YMMV / Les Misérables (2012)

• Actor Shipping:
  • A lot of Enjolras/Eponine shippers also ship the actors who play them in the film, Aaron Tveit and Samantha Barks.
  • Some Valjean/Javert shippers would ship Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe since these two happen to be best friends in real life, not to mention their blatant display of bromance in public.
  • The small but dedicated followers of the Javert/Eponine ship got a major boost when this pic◊ of Russell Crowe teaching Samantha Barks how to box surfaced.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: In this film's staging of "Master of the House", Madame Thénardier sings the lines about how much she hates her husband to the officers she is flirting with while pickpocketing them (and promptly handing over their valuables to her husband), leaving room for the interpretation that she is lying to exact sympathy from her marks.
• Award Snub: Despite eight Oscar nominations, there were some critical overlooks, namely Tom Hooper for Best Director, Eddie Redmayne for Best Supporting Actor, Samantha Barks for Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay. It wasn't exactly highly praised (only receiving 70% in Rotten Tomatoes) but with so many nominations one would expect it to win more.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Russell Crowe's performance as Inspector Javert. Some people really like him, as it perfectly matches the character. Others have called his performance flat and his singing sub-par, enough that The Onion wrote, "Russell Crowe Praised For Stunning Portrayal Of Man Who Cannot Sing Or Act In 'Les Misérables'". Only reinforced by the cast's farewell performance during the 2013 Academy Awards, and by Sacha Baron Cohen poking fun at him at the Golden Globes.
    • A portion of the base Take a Third Option in that they can’t stand his singing but liked his acting choices, visually portraying more evidence of Javert being a flawed, Anti-Villain and consistently showing his ongoing internal conflicts over the course of the story.
  • Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter's interpretation of the Thenardiers has fallen into polarizing territory. Some find them hilarious. Some find them insufferable, thinking Baron Cohen was constantly mugging while Bonham-Carter was not even trying (despite Madame Thenardier being given a dose of Adaptational Attractiveness to become a "post-Fight Club Helena Bonham-Carter character.") What didn't help was the fact that she is self-admittedly not a singer, many fans believing she should not have accepted the role and let a singing actor take the part instead, or at least let herself be dubbed over.
    • The staging choices of the movie medium compared to theatre can also contribute to this. For instance, the Thenardiers act out every funny line from "Master of the House", but many reviewers thought this slowed down the comedic timing, and all the quick cuts made the sequence feel exhausting instead of the respite it was supposed to be.
  • Hugh Jackman's acting in the film has been well received (enough to earn him a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination), but the reaction to his singing has been more divisive, particularly his rendition of "Bring Him Home".
• Broken Base:
  • This is the case amongst some members of the critical community. The acting and singing have drawn near-universal praise, but there is an active debate over how effective the choices Tom Hooper makes as director are, particularly his heavy use of close-ups. Supporters praise them for enhancing the story's intimacy and giving the cast, particularly Anne Hathaway, a chance to show off some powerful work with their facial expressions. Detractors, on the other hand, find that the close-ups make what should be an epic story feel too small and/or claustrophobic, and that more generally the film suffers from odd pacing and poor storytelling. In a broader sense, the split lies between people who think the performances make the film and people who think that even the performances cannot save the film.
  • The base broke further following the release of Hooper's near-universally-panned second musical adaptation, Cats, which led to some negative critical re-evaluations of Les Misérables in response. The split comes down to the question of if Cats's faults are its own, or if many of the flaws and directorial choices in Les Mis foreshadowed what was to come.
  • In another case of retroactive broken base, Tom Hooper's attempts at realism by having the actors singing live instead of in a record booth. Some people liked it since it blends acting with singing while others point out that singing live made the songs sounds off and their performers sounding weak and exhausted. ^note For example, Russell Crowe, one of the most contentious part of the movie, sounded better during live performances to promote the movie than he ever was in the movie itself; Same for Hugh Jackman. In addition, for most vocalist in the world, singing live is reckless at best and dangerous at worst. Especially since Hugh Jackman mentioned that he sang most of his song at the start dehydrated (to get into character and look/feel haggard), which is extremely dangerous and is nothing short of a miracle that he never developed any permanent damages to his vocal cords. ^note  Most vocalist, opera singers and musical actors would tell you to make sure to be really hydrated (8 glasses of water is considered a minimum) and not speak or sing before a performance to make sure that it is quite ready It is also seen as an argument against singing live. There are also staging issues like Valjean tearing up his papers in sync with the orchestral swells getting lost in the movie due to the way it was filmed vs. how the score was overlaid later.
