Having never seen any other production of The Phantom of the Opera, I have nothing to compare it to. Visually stunning and still containing those magnificent songs and the haunting score, The Phantom of the Opera is a pale shell of the musical that it's based upon.Įmmy Rossum and Gerard Butler in The Phantom of the Opera.
When someone speaks lyrics, it just sounds stupid, especially when sometimes they're speaking normal dialogue and at other times, they're speaking in rhyme. If they wanted to do this than they should have written more dialogue. Perhaps this is an effort to give the characters more dialogue than they had in the play.
#HOW MANY SCENES ARE IN THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA 2004 MOVIE#
One other problem this movie has is its tendency to have its characters speak the lyrics to certain songs. Unlike the play, the movie returns to these flash-forwards throughout the story, to no real purpose other than to lengthen the already hefty running time. An aged Raul is there in a wheelchair buying items from his youth. Like the play, the movie begins years after the events of the story at an auction where the artifacts of the opera house are being sold. When the Phantom is singing his anguish over Raul and Christine, he must climb atop the statue at the climax of the song as if he knows that the camera will pull back for a cool shot, which of course it does. But so much care was put in that it makes some scenes feel overly staged. More care was put into the look of the sets and the camera shots then was put into the characters or the songs. Every scene is lush and vibrant with color and spectacle. Considering how closely Butler resembles Antonio Banderas in this movie, I can't understand why the producers of this film didn't go for the much more charismatic Banderas, especially since he proved he could sing in the last film adaptation of an Andrew Lloyd Webber play, Evita. And while he manages to get adequately through the songs, the word adequate should never be the main adjective used to describe someone playing the lead in The Phantom of the Opera. However, Butler, in the title role, is a singer with no experience. Rossum is a classically trained opera singer and Wilson has performed in several Broadway musicals. With Emmy Rossum as Christine and Patrick Wilson as Raul, they chose well. In a movie where 95% of the dialogue is sung, you'd expect that you'd only chose actors who could sing, especially considering these demanding songs. When the Phantom's actions become more overt and sometimes deadly, as he senses that he is losing Christine to Raul, the love triangle comes to a head inside the Phantom's lair deep beneath the Opera House. However, Christine is in love with the young count Raul and she is deluded into thinking that the Phantom is the angel of music sent to guide her by her dead father. The Phantom haunts a Paris Opera House where he has fallen in love with Christine, a young singer whose career he has been secretly trying to boost. The plot is probably familiar to everyone.
The magic of the play seems to have been lost in the translation and been replaced by soulless spectacle that has more in common with a bodice ripping romance novel than a great tragedy. While the movie isn't a complete failure, it can hardly be considered a success. Being such a fan of the stage play, my hopes were high for this movie they really were.
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