Once upon a time there was this brilliant composer - not the best-looking guy - and one day this beautiful, young, chestnut-haired, singing-and-dancing ingénue floats into his life, and he falls in love with her and he decides I'm gonna take you under my wing and tutor you and compose this incredible masterwork for you to star in, and she was enthralled at first, but then in the end it... didn't work out too well. I'm talking of course about the tragic, torrid tale of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Sarah Brightman. During the creation of what would eventually become the longest-running Broadway show in musical theatre history. "Gentlemen!" Lord Andy decided that his version of Phantom of the Opera would feature the angle of "Hey, why don't we look at the things from the Phantom's point of view okay? You know he has needs too, alright? Maybe he's not the best-looking guy, but he's a really talented composer, and he just wants to compose things for his precious lady love who was way too young for him, but is maybe... kind of talented, maybe not that talented, but he thinks she's really talented okay?" But that... wasn't so innovative. Brian De Palma did that, too. What was Andrew Lloyd Webber's really big innovation? That huge million dollar idea that finally elevates Phantom of the Opera to Blockbuster status is that the Phantom is no longer a golemy wretch but a misunderstood stud, and that Christine's kind of into it. ♫ "Grasp it, sense it" ♫ You could call the stage musical - this stage musical - a culmination of all of the previous versions, because it takes inspiration not just from the book, but almost everything else that came before it. Phantom continues to be a cultural phenomenon to this day because of the stage musical, which is still running. Has your mom been to New York and seen exactly one Broadway show? She's seen Phantom. Or the Lion King. Everyone's mom and all the sad teenage girls love Phantom of the Opera. Not that I would... know. But in a post-Broadway musical world, Phantom of the Opera wasn't something like, say, Avatar. Remember... that... James Cameron movie. It wasn't a trend that came and went away. It's been here pretty steadily for the last 30 years. And this is honestly kind of difficult to keep this to a character profile even more now than the last episode, because the character is so tied in with the franchise. But I will try to restrain my tangenting ways. Here we go. Phantom of the Opera after Lloyd Webber. I'll start with what you probably already know. Andrew Lloyd Webber's the Phantom of the Opera is the most financially successful musical in history, with a worldwide gross nearly twice that of all four of the Transformers movies. And it is also the longest-running musical in Broadway history. It won the Tony for Best Musical in 1988, [laughs] which beat Into the Woods, and a lot of musical theater fans are still salty about that. Poopoo on the sucker, but let's be real guys, there's a reason it's still running. It's kind of the perfect musical in the same way that, like, Independence Day is a perfect movie. "Hello, boys!" Civilization will fall, and Phantom of the Opera will still be running. Watch it close like a week after this goes up. Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical was of course not the last version of Phantom by any stretch, but all of the weird and wonderful knockoffs we'll be covering today are inspired by this much more than, say, the Lon Chaney version or the Claude Rains version. After the musical, we start seeing that half mask, right here, as the iconic Thing™ rather than like the full mask as we would see before, even though the full mask is on the official logo of the Broadway musical. This comes from the logo being set in stone before the wardrobe was, and that half mask? That was because Michael Crawford's microphone didn't jive with the full mask, and so the half mask and the deformity were kind of built around the microphone. Costume design from adversity! What makes this version work the best is the fact that the Phantom isn't in it all that much. A little goes a long way, But when he is in it, Oh, the Feelings™! [Phantom screeching] "Damn you!" Christine unmasks him, and he flies into a rage. "This loathsome gargoyle..." And then for 30 seconds it's like, "Blue, blue, blue, please love me." And then 30 seconds after that, he's fine, and we're going back upstairs. And this is one of the things that is so difficult for film adaptations to capture. The musical format allows these mood swings to work in a really, really compressed amount of time. That's part of why Le Mis the musical works so much better than Le Mis the movie musical. But we'll get to the movie musical later. As always, Erik is an emotional mess in the stage musical. But how this is played, the characterization, really is based on the actor. For instance, a guy like Hugh Panaro is more on the... "Miehehehe, I'm evil!" end, And guys like John Owen Jones are more on the sad puppy end, Norm Lewis kind of gives him a more dad affect, and Ramin Karimloo, he just- he just has a lot of feelings, okay?! [Karimloo screaming his lungs out] Or if you go way back, before the musical, you get the rock god Phantom Steve Harley. ♫ "Our strange duet..." ♫ He was never in the musical so I can't speak to him much. Although, he was originally... going to be Michael Crawford, but then Michael Crawford replaced him. Sorry dude, but that hella electric guitar riff! "Sing, my angel of music."
