#[plot plot plot plot plot]

So watching the Lindsay Ellis video essay, “Why Cats?” and Andre from Black Nerd Comedy’s “CATS...I Have to Explain This,” I’m finding that the Cats movie adaptation did indeed suffer from the two things I expected it would:

1. Try way too hard to make the thing have a plot because people need stakes and action or whatever and form plots apparently aren’t a real thing anymore.

and

2. Over-adherence to realism and needing to explain everything because that’s definitely what you think of when you’re looking at a musical about 4th wall-breaking cats.

But I had assumed what was going to happen before seeing these videos was that they were going to really double down on the whole Jellicle Choice thing and make it like...a bigger thing that was a huge dilemma for the cats and like some of them feeling like “oh, maybe I should be trying to go for this because I’m not sure I’m the right fit for the life I got” which would probably turn into a megaton Be Yourself Aesop for Mistoffelees which is kind of unnecessary but kind of a nice sentiment which I’ve seen done well in a few fanfics and I can see where they would get the idea given how his uncertainty around his powers has been an implication in a few stage runs, particularly ones that depict him as not-quite-an-adult-yet.

I assumed they were going to try to take something that didn’t really have stakes except kind of for Grizabella and try to make it have stakes for more characters, since it’s kind of the closest thing to a through-line we have. But it sounds like the thing they went with was the Macavity threat, which I suppose also kind of makes sense. He trolls with the cats at a few separate points before actually going lol screw it, I’m actually gonna do something this time and kidnapping and trying to supplant Old Deuteronomy in the group, then picking a fight once his deception is revealed.

The area where that stops making sense to me is his motivation. Again, plenty of fanfics have taken his actions in the musical and given him the motive of wanting to take over leadership from the Jellicles. You can see pretty easily how people would get that from his whole kidnap-and-replace shtick. People who want to give him a more sympathetic motive will sometimes have him chasing the acceptance of the tribe but obviously in a twisted way. Either of these can work, considering that villainous characters often chase power, and if he’s a card-carrying villain, he may not understand why his crimes would get him kicked out in a “Sure I broke every human law and used my powers to just get whatever I wanted. But so what? I have them, I might as well use them” way.

In the movie, his motivation is apparently that he wants to be the one who’s reborn. Which strikes me as oddly inconsistent with what I’ve understood of his characterization. Since he’s kind of a cat crime lord, and nearly always a card-carrying villain, why would he want to go through rebirth and give that up? That’s not to say that he couldn’t be trying to pursue some kind of bizarre redemption arc in which the only way he knows to pursue it is to be completely reborn, but from the clips I’ve seen, that doesn’t seem to be what he’s going for. And pulling off something like that would require a lot more setup than what I assume the director/screenwriter/etc. were willing to do, so I don’t think it’s supposed to be some kind of Macavity Redemption Arc thing (also this is Hollywood. If Mac was going to get a redemption arc, they’d have him sacrifice himself for something, possibly reveal “lol, had some extra lives left” if they didn’t want to go full Redemption Equals Death).

So like, does he think he can somehow cheat the Rebirth cycle if he sees the Heavyside Layer? Because probably from my understanding, what he wants is access to the wonders of the Heavyside Layer, but that doesn’t make sense to me because he has to understand that if he sees it, he will be reborn, so it isn’t even like he gains unlimited access to those wonders. So like...what, movie?

And I am very aware that I’m massively overthinking something where probably the only line of reasoning was, “ZOMG we need PLOT because movie!” and so they just slapped the first plot they thought of, even if it probably should have been a more generic, “Some of the cats want rebirth because they need to learn to Be Yourself” or “Macavity wants to take over the Jellicles” plot.