Film Forensics (http://www.filmforensics.com/) film reviews
specifically examine how the films may be improved.
This review assumes you have seen the film, and is full of SPOILERS.
CATWOMAN
Catwoman is an incandescently bad film, but an excellent forensic
subject, which is lucky because I saw it with the express purpose of
writing a Film Forensics on the subject. Caterwauls of protest rose
in the streets on the night of the premiere of Catwoman, and I must
admit, on reading the reviews, I licked my lips in anticipation. I
had a feeling Catwoman would be bad in all the right ways, and it was.
Which is not to say that all bad films are good for dissection. Films
such as Van Helsing are so decayed that they fall apart as you attempt
to slice, and attempts to sew them up merely look ridiculous. But
Catwoman is, for the most part, bland and uninspired. There is much
we can do.
For a start, we need to make Catwoman Bad. The scriptwriters may have
heard this instruction and got it confused a little: I'm sure there
were notes flying around the studio for a while. The script pays lip
service to the idea that Catwoman is not entirely a Good Person, and
by lip service, I mean that the characters repeatedly say it, not that
she actually does anything particularly Bad (apart from dress in That
Costume. I don't usually make comments on costume or acting for FF,
but the Catwoman costume is very, very bad, and should be immediately
replaced.) Our character notes, of course, go back to the comics, the
1960's TV series, the animated TV series, and most spectacularly (to
my filthy then-teenage mind), Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman in Batman
Returns. To summarise the studio notes: "Catwoman is a sexy cat
burgler. Selfish, vain, crush on Batman. Can we get Batman? HOW
expensive? Alright, make it a cop."
Well, fair enough. These are not difficult notes to follow, and
there's no reason you couldn't make a good - or at least, fun - film,
following them. You just have to - and this is where Catwoman is a
very instructive film - give a shit.
Because it doesn't. Care about the character of Catwoman, that is.
This is, in fact, an excellent example of what happens when you don't
care about character. The scriptwriters compiled a list of cliches
for a Cat-Woman to say and do, and then spread them evenly throughout
the film, like little turds buried in Kitty Litter. Catwoman hisses,
scratches, stalks, lands on her feet, gets barked at by dogs, climbs
face-first down walls, and jumps around exactly like a cheap CGI cat
animated by somebody who is a firm believer in the incredible powers
of cats. Actually, our CGI animator has never actually seen a cat,
but from the studio notes he got, cats are pretty much like spiders,
which have proven to be very profitable. Our CGI guy has been getting
a lot of studio notes about spiders. One of the reasons the film is a
little choppy is that they had to cut out the bits where she shoots
webs out of her mouth when she hisses, and then swings from them. The
lawyers said they might not be able to defend that one.
Anyway, this is as good a place as any to start making improvements.
For us to care about her character and transformation, we have to do a
little delving into what being Catwoman means to her. The
transformation as played is a liberating experience, a second life
given to her, for her to do with as she pleases. With great power
comes great jewelry, apparently. Narratively, this is a bit of a
problem, one that they never quite deal with successfully: she can do
whatever she wants, so why bother going after her killers? Does she
really seem like the kind of person driven by revenge? After she has
become Catwoman, she is under no threat from her former assassins, and
after being fired, has no ties to them either. What should *drive*
her?
Well, there's one obvious thing they could have done, which is make
the Catwoman thing both a gift and a curse. However, it seems likely
they got urgent notes from the studio when "Hulk" tanked: No Id
Monsters! Conflicted main characters bad! Wait, Spider-man
conflicted. Me so confused! That make me mad!
And so on. No doubt, had "Hulk" done well, there would have been
internal conflicts aplenty, prompting the odd conversation with her
own reflection in a saucer of milk. And I think it would have been
the right choice (we're still in fairly elementary Hollywood
scriptwriting here, but we don't *need* to be ambitious to improve
this film). A good meaty internal conflict could give us some
much-needed character dynamics.
Patience starts out meek and mild and cute and klutzy, with oversized
paws - sorry, I mean clothes - and great big eyes, and she's just so
adorable! Yup, she's a kitten. What we need to see more of, though,
is her private self, the hints of the cat that she will grow into.
Firstly, she should be curious. Very curious. She can't help
herself: she has to look. Perhaps she's reading a mystery novel, but
can't resist looking at the last page. Her attention is attracted to
slightly-opened doors, to mumbled distant conversations. The thrill
of spying on the excitement she is sure other people are having. When
she turns into Catwoman, she'll have ample opportunities to satisfy
her curiosity: this can be one source of her internal conflicts.
We eventually want her to become selfish, a cat-like attribute that
could be another good source of the internal conflict that we crave.
But we want reasons for it. So let's start with her being very
unselfish, but resenting it. She already gets asked to work late on a
project: let's make her seethe inside about it. Perhaps an Aunt
steals a favourite heirloom, a ring, claiming that Patience's mother
intended it for her, not Patience. Maybe her boss pulls her up for
stealing office supplies when he sees her with a work pen in her
handbag. We need reasons for her to become a cat burgler, and we want
the audience to understand and sympathise when she does.
That's all set up nicely. Now we have to pay a little attention to
the plot, I'm afraid. The dire threat to the world: a cosmetic that
does bad things to your skin if you stop using it, but makes your face
hard as rock if you do, a threat that I imagine could have been
borrowed from the 1960's TV series of Batman. If only they could get
a woman with "Rock" somewhere in her name to play the villain!
Wouldn't that be a great pun?