[hella electric guitar riff plays] Now the musical is the new benchmark, the new thing to be ripped off, and suddenly, we have a lot more Phantom adaptations in the wake of a hit Broadway musical. [Christine(?) screaming] [Phantom screaming] Hey, it's the mid-80s, and VCRs are becoming an increasingly popular form of babysitting! How about Phantom of the Opera... for kids? This is nowhere near as hilarious as it sounds, except insofar as it had a budget of, like, two, and the animation is terrible. While the novel isn't really violent and has zero sex, it isn't really, you know, interesting to kids either. So this, rather than being a kiddyfied version of the book, is basically just the book. But boy, did they not have the budget to give him a scary face or more than five facial expressions, so. Since this one's also one of the closest to the books of all the adaptations, it gets that "I've learned the error of my ways" thing in there, buuuuuuuut that is apparently not a terribly satisfactory ending, so... rocks fall, and he dies. Next. "I'm sorry about the way I look." I know I said I'm not going to go into every post-musical version because there are a ton, but I have to give a nod to Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge. This is, um... it's actually a horror movie? [laughing] Eric with a C is your average sexy high school athlete with a family who happens to have a house on land that is coveted by a mall development. So when Eric's family won't sell, the mall people send a hitman to kill Eric's family by burning, so they could build that mall unfettered. Morgan Fairchild plays the bad guy, Pauly Shore is the Persian analog, and Eric doesn't compose, he works out. He doesn't use a punjab lasso, he roundhouse kicks his enemies. When Christine wakes up in his lair, he's not playing the organ, he's lifting. "Hello, Eric." That alone deserves a modest slow clap. Next. "Yes." People are often surprised to learn that Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund, starred in this version, at the height of both Nightmare on Elm Street and the popularity of the Broadway musical, and it is a shameless ripoff of both. This one includes the odd element of Christine being a modern, who is like the reincarnation of 1880's Christine, and she goes back in time to relive the whole Phantom thing. Why the modern plot is in there, I don't know. This Erik has sold his soul to the devil, see. He's a great composer, but the soul-selling made him ug, so he kills people every few days or so, and sews skin onto his Freddy Krueger face. He has bad puns, like any Freddy Krueger. "You're suspended." And of course Freddy Krueger's... o-face with his killgasm. This version is the most evil Phantom, and therefore the least interested in his Christine. From a filmmaking standpoint, he doesn't seem to want her at all. They're almost never in the same shot together. And in this version he also solicits prostitutes. [Erik] "Christine..." "My name is Maddy." You haven't been doing this for very long, have you? While I find this remarkable in that it is the super rare horror movie where sex workers don't get punished for being sex workers, this version on the whole is surprisingly disappointing, considering what it is. Because it's boring, not because it's gross. But it is really gross. "Where do you live?" "When you sing, I live in the heavens. And when you do not, down below." From Freddy Krueger we go to... Tywin Lannister. Yep, before he was the lord of Casterly Rock, Charles Dance did a turn as the Phantom, too. This was a TV movie that was based on a musical by Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit of Nine fame. This one's pretty similar to their musical, minus, you know, being a musical. And believe it or not, this musical actually predated Lloyd Webber's version in terms of when it was started. But for a variety of reasons it didn't premiere until 1991, after they produced the TV movie, based on the then-unproduced musical. And this is honestly one of the better versions, ignoring the part where it is WAY too freaking long. Seriously, it's three hours. Dance plays Erik more vulnerable and
sensitive than Tywin-y. "I'm just not used to killing people.
