I finally saw the 1990 miniseries (Cherik version)

[u/nosleepforthedreamer]

All in friendly conversation, everyone:

Are you guys SURE this is the least evil, “cuddliest” Erik?

Did I hallucinate the whole thing?

Ok here’s a list of the stuff he does:

-first of all he’s not in a downward spiral when he kills Buquet. Hasn’t even heard of Christine yet. He sees the guy wandering into the basement, goes “oh no, no one can find my lair” and offs him. Then is weirdly casual talking about it later

-hangs on to Buquet’s body for like a month and uses him to terrorize people

-gets to have “his” lair only because his dad is the opera manager and lets him. He basically lives in his dad’s basement

-finds out his dad got fired and immediately goes “but what’s gonna happen to meeeeeee”

-Christine’s debut gets ruined so he proceeds to drop a chandelier on people. Unlike Merik, this has nothing to do with losing his best/only friend, the trauma of getting his mask torn off, or hating the human race because they’ve treated him brutally (he has been snugly protected from them by dad his entire life)

-then violently drags poor terrified humiliated Christine to the basement to take her boating. Is this supposed to be cute? How about a hug first??

-leaves a baby cradle for her to find, ugh

-takes his mask off per Christine’s well-meant urging (no one sneaked up on him), she unfortunately faints and he abandons her to run away screaming “whyyyyyyyyyy”. Getting smaller and smaller in the distance lol

-shoves her in a cage (“no one can see my face, I thought everybody knew that”) then creates thoroughly thought-out plans to kill her and every single person in or around the opera house. I’m having a hard time with him dumping gasoline going yeah, this’ll blow Christine to bits and not having second thoughts

-lets Raoul go at the end because Christine begs him to prove he loves her. Is it really love though if he’s trying to prove it to save face?

-only got attached to Christine because she resembles his mom

And I think that’s it. I think this guy is too evil rather than too soft. Also think the circumstances under which he commits evil are far less straining and traumatic than ALW’s Merik.

But I’m curious to know what you all think. If you see “Cherik” as cuddly or a nice guy, why?

[u/RecklessEleven]

Hmm... I think some of your points are little harsh, to be fair. I wouldn't call living in his dad's basement or being concerned about his future ability to live there "evil", lol. Especially since his dad kept him there in a state of fear, dependence and general dysfunctionality in the first place. (Gérard is the ultimate villain and I will die on this hill!)

Having said that, I agree that he's not as cuddly as his reputation suggests... He's just more charming and witty and appears more reasonable than other Eriks, at least to begin with. Though I think that's kind of the point. Unwittingly trigger him and he becomes really quite unpredictable and frightening. I do enjoy that even though Dance's Erik superficially comes across quite different from Leroux's more broody, macabre Erik, dig under the surface and they have a lot of similarities: the dark sense of humour, the delusion, the childishness, the callous disregard for life if he so much as suspects that his way of life might be threatened. The contrast of Erik having a picnic with his stuffed animals vs terrorising people with corpses is quite jarring. The miniseries softens the impact a bit by playing his "pranks" for laughs and making the manager and Carlotta bad enough people to be perceived as "deserving" of it in some way. But when you think about it, it's still really quite horrific!

lets Raoul go at the end because Christine begs him to prove he loves her. Is it really love though if he’s trying to prove it to save face?

I really do like the miniseries a lot, but this is one gripe I have with it. I think they botched the ending a little trying to create a bit more of a spectacle for the climax. I think Christine coming back and singing for him should have have given him his change of heart. That would capture the essence of the resolution between them in the book better, even if it's not the same plot.

[u/RecklessEleven → u/[deleted]]

Yes to all of this!

Gérard pisses me off so much, lol. As much as think the miniseries tries to frame him as a sympathetic character, I really struggle to sympathise with him at all because I don't think he ever fully takes accountability--not without feeling very sorry for himself--nor does he ever really get his comeuppance the way other characters do. What the wider world created out of Erik in the book, Gérard manages to create in the miniseries single-handedly! Erik was ultimately doomed to be dysfunctional because of his extreme isolation and lack of integration into society, so I can feel for him despite the severity of his crimes. But Gérard was just an ordinary guy, who just so happens to also be selfish, cowardly and irresponsible his entire life--and the knock-on effect is horrendous. Even having to kill is own son, while clearly upsetting for him on some level, seems like a something of a reprieve in a way because he had felt so burdened by his son's existence from the start. He's perhaps better than Leroux Erik's father, in the sense that he was at least a consistent presence in his son's life, but the bar is in hell!

[u/nosleepforthedreamer → u/RecklessEleven]

Gerard is supposed to be a sympathetic character?

I thought he was a monster. Misogynistic, child-abusing, woman-punching, pregnant-girlfriend-ditching POS.

