Whether or not people love or hate the story or the stage show, no one can deny the presence and legacy that Phantom of the Opera left on musical theatre. Starting off as a 1910 French novel titled, Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, the story was later adapted into a musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber, resulting in a production that was highly successful upon release from several countries. With its gothic atmosphere, booming music, fantastic set design and universal-movie monster style main antagonist, a feature film would be an interesting direction for the production to take itself. The initial concept and preparation for the film looked promising to begin with, as previous cast members of the musical, including Sarah Brightman as Christine and Michael Crawford as the Phantom, were already cast to reprise their roles, however everything changed when it was revealed that Joel Schumacher who worked on films like Batman and Robin, would be the one to direct the film. The film would later go into development limbo, Webber’s divorce from Brightman caused her and Crawford to leave the film, several other actors were considered and lost, and this led to the film being released in 2004. Just before the performance of a grand opera, the lead singer Carlotta (played by Minnie Driver) storms off on her role, leaving the position to be replaced with Christine (played by Emmy Rossum). Being satisfied with her voice, she is given the part, not knowing that she is being taught by the Phantom of the Opera (played by Gerard Butler), a disfigured man left underground from years ago that is training Christine up to be his eventual bride. Christine’s other man in her life, Raoul (played by Patrick Wilson) discovers the deception the Phantom is playing on her, and the two must witness as the Phantom slowly takes over the opera, making them perform his own opera with Christine as the star. What should have been the easiest movie to make amazing was hit with mixed reception from both fans of the play, fans of the book, and general movie-goers. The film lacks a lot of the plays scale and presentation, the book’s ambiguity and mystery, and a strong sense of direction, set design, cinematography, and casting.

One of the things that people usually agree with in regard to the musical is that the story is not necessarily the best; with Webber’s bias for the phantom getting in the way of making the romance feel equal and not one sided. But what most people appreciate about the stage show is the scale and effort that goes into the set, costumes, and production. In this film, they attempted to add more elements from the book that were left out of the stage show, as well as explain further upon elements that were left vague from the musical. Both of these ideas are good in concept yet failed in delivery. Including more elements from the book is fine to flesh out the story, yet what is added either has no impact (especially an out of nowhere horse in the sewers) or didn’t need to be addressed. Same can be said with the stage show; the films removes what was once fantastical elements that were left up to the audience’s imagination as to how it was done, showing so much of the trickery off that it sucks out any sense of wonder and leaves everything feeling very unimpressive. Since a lot of the other elements of the film are not strong enough to distract the audience from the narrative’s weak structure and focus, the audience is not able to get invested and instead leaves them waiting for the next song to play. Joel Schumacher’s directing in this is especially minimal, as it feels like scenes and actors are just left vacant on-stage while the camera is rolling; without any guidance to direct them in an interesting way. This leaves characters without set-up, scenes that have no good flow or structure, musical numbers without passion and shots without intrigue.

The characters, outside of the Phantom, really rely on the actors that portray them to make them stand out on screen as they were written to be very straight-faced and generic against the gothic atmosphere and overwhelming antagonist. These actors are left lost without direction, not only in how they perform but also in how they sing. In a musical, vocal performance is equally as impactful as acting, as a singer has to act out the words they sing as well as make it sound good. Not only do most of these actors not make it that impressive, but they also look lost while doing so. Emmy Rossum as Christine comes across as a lost deer in the headlights instead of a troubled mentally repressed girl, and her singing is perfectly nice but nowhere near strong enough for the role she has been tasked with. That along with the weak pitch and auto-tuning only makes it worse. Patrick Wilson as Raoul suffers the opposite problem to the stage play; where that character is too overly masculine and bland, this one is incredibly emasculated and bland. The Phantom is easily the most important role to cast and easily the one that was ruined the most. Casting Gerard Butler for the Phantom was a terrible choice. Even ignoring the fact that he is way too clean looking to be the Phantom, his singing is horrendous, and he can’t be blamed for it. Having no singing experience outside of four lessons before filming would lead to the overly screechy, off-key voice that was put on screen. While a talented actor, there is no way he could have worked in this film. The only two actors that comes out of this film looking good is Minnie Driver as Carlotta, who is a lot of fun to watch (even if it’s strange that she is the only voice who is dubbed over) and Miranda Richardson, who gives a nice decent performance.

The production design for this film is very confusing. It’s wrong to say that there’s no effort put into it and one of Schumacher’s better talent’s is his ability to show off his sets which are usually at least unique, but the style this film goes for is completely wrong for the tone and atmosphere the story has. Instead of utilising the harsh shadows and vibrant shades of blue and red to match the gothic environment, emulating the dark gothic atmosphere of the story by filling the screen with such beautiful contrasting colors that it’s never boring to look at, a perfect mix or dark and light, the film feels saturated in urine yellows and dull pinks, which is not mysterious or atmospheric in the least. It also lacks that sense of cinematic flair that the musical ironically had; it was able to create cinematic images through its staging alone, whereas here everything is shot and framed in an incredibly boring safe way with no camera movement, no interesting angles and no cinematic approach. The only scenes that feel appropriately cinematic both feature the chandelier: the opening in which color is introduced and the transition is very cool, and when the chandelier comes down and the angles and perspective makes it look very massive and weighty. The music is still the same from the musical outside of a few changes to edit the time together and while they still have great melodies and instrumentals, the poor singing in the film negates a lot of those pros. Also the actors are rather singing their songs instead of performing them: performing them would require acting while singing and since there’s no emotion put in the physical nature of the song, the lyrics melt away and become unbearable, becoming flooded over by the music instead of engrossing the audience and telling the story through lyrics. The make-up for the Phantom is also ridiculous; only having a tiny scar the size of a mild sunburn instead of being a grotesque monster, defeating the whole purpose of the story in which a monstrous face produces an angelic voice.

The Phantom of the Opera has never been a perfect project, and everybody has something wrong with every version be it the book, the musical, or the film. But at least with the first two options, they left their impact in some meaningful way, introducing the world to some great gothic themes, dark imagery, haunting yet beautiful atmosphere, grand song numbers and massive visuals. This movie feels like if it did not have the name attached to it, it would be forgotten about really quickly. By trying to set it more in reality, it sucks away the enjoyment of the imagination, by trying to keep all the actors with their real singing voices (outside of the only one who can), it leaves the songs sounding off key and lifeless, and instead of recreating the same dark yet colorful atmosphere the musical gave, its replaced with bright golds and pinks instead. This is a bad movie but not one that will anger many outside of die-hard musical or book fans, as by film standards it could have been far worse. The music of the night turns out to be pretty sour in this version, only worth a watch if you’re curious to see for yourself. Clearly Leonidas can’t be an opera singer.