He's successful when it comes to the latter - there's a lot of singing, even to the point where whole passages of dialogue are sung rather than recited. Instead, he wanted to emphasize the romance and operatic elements. When he penned the musical, Lloyd Webber was not striving for shock and horror. I won't say this is the worst version on the roughly half-dozen cinematic editions of the story to-date, but it's near the bottom, and doesn't come close to either the silent classic with Lon Chaney or the 1943 re-make with Claude Rains.
But, once he realizes Christine has slipped away, the Phantom's jealousy has terrible consequences. His goal is to make her a star, but, when he achieves that, he loses her to Raoul, her childhood sweetheart who is now the Opera House's patron. The Phantom loves Christine, but will not allow her to see his scarred face, for fear that she will reject him. In brief, Christine is an up-and-coming opera star who has taken extensive voice lessons from the mysterious Phantom, who lurks in caves beneath the Opera House. The supporting roles are filled by British character actors - Miranda Richardson as Madame Giry, Minnie Driver as the diva Carolotta, and Ciran Hinds and Simon Callow as Firmin and Andre, the new owners of the Opera House.Īlthough the storyline has been made more coherent for the movie than it is in the stage version, it nevertheless helps to have seen a previous version of the film or to have read the novel upon which it is based. It's hard to make any determination about their acting skills based on this movie, but they can all sing to one degree or another. The trio who eventually got the lead roles are relative unknowns: Gerard Butler is the Phantom (his largest previous role was as "the Stranger" in Dear Frankie) Emmy Rossum (the dead daughter in Mystic River) is Christine and Patrick Wilson is Raoul. As originally conceived in 1990, it was to star Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman (the original Broadway performers), but those two long since departed, along with many other names, including Antonio Banderas. This film underwent a lot of iterations before finally making it to the screen. The tale of the Phantom is softened considerably in an attempt to keep things from becoming too depressing. Truth be told, I am not fond of Lloyd Webber's style of music, and The Phantom of the Opera suffers from a multitude of problems, not the least of which are poor writing and an uneasy marriage between a gothic setting and big-production musical numbers. I have never been a fan of Andrew Lloyd Webber's phenomenally popular stage musical version of The Phantom of the Opera, so it will probably come as no surprise that the film adaptation, which is faithful to its inspiration, left me feeling underwhelmed.
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