It's thrown me off a bit." Once again there's no Persian. Instead he's got a dad. I mean, he doesn't know that Burt Lancaster is his dad, but his dad does, which kind of detracts from the tragedy a bit. A lot. It detracts a lot. Because Erik's not alone, he's got Burt Lancaster watching out for
him the whole movie. So it's really hard to feel sorry for him when he's basically living on Daddy's credit card under the Opera house. This is also the only version where we don't
see his face at all. Does this work? ...Kinda, a little? Honestly it feels more like a cop-out. But it's also the only version where he punches a fake deer in the face. Let's watch that again. Dario Argento's Italian horror version, aka the version with the rat sex scene, aka the absolute worst one, period. This one makes the 2004 movie look great. Remember how, in Batman Returns, the Penguin was raised by sewer penguins? Well this Phantom was raised by rats. Also, he's not deformed at all. Shruggles. It's an internal kind of ugliness...? I dunno. I assume he looks normal because the director didn't want to have a hot, steamy sex scene starring his actual IRL daughter with an uggo. He's also the only version that just straight-up rapes his Christine, so... Keeps racking up the worst one points. Worst one. In fairness, being raised by sewer rats makes a tiny bit more sense than sewer penguins. Boy does this Phantom love him some rats. And he will murder you if you come after his rats. And in the end Christine's really hot for him, but... "Christine!" [Lindsay as Christine] "Oh, no, not my raised-by-rats rapist." Okay, but now... [takes a deep breath] We're really gonna get into it. "You have come here for one purpose, and one alone." Woof. Joel Schumacher of Batman and Robin fame was always Lord Andy's top choice to direct, because Lord Andy is the grand poobah of terrible decisions once he's old enough to start drawing retirement. And boy could I harp on the technical ineptitude of Joel Schumacher's filmmaking choices in this shitstorm of a movie, but let's stick to the topic at hand. And I know a lot of people like this version, so if you don't want to watch me rag on Gerard Butler for five minutes, just... skip to this timecode here (17:02) The movie adaptation of the Broadway musical features Z-grade Tom Waits impersonator Gerard Butler as the most bewilderingly-miscast Phantom yet. When you look at the other Phantom adaptations, at least some of the worst ones, at least they knew what they were going for. They had a vision and they stuck to it. What the hell were they thinking trying to fit a Gerard-Butler-shaped peg into a person-who-can-sing-shaped hole? "This is the point of no return!" Here's where Gerard Butler belongs. Or here. No, no no. Yes. No. No, God no. Okay, here, focus! Ignoring the fact that the man with the perfect tenor cannot sing, I wouldn't characterize Butler's Phantom as particularly sexual either, possibly owing to the fact that our lead actress was underage at the time. But his Phantom is more of a petulant child. In no other version, for instance, does he play with dolls, like, where did this come from? Though the relative sexlessness may be part of the draw in the same way, you know, Edward Cullen is a draw. This movie fixes a lot of the logical problems for the musical but then creates all new ones. A big addition in the movie is a sword fight between Erik and Raul, which Raul promptly wins. How did you survive on your own this long, dude? That shit is caught. You have been caught- no, no apparently not. "Now let it be war upon you both." And then in the very next scene Raul's like, and now I know how to catch him! "To ensnare our clever friend" So during the scene featuring Dread Pirate Roberts and the tango dancers- [breaks into laughter] This fucking movie. So, after Dread Pirate Roberts and the tango dancers in front of the PA waving flames in the background, Christine rips off his full head of hair to reveal... another full head of hair. And a deformity that amounts to, eh... I don't know. Maybe he had some shellfish that didn't agree with him? "Must face the infection which poisons our love." She's like, really? That's what you're all worked up about? This is your reason for abandoning society? This is what got you caged and put in a freak show? Like, you got stung by a bee. You're fine. You get the impression that Butler knows his deformity is not even really a deformity because he really tries to compensate with ultra crazy face, but, really nothing compelling or tragic here when she kisses him. [Lindsay as Butler!Phantom] "I'm glad you can bear to kiss me despite my pink eye." And the beat of him letting her go is apparently not enough to impart his man pain for Joel Schumacher. Oh, no. This movie ends with him breaking all of the mirrors. Every single one. Metaphor! So as watchably awful as the 2004 movie is, the rabbit hole goes deeper still as we reach the coup de gras of this whole shit show. The piece de resistance, the... mwah! I mean, the movie did... ok, I mean it got a theatrical release, and the show is now the longest-running one ever so... did someone say... sequel? Want to dissuade your kids from majoring in musical theater? Murder that dream in its crib? Love Never Dies, the worst musical I've ever seen, and I've seen Lestat: the Musical. Twice. Ten years on, and Erik has apparently jumped ship on living in