[ SECRET POST #6234 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #6234 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.


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[Cyberpunk 2077]



































Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 20 secrets from Secret Submission Post #891.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

05. https://i.imgur.com/BlsYxta.png

[(Anonymous)]

Ahaha. I didn't think Gerard Butler was very good at the singing part, but I thought Emmy Rossum did fine. Mind you, I'm not a musical/opera fan in general, and IME people who like PotO and have seen multiple Broadway performances generally disagree.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, musical fans and opera fans are usually quite a different bunch. If I were to get on a high horse it would be easy to talk trash about musicals compared to opera because the singing is just that different, opera is its very own intense beast.

I won't, though, because they are different art forms -- and both are great if you ask me.

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed. I loved the visuals as well.

[(Anonymous)]

He was fine, yeah. People complained because they wanted something to complain about but I'd be willing to bet a good deal of people got into PotO because of this version, myself included. It's fine to like this or that artist more, especially when you can so easily compare how they did one same role justice, but there was quite a lot of unnecessary vitriol directed at Butler's performance.

I'll still gladly pop in the DVD to rewatch this film or the CD to listen to the soundtrack again and it doesn't make me any less a fan than those who have a recording with Sarah Brightman as Christine -- or those who are fans of the book first and foremost, for that matter.

OP to secret maker

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for turning my comment into a secret!

[(Anonymous)]

Nah, his voice was weak and his performance was horribly undermined by the movie's insistence on a) uncovering most of his face at various times and b) making his terrible face look like maybe some mild sunburn.

Michael Crawford may be a douche, but his Phantom was really good.

[(Anonymous)]

i know nothing about the other phantoms in detail, but omg i hate when people give butler's performance shit. i love that he sounds 'worse'. he's a teacher, not the prize pupil for a reason, lmao.

[(Anonymous)]

The Phantom is canonically a musical prodigy with a divinely, ethereally beautiful singing voice. (This is partly why Christine's willing to believe he is the "Angel of Music" her father told her stories about.) He couldn't turn his talent into a mainstream career, because he was ostracized for his looks.

At the time the 2004 film came out, I was a diehard True Phan who worshipped Crawford. I went to see the movie and was disappointed as I expected to be. I bought the DVD to give it another chance. As soon as Gerard started singing "Music of the Night," I turned it off, put the DVD away, and never touched it again.

When I saw this secret come up as a comment, I looked up his MOTN performance on Youtube, and thought...... He's not as terrible as I remembered?

...damn, it's been 20 years.

[(Anonymous)]

No, he's meant to be a spectacularly good singer, who does in fact perform his own opera later (in a mask). But he could never perform because of his deformity, so he haunts the opera house and stalks Christine instead. Emmy Rossum was a good Christine, which makes me wonder how much better she could have been with a good Phantom.

One thing I really liked about the movie was that their Raoul was quite good! He's often kind of off-putting, but not this one!

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, Raoul has a fine line to walk and movie!Raoul did well.

[(Anonymous)]

I absolutely love this movie, I just don’t mention it to anyone because they expect me to defend it.
I think Michael Crawford’s Phantom singing was far superior but you know what? The visuals from the movie makeup for Butler’s average voice and then some!

[(Anonymous)]

His voice isn't awful, but it's not a great match for the part as written and they were too scared of the phans to adapt the music to suit the voice better. That said, Butler did better with Phantom than Depp did with Sweeney.

[(Anonymous)]

The casting of this is pretty interesting to me, in that Hugh Jackman couldn't play The Phantom because of Van Helsing, Anne Hathaway couldn't play Christine it because Of Princess Diaries 2, and Shumacher was impressed by Butler's performance in Dracula 2000.

[(Anonymous)]

I remember hearing that Schumacher wanted a young teen as Christine and told Hathaway she was too old for the part, or something. That she turned down the role when she was told Christine was meant to be a teen, anyway.

I would've loved Jackman and Hathaway in the roles, especially since Butler only sounds as good(?) as he does because his voice was autotuned and edited to hell and back.

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting. I remember hearing Charlotte Church was approached for the role of Christine, on the condition that she lose weight. She told the producers to fuck off. Respect!

[meadowphoenix]

i think he was actually quite bad and his badness made the plot nonsensical and christine dumb as hell. i love the movie and i rewatch it all the time.

[(Anonymous)]

Christines are always dumb as hell. 2004 Christine just also has a tin ear.

