Who’s seen The Phantom of the Opera (2004)? IMO it’s a dreadful film.

Gerard Butler was miscast.
The Phantom is supposed to have a voice like an angel, whereas Butler is passable but not that great.
He’s incredibly handsome. Which is WRONG!!! The Phantom is supposed to be hideous, that’s why he’s hiding in a dungeon and trying to bewitch Christine instead of going up to her and asking her for a date. (Or whatever men did in those days.)
When you do see his face, after that sliver of a mask gets pulled off, it looks like he has a bad sunburn or something. It makes you wonder why Christine is so perturbed earlier, when she sees him.

His backstory - the reason he’s pointlessly evil (was there really any reason to kill Joseph Buquet? Because he peeps into the girls’ dressing room??) is because as a child he’s implausibly kept in a cage and exhibited in a freakshow, which scars him for life. That seems unnecessarily dramatic. There was no poignant backstory in the book (I don’t know about the original Broadway production). We didn’t need one. The original book had a Persian talking about how he built trapdoors in the Shah’s palace, and that was enough for me. Of course, getting beaten in a traveling circus because of a sunburn could turn anyone into the psycho spoiled brat he was portrayed as in this movie.

The other thing that really, really, really pissed me off is how they made the Phantom such a joke. He appears at a masquerade, decending the stairs like a toddler stamping his feet, and instead of being menacing and eerie he just looks so ridiculous and insignificant. Why would anybody take him seriously? And that swordfight with Raoul - mercy me! The Phantom SHOULD NOT LOSE A SWORDFIGHT, especially with a wimp like Raoul. In real life any red-blooded woman would take the Phantom, sunburn and all, over this guy.

I think this movie is popular among young women because the Phantom is all tortured and solitary and still looks hot. It’s a hot mess!