From Cats to Star Wars: How Hollywood shot itself in the foot with its shameless fan service

Where ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ and ‘Cats’ have failed, ‘The Witcher’ has soared. In our latest arts column, Ed Power explores why bending over to please fans doesn’t end so well

It would be an exaggeration to claim Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is sinking like a stone. The closing chapter in Disney’s overstuffed Jedi trilogy has soared to a $175m opening weekend in the United States (and an additional $200m internationally). That’s the third highest ever haul for a movie in December. Not too shabby for a time of year when people are generally occupied with last-minute shopping and falling out with family members.

And yet those figures aren’t quite something from a galaxy far far away. It won’t have escaped Disney that the two films ahead on the winter leaderboard are its predecessors in the “Skywalker” series: 2015’s The Force Awakens ($248m) and The Last Jedi ($220m). A graph tracking the relative popularity of the three blockbusters would thus see The Rise of Skywalker plunging like Emperor Palpatine down that Death Star shaft in Return of the Jedi.

Still, Disney executives making bah-humbug noises about the soft box office can console themselves that at least their jobs aren’t on the line. There is less sanguinity, one imagines, over at Universal Pictures as it reels from the grim fandango that is Tom Hooper’s Cats.

The surreal feline musical is catnip for the haters and has hobbled its way towards a disastrous $6.5m in the US. Not what you want when elaborate CGI and a glitter-bomb cast including Judi Dench, Taylor Swift and Idris Elba have pushed production costs north of $100m. Those involved must be furry-ious (yes, the puns have been terrible too).

The backlash to Cats has been a delicious pre-Christmas treat. Critics have had fun comparing its bizarre special effects to life viewed through a “David Cronenberg Snapchat filter” and the darker recesses of David Lynch’s id. Notably absent from the discourse, however, are devotees of the 1981 Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Where have they all gone? Why aren’t they speaking out in defence of their Jellicle juggernaut?

Cats the stage production, lest we forget, is a stone-cold smash. It’s the sixth longest-running West End musical, a phenomenon that continues to thrill audiences worldwide.

And its fans are as diehard as any Jedi junkie. When Lloyd Webber updated Cats for a 2014 West End run, by including a rapping Rum Tum Tugger, one aficionado was so appalled that he set up a Facebook page, Preserve the Magic of Cats, and even contacted the playwright. Andrew Loyd Webber didn’t respond. But when Cats was revived on Broadway in 2016, Rum Tum Tugger had reverted to singing rather than dropping hip-hop bars.

Hooper will have therefore felt he was giving this significant pre-existing following exactly what it craved with a film that stays studiously faithful to the original. Where did they go when it came to the kitty crunch? JJ Abrams might have a similar question. The fans loathed Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi, a Star Wars movie that didn’t appear much impressed with Star Wars or, for that matter, Star Wars fandom. Amid the ensuing uproar, its box office was considered a disappointment (it ultimately netted $1.3bn – $700m down on Abrams’ The Force Awakens).

Abrams, returning to a saga he had started, must have thought he was doing the sensible thing by correcting course. Where The Last Jedi openly sneered at Star Wars hardliners, The Rise of Skywalker panders unstintingly.

So Han Solo’s best pal Lando Calrissian is parachuted in, seemingly for no reason other than that Abrams assumed this is what Star Wars fans would like to see. Complaints about Kylo Ren shattering his Darth Vader-esque helmet in The Last Jedi are addressed in a scene in which… Kylo Ren fixes his helmet. And there are big moments for the original power trio of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (the late Carrie Fisher).

Adam Driver as Kylo Ren in 'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' (Lucasfilm)

The Rise of Skywalker, in other words, doesn’t simply play to the Star Wars base: it tickles them under the chin and assures them that they are the best, smartest, cuddliest fan community ever. Hooper and Abrams might thus have a lot to empathise about should they find themselves seated beside one another at a New Year’s Eve dinner party. You bend over trying to please fans. And they shrug and yawn (and then run screaming for the hills in the case of Cats).

Against that backdrop it feels all the more significant that the hot new thing on TV is Netflix’s adaptation of The Witcher fantasy saga. Starring Henry Cavill as a mercenary with a manbun, the show has lit up the internet since debuting on 20 December.

Cavill’s repertoire of angry stares has become a wellspring for memes. The jokey “Toss a Coin To Your Witcher” song is social media’s unofficial Christmas anthem. The series has been hailed the new Game of Thrones – not least by Game of Thrones fans craving a fantasy fix since that the HBO/Sky Atlantic drama ended last summer. Amid the enthusiasm, what is telling is that The Witcher isn’t even passingly interested in catering to pre-existing fans. For one thing, it pretends the hit video-game spin-offs never existed.

And it radically remixes the cult Andrzej Sapkowski books. Timelines are tinkered with, the order of key events retooled extensively. Imagine if Game of Thrones had started with the Red Wedding and only later pushed Bran Stark out that window. Such is the trajectory The Witcher follows. 

The Witcher, in other words, cheerfully takes an axe to its pre-existing canon. And the public loves it. This is a reminder that fandom is an eccentric, idiosyncratic and contradictory beast. As Abrams and Hooper have learnt to their cost, trying to give the people what they think they want can be the equivalent of stabbing yourself in the toe with a lightsaber. It’s almost as if Hollywood would be better off chasing its own ideas rather than attempting to cynically reel in the punters with more of the same. Next Christmas, how about surprising cinema-goers with a blockbuster that at least tries to be original?