Taylor Swift will be in Tom Hooper’s upcoming holiday musical movie extravaganza Cats. We’ve seen quite a bit from the upcoming movie, which will feature Taylor Swift as Bombalurina, and the reaction has been quite visceral online. Even Taylor Swift recognizes the “weirdness” of the upcoming movie property.
Speaking about deciding to join Cats, Taylor Swift went way back in time to bring up the type of person she was as a young woman versus now, noting how people would ask her if she wanted to be an actress previously. All she knows is that she looks at acting projects differently these days and she really wanted to put her own spin on the strange and intriguing world of Cats. She noted:
When I was younger, I used to get questions like, ‘Where do you see yourself in 10 years?’ I’d try to answer. As I get older, I’m learning that wisdom is learning how dumb you are compared to how much you are going to know. I really had an amazing time with Cats. I think I loved the weirdness of it. I loved how I felt I’d never get another opportunity to be like this in my life.
Speaking to UK Vogue, the singer and sometimes actress also talked about performing in Cats, noting that Tom Hooper’s movie was created by performing live and via live takes. Ultimately, CGI was added after, leaving us with the look we’ve seen in the first and second trailers for the holiday release.
Of course, the trailer that got this whole thing going really highlights how strange – and wondrous to some!—the new movie will be. It’s heavily reliant on CGI and its anthropomorphic cats have been described as being representative of the uncanny valley. Take a look if you haven’t already.
Regardless, this has led to some polarizing responses online and Taylor Swift’s comment about the “weirdness” of creating Cats feeds right into the narrative. Some people who love the musical have been interested in the new look of the movie. And some people have responded negatively.
Recently, Tom Hooper even explained Cats has evolved in the time since fans have first gotten a look at it, and the movie has changed some in response to what fans have said about the flick, similar to what happened after the Sonic trailer dropped and later changed for the better.
We’d only finished shooting in March, so all the visual effects [in the trailer] were at quite an early stage. Possibly there were, in the extremity in some of the responses, some clues in how to keep evolving [the production]. When you watch the finished film, you’ll see that some of the designs of the cats have moved on since then, and certainly our understanding of how to use the technology to make them work has gone up, too.
Ultimately, Ian McKellen and other actors involved with the movie seem to love its look, and we'll have to wait and see how Cats fares when it hits theaters on December 20. For now, take a look at what all is coming out before the end of the year.