[meadowphoenix]

you're not wrong, but at least i can believe the other chrstines have been indoctrinated by the church aesthetic and focus on ~beauty~ enough to get it. but an ugly-sounding one? no way you wouldn't immediately think demon.

[(Anonymous)]

Sorry OP, still loathe Butler's voice, Schumacher's casting choices, and pretty much everything about the film but the chandelier rise/flashback framing and Patrick Wilson's Raoul (hair and age difference with Rossum aside.)

I would've preferred Crawford to Butler, because Crawford could actually sing the role without being autotuned and replacing digital editing for breath control, but it's not like the choice was Butler or no-one.

I don't even much like Ramin Karimloo's Phantom, but if he'd been Erik and Butler had had a brief cameo as Papa Daaé I would maybe even forgive setting the movie in fucking 1871. Paris Commune, anyone? I'm not saying I wouldn't watch that war movie, but what a stupid mistake. Would've loved Jackman in the role, or been interested in seeing what Will Ferrill did with it to repeat the "they cast who?" Crawford situation.

And there were a ton of stage actors who could've done it, or Butler could've been dubbed like Minnie Driver if Schumacher's determination to see Butler's (padded!) butt on the big screen couldn't be swayed.

Schumacher specifically picked Butler because he wanted a rock and roll, 12 pack a day smoker to play a character with a hideous face and glorious voice, because Schumacher was an idiot. He thought the whole point of the musical was to make the cast young and sexy.

The only reason I don't loathe Butler's performance in general is that he went on record saying he refused to do the final lair confrontation scene shirtless and told Schumacher he would be missing the point and undermining the emotional core of the show if Christine fighting for her freedom and Raoul's life and the Phantom's epiphanies about love and compassion were overshadowed by Butler's bare hairy chest.

So thank you, Gerard Butler, for at least getting that right. Maybe if you'd been dubbed I would've hated Gerik less.

Sorry again OP but you poked my combo 30 year old Phantom of the Opera hyperfixation and 20 year old anti-2004 movie grudge.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, he's excellent in the campiest of ways possible.

His Eric gives no shits except for his childishly selfish desires. You can feel the passion exuding from Gerard Bulter.

[(Anonymous)]

So I think there is a thing with musical fans, where they're so involved in the medium, what they think is a bad singer is what most people consider pretty good, actually. I think most people would hear Hugh Jackman and think "yeah, he's good at singing", where people really into musicals can notice he isn't good enough for a lead role on Broadway or the West End. Whereas everyone can agree Russell Crowe's singing as Javert was bad.

All this is to say, Butler was more Russell Crowe than Hugh Jackman.

[(Anonymous)]

The sad thing is, Hugh Jackman is a GREAT singer who HAS starred in live stage musicals before. I've actually seen him give a live concert where he sang his favorite songs for 2 hours, and he was phenomenal.

I have no idea WTF happened in Les Mis movie. He was like a different person.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT

I think the director was highly encouraging for "realism" so Hugh Jackman wasn't focused on singing well. He was focused on acting his ass off as he sang his lines.

Like, I get what the movie was going for but I hate it and I'd argue that is missing the point of making a film/play a musical to begin with.

[(Anonymous)]

NAYRT - Butler's voice was autotuned and otherwise mucked with to even sound as good (lol) as he did.

Iirc the director on Les Mis wanted everything sung on set with minimal post processing (I would guess Crowe got some) which is setting everyone up to suck.

Plus, I have zero musical training, but I would place Jackman as a baritone, iirc his first stage musical role was Gaston in Beauty and the Beast.

But Valjean is famously a really high tenor role, to the point where there's a parody of Bring Him Home that goes "God it's high/it's too high/it's so high/bring it down."

And for whatever reason, whoever was in charge didn't transpose the part down to a range Jackman could handle without just autotuning him up into the stratosphere, and the director didn't want any post processing (which is ridiculous because obviously they had to do some sound mixing and remove set noise and shit anyway.) So you can hear the strain of him trying to falsetto his way through.

And the difference between Butler and Jackman is that Jackman has a range that can handle singing shit more complicated than Row Row Row Your Boat and Butler doesn't. No amount of raising or lowering the Phantom's songs would've found a range where Butler could sing the whole thing.

There have been baritone Valjeans and Eriks onstage where either they had the extension to reach the tenor high notes anyway or their whole part was transposed down, but there was no rescuing Butler.