hudson's snot from shot to shot?

-Jellicle Cats are a cult, and the Jellicle Ball is a death ritual. This has always been known, but never before has any performance of Cats been brave enough to launch Grizabella into the sun.

-Magical Mr. Mistoffelees really needs to stop licking his lips behind Cat Dame Judy Dench—this is really f*cking me up.

-I'm actually broken. This movie broke me.

Truly, Cats broke me. When I entered my packed Cats screening in New York City on its opening Friday, I worried that I was the only one there with less than genuine intent, stifling laughter to avoid ruining the experience for everyone around me. But as soon as the first Cat appeared onscreen, the audience started laughing. By the end of the first song, the laughter was uproarious. And by the time "Mr. Mistoffelees" rolled around, roughly half the audience was literally clapping along. The experience of watching Cats didn't just break me; it broke all of us.

As the credits rolled, a man in front of me turned around and said, "That was the worst thing I've ever seen." Another man in front of him chimed in to agree. So did the girl next to him. Here we were, total strangers, experiencing a moment of transcendent unity during one of the most troubling times in our nation's history––all thanks to Tom Hooper's utterly horrific Cats.

Currently, Tom Hooper is insisting that movie theaters adopt a new, edited version of the movie with "improved" visual effects. I don't know what these changes entail, but I am certain that they are a monumental mistake. Changing the grotesque visuals of Cats threatens the very thing that makes Cats so special, and so much more than its source material.

Tom Hooper's Cats led me to experience emotions I've rarely felt during movie screenings. I laughed. I cried (with laughter). I wretched. I looked up a Cat lady's nostrils. I clapped along with strangers. I wretched some more. I questioned my sexuality.

Maybe Cats is the secret to our humanity. Or perhaps we've really been Cats all along.
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FILM

Why Do We Need a "Cats" Movie?

Cats is a terrible, terrible, terrible musical.

FREDERICK M. BROWN/GETTY; MICHELINE PELLETIER/SYGMA/GETTY; JOHN SCIULLI/GETTY

Cats is the Broadway equivalent of listening to a real cat being murdered.

Amongst musical fans, Cats is basically a joke at this point. There are so many amazing musicals on Broadway, from old favorites like Phantom of the Opera and Les Miserables to newer hits like Hamilton. And yet somehow, through what can only be the work of some unknowable cosmic horror, Cats continued to get butts in seats for decades. Who was still going to see Cats in 2016? Why would anyone subject themselves to such torture? Was a cabal of masochistic audiophiles singlehandedly keeping Cats afloat to play into their kinks?

Watching Cats live is a brutal experience, as it is terrible on every possible level. The music is barely listenable, cloying and screechy and singsongy. Yes, "Memory" is decent and "Mr. Mistoffelees" is fine if you've never listened to another musical before. But neither of these make up for the fact that "Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats" is an actual crime against humanity. Just try to make it through "Jellicle Cats" without killing yourself. Just try:

Jellicle Songs (Part 1) | Cats the Musicalwww.youtube.com

Amazingly, the narrative of Cats manages to be even worse than the music. The plot is completely nonsensical, following a bunch of singing cats as they embark on a giant acid trip, constantly finding new cats to dry heave on until they finally sacrifice an old cat to their acid cat god.

Choreography consists entirely of grown adults jumping on and off of platforms and sometimes rubbing their butts together. The costuming is terrifying, with everyone looking like an army of possessed Ronald McDonalds in cat-print spandex. I once read an interview with one of the actors who said that the entire cast was high off their a** for every single performance, and I'm pretty sure I made that up but I still believe it with 100 percent certainty.

In short, Cats is inarguably the worst musical in the history of Broadway––a blight on Andrew Lloyd Webber's otherwise stellar career––and everyone who enjoyed it suffered from some degree of Stockholm syndrome. Now, finally, Cats is off Broadway. So, DEAR G*D, why would anybody ever make a movie version?

It's not even a question, the Cats movie is going to be awful. The director is Tom Hooper, the man responsible for casting Russell Crowe as Javert in the movie version of Les Miserables, resulting in the world's single worst rendition of "Stars." If Tom Hooper was capable of screwing up an amazing show like Les Miserables, imagine the absolute mess he can make out of heaps and heaps of cat vomit.

Perhaps we'll finally get to watch Taylor Swift pretend to remove fleas from her skin, or see James Corden hump Jason Derulo in a new Bustopher Jones/ Rum Tum Tugger romantic subplot that I just decided I actually kind of want to happen. But most likely, the new Cats movie is just going to be straight-up terrible, because everything involving Cats is always terrible.

See for yourself below:

CATS - Official Trailer [HD]youtu.be