Still, we work with what we're given. It would help if the villain
was motivated by something other than profit, as the moment that
slight problem with the cosmetic was found, lawsuits would utterly
destroy the company. She's the wife of the owner of the company, and
has been using the product for quite some time. (By the way, it's
nice, for once, to see an abomination of science that doesn't get
totally out of control - she doesn't obviously have to apply the stuff
more and more often, or in greater quantities, to keep its affect
going, else it suddenly reverse all the anti-aging effects in one
Dorien Greyish swoop.) We could have her deluded, thinking that the
problems could be worked out before mass production. We could have
her deliberately trying to bring the company down. Or perhaps she is
planning an even more neferious scheme - cue the Batman 1960's theme
music - to put a wrinkling formula into the drinking water so that
women wouldn't care whether it was addictive or not: they need it.
Ha! Haha! Hahahahaha! Oooooh, I'm not the right person to be
writing this script either. I'm beginning to think the water-supply
thing is a good idea. It doesn't make the script any more stupid than
it already is, and it ups the ante. Perhaps in their research, when
the company discovered the secrets of anti-wrinkling, they discovered
its opposite; a wrinkling (or, aging) formula. According to
movie-logic, obviously this is produced as a byproduct of producing
the antiwrinkling cream. And what does the company do with
byproducts? Why, they flush them out to sea, of course!
But someone has discovered what is going on! They must… die!
And that's what kills Patience. Not the fall, not drowning, but being
hit by industrial quantities of wrinkling formula, so that she ends up
a shrivelled up husk as she's washed to shore, like some kinda Mummy.
How iconic!
Here we hit the next problem. Patience goes in, discovers the
problem, doesn't see that Sharon Stone is behind all this (but we do),
and gets flushed and deaded. So, the audience is way, way ahead of
Patience throughout the film. It would be better, I think, to show
the scene when Patience finishes redoing the ad in her apartment -
before she decides to hand-deliver the ad to that warehouse - and then
jump-cut to her waking up flat on her back on the rocks at the edge of
the water. Let's make this a mystery for the audience, and have
Patience lose her memory over that period (she's already a bit vague
over that time, so this isn't too big a change). She wakes up,
confused, and tries to piece together what has happened to her,
gradually discovers her mysterious powers, gets fired, and so on. We
can reveal bits of that evening in flashbacks as the movie progresses.
This gives her a little more in-character motivation to stay with the
plot.
Here's where the changes begin to frighten her. She wants to be nice,
but the naughty side just wants to come out. She's suddenly selfish
and enjoys it. She does more things for herself, but occasionally,
when she lets herself go, it scares her. Like when she starts
stealing things. Little things at first - paying a night visit to her
Aunt to retrieve her mother's ring - but then, after admiring a
beautiful egyptian bracelet in a shop window, one night she suddenly
finds herself in the store, in the act of stealing it. And on the
ferris wheel, when the child is in peril, she is scared to realise
that the only reason she saves the child is to show off to her
boyfriend. The story is about her coming to terms with her Catwoman
self; not letting it overwhelm her, but tempering it with her nicer
side.
And about discovering, along with us, that it was Ms Stone who was the
villain all along. The plot moves forward: Catwoman investigates the
cosmetics company, and runs into the dead body of the chief scientist.
She suspects the head of the company, and goes to confront him, but
*he* turns up dead too. It's a little ridiculous to keep the launch
of the cosmetic on schedule even after the chief scientist and founder
of the company have been murdered, one *the day before the launch*, so
perhaps after our villain has killed her husband and framed Catwoman,
Catwoman manages to escape, though not without injury. She hides out
from the police, licking her wounds. Literally. That's a studio
note.
In this time, Patience has a crisis of confidence about being
Catwoman. Her curiosity has taken her too far. Her boyfriend
suspects her, she's on the run, this Catwoman lark is No Fun. *Now*
it's time for her to meet the owner of the cats, who can explain to
her that she *died* - that's the only way she could have become
Catwoman. More memories return now, as they are wont to do. She
remembers seeing the side-effects of the cosmetics, and realises that
her friend in hospital is suffering from the cosmetic withdrawal, her
face getting dry and cracked and horrible. She'll need those
cosmetics for the rest of her life, or until a cure is found. It's
time for revenge!
So when she goes back to stop the launch of the cosmetics, it is, for
the first time, with her full powers realised, Patience at peace with
her Catwoman self. The climax. And the villain's big reveal is that
stopping the delivery vans isn't enough - the wrinkling formula is
pumping into the sea, and soon people will be clamouring for her
cosmetic cream, regardless of side-effects. Only now do we get the
revelation that the wrinkling formula is what killed Patience, not the
fall and drowning (which is what she had previously assumed). And so,
the big fight.
I don't know about you, but I didn't feel particularly scared for
Catwoman's life when she's hanging out the window of the skyscraper.
We've already seen her take implausibly high falls. Certainly, you
could argue that this fall would be just too high, but you have to
admit, it takes away from the threat a bit. No, the ideal threat -
and comeuppance for the villain - is for her to be poised above a vat
of the wrinkling formula. Or perhaps Catwoman is in the pipes, once
more, where Patience was flushed, and the villains decide to do the
same trick again. However, this time it doesn't work. Catwoman
messes with the flow controls, and the wrinkling formula ends up
bursting the pipes and spraying all over the villain.
And that's all we have time for. I've passed over her relationship
with the cop, although it could use a little work, and there's plenty
more replotting we could do, but this is plenty for a second draft.
The character of Catwoman has enough promise to spawn an interesting
film some day, and no doubt in another thirty years time, we'll see
another treatment. If Hollywood is still doing its thing then, we may
see a repeat of the uninventive blandness of this film, but there's
one bright side. At least the CGI will be better.
Copyright 2005 by Andrew Shellshear
http://www.filmforensics.com/autopsy/2005/03/22/catwoman/
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