• Crack Pairing: In the years since the movie, there has been a small influx of fanfiction and fanart for the Eposette (Cosette/Éponine) ship on sites like AO3 and Tumblr. This small group is mostly made up of shippers who grew tired of the Marius/Cosette and Marius/Éponine shipping wars and decided to Take a Third Option. It has gotten to the point that it's the most written about ship for Eponine on AO3, and outranks Marius/Eponine by a good margin.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Anne Hathaway got the most praise and awards (including an Oscar) for her portrayal of Fantine, who is only in the film for 15 minutes.
  • As always, Gavroche. The little guy is even more badass in this version.
  • Again as always, Enjolras. Most people seem to agree that Aaron Tveit has one of the best singing voices of the cast, and some think he should have been cast as Marius instead of Eddie Redmayne.
    • Several other barricade boys have also gotten a fair amount of fan attention, notably George Blagden (Grantaire), Fra Fee (Courfeyrac), Killian Donnelly (Combeferre), Alistair Brammer (Jehan), and Hugh Skinner (Joly).
  • Again as always, Eponine. Unlike the movie star leads, Samantha Barks was cast because of her experience in the role.
  • Amanda Seyfried is seen as one of the most likable and fleshed-out musical Cosettes ever, to the point where there was a sharp drop in fandom Cosette hate after the film and the canonical Marius/Cosette finally managed to overtake the longtime Fan-Preferred Couple Marius/Eponine in popularity.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Everybody who lived in misery and/or died horribly are happy in the afterlife, but they're still dead.
• Fans Prefer the New Her:
  • When Fantine has her hair shorn off, it's meant to be another degradation into her shame and poverty. Turns out that Anne Hathaway looks really good with short hair, and many magazines praised her for it; despite Anne insisting she was going to grow it back as soon as possible.
  • Valjean also looks incredibly good in the opening sequence, since the shaved head and long beard are quite flattering to Hugh Jackman, and more so than when Valjean becomes a respectable member of society.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • At the 2011 Oscars, future Fantine Anne Hathaway sang a parody of "On My Own" to playfully curse a certain "Hugh Jackass" (and future Valjean) for bailing out of singing a duet with her. And of course, they did sing together in the 2009 Oscars.
  • When Tangled came out, Amanda Seyfried was commonly cited as the actress who most matched Rapunzel in real life. Cosette's first song in this film has her with her hair in a plait, singing about how her life's begun and how she's been kept away from the outside world by her single parent. Cosette's bedroom even bears a passing resemblance to Rapunzel's, with a canopy bed and hand painted flowers on the wall.
  • Sacha Baron Cohen starring in a movie based on a book by Victor Hugo. He had previously starred in a movie called Hugo.
  • Seeing Javert going undercover among Les Amis, and Enjolras' reaction to it? Well, think about Enjolras' actor, Aaron Tveit, then starring in USA Network's Graceland as an FBI undercover agent who is undercover among a tight-knit group.
  • Russell Crowe and Amanda Seyfried playing a father and a daughter in the 2015 film "Fathers and Daughters", considering that in Les Mis Seyfried played the daughter figure of Javert's nemesis Valjean.
  • This wouldn't be the last time featuring Eddie Redmayne as a character who would stay in Paris and be in the know about a revolution.
  • Here's another one for the "father and daughter" ones involving Amanda Seyfried. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, which features Seyfried reprising her role of Sophie from the first Mamma Mia!, also adds in Hugh Skinner, who previously portrayed background barricade boy Joly in Les Mis, as the younger version of Harry, one of Sophie's three potential fathers.
  • George Blagden plays the student revolutionary Grantaire. One of his later high-profile roles would be the granddaddy of absolute monarchy himself: King Louis XIV in Versailles.
  • In the song "At The End Of The Day", Valjean says the line "This is a factory, not a circus!" Valjean's actor, Hugh Jackman, later went on to star in The Greatest Showman, a musical about a circus.