France and emigrated to Coney Island, where he owns a theme park/freak show/opera type thing and now he's got his empire all set up, he's ready to lure Christine out in order to win her back, for realsies this time. The passion, the romance, the milking of the giant cow. Thrill as Erik pours Raul a drink as their dick-wagging contest enters its second decade. Reel as Erik and Christine sing a song about how they had sex that one time off screen somewhere. "And I caught you!" "And I kissed you!" "And I took you!" The version you can find on DVD, by the way, is basically version like 35.6.0, as the show was workshopped a lot, so this isn't really even the definitive version. It's just a version. Instead of "the Phantom," he goes by Mr. Y. "Mr. Y welcomes you." So Christine and the fam come to Coney Island because they need money. And this might seem petty in the grand scheme of the show's shittiness, but how does Christine not immediately recognize that something is wrong when a Tim Burton carriage pulls up with Alan Cumming and Uncle Fester in tow? "Climb aboard..." Did somebody call for a nightmare? As soon as Erik gets her alone they sing this 10-minute dirge about how they had sex once, as you do, then, surprise! Guess whose kid that is. "Ten years old!" So Erik, let's ask the serious question. What's different from the first musical? What's... what's missing? He is a jerk-ass in both of them sure, but in the first one he's sympathetic because he's deprived. And while his actions aren't condonable, they are still motivated. In Love Never Dies the Phantom has A, a huge support network, B, successful business, C, lots of money, D, already banged Christine, E, fucking kid he didn't even have to raise, F, is a massive asshole anyway. "Or your progeny may disappear." Our hero threatens to murder Christine's child. So romantic! Leaves her crying. What a man! I guess Fifty Shades of Grey fans would like it. It's like it took everything about the first show that made it work despite itself and chucked it out the window. He basically ruins all of the other characters lives Heathcliff style, but he's our hero now. To be fair, I am at a loss as to where the
story could have gone. The story of Erik and Christine is done when he lets Christine go. It is emotionally complete in a way that not
many stories are. Continuing the story of Erik and Christine is just redundant. It's over. The mere existence of Love Never Dies makes the story beat of the Phantom putting someone else's needs before his own... just destroys it. Just gone. Bye! Phantom's character arc, in the good versions anyway, is about maturation. He is a genius in some regard, sure, but in the realm of inter-human contact, of love, he is a child. He never made it past toddlerhood. "Now let it be war upon you both!" [Lindsay as Phantom] "Oh, sure, just because I'm shooting fireballs at you, you abandoned me. Well fine, I'll kill everybody!" Because he's never been shown love or compassion himself. Other people are basically toys to him. That's kind of a thing that happens. So the act of him letting Christine go is the first time in his life that he really recognizes someone else's humanity. That act of self-sacrifice, of putting someone else's needs before his own, is one of the most painful lessons that he or anyone can learn. That is adulthood. "The world showed no compassion to me!" Toxic people are toxic for a reason. Their lives probably sucked, making them into toxic abusive opera ghosts. That does not mean that they are not worthy of love or that they cannot learn to be better people. But just because your life sucked doesn't mean you can march up to people and declare that they owe you something. So while many claim that it's this tragic story about repressed sexuality or something, meh, I don't see it that way. I see it as a coming-of-age story for a 50-year-old-man. Which is why I see Erik voluntarily letting Christine go as such an important character beat. That is the moment he finally grows up, the moment he realizes that yeah, his life has sucked, but that doesn't give him the license to make people his playthings. So, f*ck Love Never Dies and its stupid existing, but I highly recommend it for your bad movie nights. It is... pretty... hilari-awful. bad-larious, So, to conclude, is there a really great version of the Phantom of the Opera? No. But there are compelling versions. Obviously this is all very subjective, but because people asked, for my money the 25th anniversary Live at the Royal Albert Hall version is pretty much the closest to a definitive version you're gonna find. Ramin Karimloo and Sierra Boggess are my favorite Phantom and Christine, respectively. And here they are at the same time! And it is far from the deepest musical you're ever gonna find, but I'm just saying, it's still running for a reason. So, that wraps up my Phantom opus maybe...? Like I said, I could go on. But we're going to move on from that topic. The voted theme for the next round is historical people that actually existed and got fictionalized. Um, yeah, so here are your options. Uh, vote well, vote strong, you can do so here. You can find out who I pick on my Twitter. And you can also support me on Patreon where you can help me vote on things like what our next theme for Loose Canon is going to be. Thank you very much for watching and I will see you next time. Don't kidnap people.
