That being said, 2004 Phantom is like an angsty teen girl’s friends-only Livejournal that is filled with earnest attempts at steamy self-insert fanfic and colorful diary entries on how hot what tight pants, smeared eyeliner sad boy of the week.ĭeep cut shade and referencing aside, it is absolutely no surprise that it hit it big with that sort of demographic back in the day! The Fairy Puberty Godmother worked her magic and made a legendarily development hell passion project happen, but it had a healthy dose of new sexuality and new sexy actors to go along with it. So they weren’t exactly light on the sexiness, but really trying to shout “HEY YOU, FIND THIS SEXY” to the rooftops! If it sounds like I am just ragging on this film, please realize that this is coming from a place of love and roughly fifteen years of fandom membership (I have seen Phantom on tour and bear the great privilege of seeing the North American tour of Love Never Dies, the failed sequel that is apparently so bad that they haven’t put it on Broadway). Now, “baby’s first sexual awakening” sounds ridiculous because the movie definitely lost most of the musical’s subtle sensuality for tango dancing Dread Pirate Roberts and 2000s era Gerard Butler.

Yes, this is a thirst retrospective, you clicked on this, and you can either abandon ship or strap on for the ride.

For me, to accurately describe my relationship with this film is to acknowledge just how much it meant to me in one special way: it was baby’s sexual awakening. That’s fine and commendable because that means you’re either normal or not a theater kid that has tons of opinions about Broadway musicals! Well, I am not normal and I’m a theater kid In Name Only because acting school just ain’t a thing in Tennessee. I am guessing that many of you that will be reading this either despised, never seen, or are completely ambivalent to Joel Schumacher’s critically maligned adaptation of Phantom of the Opera. So enjoy my first retrospective about Joel Schumacher and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 2004 adaptation of Phantom of the Opera!

“Monster” is going to be a totally subjective term for this series and I’m mostly going to be writing about movies that set off the good ol’ brainworms. Insert a very dramatic, ominous organ because welcome to Monstrous Babes, a semi-regular series of retrospectives and reviews on films where the main romance is centered around a human and a monster.

Phantom of the opera movie 2004 cast