cats-trailer-memes

Movieclips Trailer/YouTube

The new ‘Cats’ trailer is here to make you want to claw your eyes out 

At least some good memes were spawned from that horror show.

Photo of Alyse Stanley 

Alyse Stanley

Streaming

Posted on Jul 18, 2019   Updated on May 20, 2021, 8:25 am CDT

The first trailer for the Cats movie musical adaptation dropped Thursday, and it will make you want to claw your eyes out.

The trailer for director Tom Hooper’s adaption earned nearly 100,000 views and its own Twitter moment–only an hour after its release. Seeing the famous cast–including Taylor Swift, Idris Elba, and Rebel Wilson–mutated into bizarre CGI human-cat hybrids, with what looks like an Instagram filter straight from hell seems to have scarred all those viewers for life.

But hey, at least the horror show is pumping out some good memes.

Much of the conversation revolves around the actors’ looks: 50% human, 50% feline, and 100% horrifying.

A Twitter account posing as the official Cats one joked that “the cats in Cats (2019) will have realistic spiked penises,” and I–like, no doubt, the thousands of others who liked the post–half-believed it at first.

https://twitter.com/jaboukie/status/1151972684835840001

Others set the trailer to a more appropriate score, like the one from Annihilation or Us.

https://twitter.com/ianabramson/status/1151977667207372800

As someone who saw Cats on Broadway, I can say with good authority that the original costumes are only marginally less frightening. The large set pieces in the new Cats trailer make the actors seem, well, cat-size, which is a change from the play that somehow manages to make things even more disturbing.

The trailer also had plenty of users confused over what exactly this movie is about. Which again, as someone who’s seen the play, I still don’t really get either.

“The plot of Cats is that they’re cats and they introduce themselves until one of them gets permission to die,” Twitter user Louis Peitzman wrote, which sounds about right.

Users began comparing screencaps and GIFs of the trailer to other horrifying memes, like Nicolas Cage’s face on a cat and Jemaine Clement’s failed transformation in What We Do in the Shadows.

https://twitter.com/Pizza_Suplex/status/1151972076410089472

https://twitter.com/BAKKOOONN/status/1151962988267659265

https://twitter.com/smthngdarkside/status/1151980811735982081

https://twitter.com/urdadwayne/status/1151988661497393154?s=21

And of course, the trailer brought to mind other characters whose CGI transformations failed to impress, like our toothy Sonic the Hedgehog.

https://twitter.com/tsampson/status/1151971132926496771

https://twitter.com/theblakebagu/status/1151987128051462144?s=21

Many were also quick to point to former “adaptations” of the musical.

https://twitter.com/krangtnelson/status/1151978924764794880?s=21

Perhaps most frightening of all is what the new adaptation will inspire. Some are anticipating a Cats FaceApp and Snapchat filter.

https://twitter.com/laura_hudson/status/1151967688249360384?s=21

Cats is set to premiere in December of 2019.

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*First Published: Jul 18, 2019, 7:59 pm CDT

Alyse Stanley

Alyse Stanley is a video game and culture reporter based in Virginia with words at Polygon and USGamer. When she’s not writing about memes, she edits Unwinnable’s monthly magazine. You can follow her on Twitter @pithyalyse.

Alyse Stanley