• Ho Yay:
  • Enjolras and Grantaire. It's said in the book that Grantaire never cared about revolution or anything of that sort; he was only there because of how much he admired, loved and venerated Enjolras, which makes their deaths all the more sorrowful. It doesn't help that he spends nearly every scene staring at Enjolras, even when he's talking to someone else. Not to mention that George Blagden has pretty much admitted to intentionally playing Grantaire as in love with Enjolras. They also appear to die Holding Hands, as in the Brick.
  • To a much lesser degree, Marius and Enjolras.
  • There are also a fair amount of Valjean/Javert shippers, though a lot of it is Played for Laughs.
• Memetic Mutation: See this page.
• Moe: Eponine, thanks to Samantha Barks.
• Narm:
  • As Valjean is trying to take Fantine to the hospital, she raises her fists at him threateningly. It's exactly the same kind of martial arts stance that Anne Hathaway used as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises.
  • "The Confrontation" of Valjean and Javert is sung during a distracting sword fight, where Valjean uses a piece of wood.
  • The "Who's there?" "FRENCH REVOLUTION!" scene. It's from the book, but still... it seemed like it was supposed to be dramatic, but it ended up sounding like the worst knock-knock joke ever.
  • Hugh Jackman belting out "Bring Him Home" at the top of his lungs, until you start expecting the students to shout that they're trying to sleep. Made worse as his performance of the song's reprise at the end is far better and more subtle.
  • The final Dream Sequence of a huge barricade manned by a huge crowd including the cast (except villains) — dwarfing the size of the barricade and amount of popular support the students ever had in reality. Can come across as Irony to the cynical (the director has said the film is presented free of irony). Not helped by the dead bodies of French soldiers lying at the foot of it. Apparently even in heaven, the French soldiers get no respect.
    • The scene with the giant barricade was originally supposed to have a bit of text in the same way the film's time-skips do that would say that it depicted the successful 1848 revolution. The inclusion of the dead characters was probably a key reason that that bit of info was left out, and it represents the people's dream of the second republic instead.
  • Javert's suicide by falling off the bridge turns from tragedy to farce by the cartoonish "SPLAT!" that plays upon landing, guaranteed to make the audience wince or laugh or both.
• Narm Charm: The entire film is sung! Quite a good amount of the reviewers expressed disbelief at that working, though it's not the first musical to do so.
• Older Than They Think: Live singing in musical film actually goes back to early talkies, but after lip-syncing came around it was rarely used.
• One-Scene Wonder: Les Mis veteran Hadley Fraser, fresh from the success of The Phantom of the Opera's 25th anniversary performance, as the Army general. Many said that his singing was among the absolute best in the film.
• Questionable Casting: One of the biggest criticisms of the film is that the main cast is mostly comprised of people who are either not singers, or are singers but ones who are not properly trained for the musical demands of this show, especially given the divisive decision to make them do take over take of live singing on set which would hamper even stronger voices.
  • Not many people knew that Russell Crowe had a musical career once when his casting was announced. That being said, Crowe is a trained folk singer, which requires a very different skillset compared to musical theater.
  • There was similar hub-bub about Wolverine being cast as well, but it was Downplayed because Hugh Jackman is a triple threat with experience in musical theater, both in Australia and in a West End production of Oklahoma!.
  • Taylor Swift was considered to play Eponine. It's become a Never Live It Down moment ever since. Hooper would eventually cast Swift in Cats.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Before the film was released, Cosette was by far the least liked character in the musical due to the perception she was a Flat Character who does very little in the plot and "stole" Marius from the "more deserving" Eponine. Amanda Seyfried's portrayal gave her a lot more personality and resulted in a sharp drop in her hatedom.
• Retroactive Recognition: This is a very early screen role for West End luminary (and future Ted Lasso star) Hannah Waddingham, who is in the ensemble as one of the factory workers in "Lovely Ladies".
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Although they see each twice (and one of those times was when she died) and never say a word to each other, the pairing of Enjolras and Eponine has become very popular due to a handful of strategically timed back to back shots of each other, a moment where they actually stand next to each other, a brief notice by Enjolras when Marius leaves the cafe with her, and a shot of him as she dies.
  • Although really an editing goof, Enjolras appears to pick Eponine up after she dies rather than another character in a split-second shot. Yet, it seems to have added more fuel to the ship.
• Signature Scene:
  • Javert looking down on Madeleine from his office window has become a meme.
  • The unrelentingly heartbreaking "I Dreamed A Dream" scene.
  • Eponine walking in the rain and singing "On My Own".

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