The New Cats Movie Trailer Is a Showcase of Slinky Feline Talent

(11/19/2019)

With just one month left until the release of the film, the new CATS movie trailer is here! This new trailer features longer looks at the film's amazing roster of performers, snippets of different songs, and the suggestion that the CATS movie is basically a big feline talent show. Let's break down the fresh-stepping footage.

Even More Cat-Like

[Image credit: Universal Pictures]

The first thing to notice in this new CATS trailer is that the "digital fur technology," which was touted in an early promo video for the movie, is much further along than it was before. From Taylor Swift to Idris Elba, all the performers look far more cat-like than before. They're slinky!

We weren't sure what to expect the characters in CATS would look like, and it's wild to see an actor like Idris Elba hanging out, wearing nothing but digital fur. You're not going to see another movie that looks like this one any time soon!

Putting on a Talent Show

The plot of CATS, at least on stage, features Old Deuteronomy (played here by Judi Dench), an elder of the Jellicle tribe, and the process of selecting one cat to be reborn to a new life on what the stage musical calls the "Heaviside Layer." Based on this trailer, some version of that story is at play as well, and it seems to lead to a talent show of sorts.

What that means is that different cat characters, such as James Corden's Bustopher Jones, Jason Derulo's Rum Tum Tugger, Idris Elba's dangerous Macavity, Jennifer Hudson's tender Grizabella, and Taylor Swift's Bombalurina, perform their own stories and dance routines as, effectively, auditions to move on to the next life. What gives Old Deuteronomy the power to make such an important choice? The CATS movie will presumably tell us!

A Giant World

We knew that CATS would feature giant sets to dwarf the actors and make them feel as if they are the size of actual cats, but this trailer really shows off how elaborate the production design is. This new CATS movie trailer also makes clear that there's a lot of fantasy at work here. Which is to say that the whole point of this movie is to immerse us, the audience, in an unusual and surprising world. Mission accomplished!

Since the original stage musical is based on a set of poems for children there's a lot of room to indulge in whatever fantasy whims the filmmakers could think of. That's how we get sights in this new trailer like Elba's cat character seeming to disappear into a puff of smoke, or Taylor Swift's character sprinkling a can of catnip while dangling from a giant star above a theater stage. That's exactly the sort of whimsy we want to see in CATS, and we can't wait to experience the musical movie in full!

Tickets for CATS will be on sale soon!

All images courtesy of Universal Pictures.