Board Thread:Survivor 40: Annihilation/@comment-31148030-20190802215546/@comment-28511285-20190803022357

I know you're all expecting me to have a hot take on the CATS trailer. I can smell it on you.

What do you want me to say, huh? You want me to say it looks bad? A travesty of epic proportions, against all laws of god and man? You want me to tell you how fuzzy James Corden is gonna be crawling through my nightmares tonight?

You already knew that. You know how I feel about this shitty themed concert with delusions of being a musical. What do you want, you want me to be angry? I wish I could be, honestly. I wish I had the capacity to muster any kind of meaningful reaction. In any other universe I'd be lying on my floor in the fetal position right now, squealing softly with despair. But honestly? I gave up on the human experiment the moment my high school decided to put up CATS instead of Urinetown my senior year. Now? Now I'm just trying to get through the fucking day. I've got lifeless, photorealistic CGI lions to deal with, I don't have time for this shit.

They're all so. . . earnest. Like, look at that behind-the-scenes trailer. They're all so pumped to be there. They're working HARD on this! They got the choreographer from Hamilton! They are dancing! And filming! They are taking time, and effort, out of their busy celebrity schedules! It would be very easy to point at this. . . this THING, and attribute its existence to corporate greed, and say it's a cynical cash grab. And it is. But everything is a cynical cash grab now! LIFELESS! PHOTOREALISTIC! CGI! LIONS! I dare you to tell me that there is a single person on this Earth who is more excited about the Lion King remake than they are about this CATS movie.

No, the frustrating thing about CATS -- the horrifying thing that wakes me up in the middle of the night, the soul-crushing thing that creeps, unbidden, into my empty husk of a brain at inconvenient moments, and makes me question why I am even here, in this uncaring universe, what's the point of it all -- is not that it's cynical or empty. It's that people actually like CATS.People! Actual human people, many of whom I otherwise respect and admire! They love it. They love the songs, they love the lack of plot, they love its pointlessness. And nobody's manipulating them. They are in full possession of their free will. This was baffling to me before the CATS movie trailer, and it will be baffling after.

I like to think I am a relatively empathetic person. I'm trying to be, at least. Much of my job -- as a critic, as an actor, as a writer of fictions -- is directly linked to empathy. You need to imagine the perspectives of other people in order to achieve any semblance of success in my field; arguably, in any artistic field.

But CATS? I'm sorry. It's too far. If human empathy is a baseball game, CATS is me, collapsing from heat exhaustion just before I reach home base. If understanding perspectives different from my own is a hot-dog eating contest, this is me, vomiting onto some poor kid's face just before the bell rings.

Y'all have tested my limits, and I have been judged wanting. I have tried, HOO BOY have I tried. But I am physically incapable of going further. You win, alright? We can all go home now.



Long story short though, to answer your question yes I had a ton of fun but also it was an experience that killed me physically and emotionally and I never want to play another org this intense ever again. I hope that explains it well enough.