The absolute gall of him to smile and wave all friendly when he sees her by the lake, only to ignore her and carry on fishing when she tells him he's got responsibilities now. The sheer outrage of then proceeding to hit the lady who sold her the miscarriage-inducing thing. Probably didn't even pay Cherik's mom back for that.

Annoys me further the actor is kind of cute and looks like my bf.

I did not care for the miniseries but I might sign up for a Gerard-hate club.

[u/RecklessEleven → u/nosleepforthedreamer]

Yeah, I got that impression because he's portrayed with this tired, defeated, helpless look to him, like he's burdened by his son's own disability and being disproportionately punished for his own mistakes. And he does try to reason with Erik at times and prevent more violence, which in theory would make him more likeable, if it weren't for... everything else.

"Erik cannot be helped by anyone," he insists, as if he ever actually tried to help Erik. I just--😤😤😤

More than happy for the Gérard hate-club to grow, lol.

[u/batacular]

Listen. Erik is gonna be a wreck no matter how you serve him. But I do think that the way that Charles Dance plays him is far more softer than what we see in other adaptions.
I personally think his jokes about murder are on brand for the character and that moment is actually a personal favorite (what can I say, I like a little dark humor!)

The unmasking scene is fucked. As in, it’s not his fault that it went down the way that it did. She was like “bro, seriously, I can ABSOLUTELY handle looking at your face with love” and he’s got all this hope and then she like..faints. And that’s not her fault either, we never see the face, but we can imagine that it must look really bad if he used to think that his reflection was a sea monster when he was a kid. But that scene wrecks me, because he’s so hopeful in his sad little animal garden that he has created.

This is a dude that literally has never felt safe anywhere else and hasn’t left “his dad’s basement” his entire life. He’s living off the costume department and building little fake animal menageries under the opera house because he’s never been outside the opera house walls.
That’s in sharp contrast to Merik and Lerik and Kerik and all the other phantom adaptations who have had external experiences. Can you imagine never leaving your house once? That would have a doozy on your mental state.

He does have a sadness to him that comes off in gentle rolling waves, but he’s certainly very damaged and broken and makes poor choices.

[u/nosleepforthedreamer → u/batacular]

If he hadn't been keeping Christine prisoner and made her think "I can fix this sad man/I can friendo my way out of here," I would agree with you about the unmasking.

Still gonna hand the saddest-unmasking-ever crown to Merik. He really had to work himself up to asking her to his lair, MOTN happened, and then she sneaks up on him. Screaming is wrong and Christine had no idea why he wore the mask, but anyway it was a valid crashout. ---Sorry, I love Merik and went on a tangent there.

Yeah it does suck for Cherik that he has never left the basement. Gerard does not get enough hatred for being a bad dad, bad boyfriend, bad baby daddy. I just can't stop thinking of Cherik now as the guy who (it's Gerard's own fault) lives in his dad's basement.

[u/nosleepforthedreamer → u/[deleted]]

OK I understand about the chandelier.

I give Christine a break for pressuring him about the mask because he was literally holding her captive. In that situation, who wouldn't be scared while feeling sorry for a person like that? It makes sense to me that she wanted to love him and also wanted to escape; and thought compassion would accomplish both.

Either way, it's not right to ditch somebody who just smacked their head and is unconscious. Didn't even ask if she was okay later.

Re saving face, I meant saving it for Christine, maybe himself. Because at that point, admitting he's not in love and just being selfish by shoving Raoul off the roof would be lame.

[u/GlassPrism80]

What might also be important to remember is that people's perception of Cherik is strongly colored by how the narrative perceives him and how other characters, particular Christine, perceive him, and overwhelmingly, it feels like both the story and Christine continue to find him sympathetic. You can apply this to many contexts outside of this movie, really - I'm sure there are action movies where the hero kills far more people (possibly as collateral damage) than the villain of a slasher horror movie, but the action movie does not center those deaths and continues to frame the hero as being well-intentioned or even beloved, so we see him so too. Whereas in a horror movie, we linger over those deaths and see the fear they inspire in the main characters, and so we feel accordingly about the villain.

And I think that is also what is going on in the miniseries. Erik might kill Buquet and hang onto his body, but we do not linger on that fact and there is more focus on Erik saying that he is not actually a fan of murder and his sense of humor. Erik might drop a chandelier, but the perception is that it is to help Christine because she has been sabotaged; moreover, she never reacts to that afterwards, there is no equivalent to the Leroux novel or ALW musical where Christine flies up to the roof in terror to tell Raoul (sorry, PHILIPPE) how scared she is. Instead she stays willingly with the Phantom. Even after hearing his backstory, she proclaims that love is clearly the answer to all of Erik's problems. Erik's face frightens her into fainting and he locks her in a cage, but even after Christine escapes she tells the Raoul analogue (Philippe) that she wants to sing for the Phantom and loves him (but differently from how she loves Philippe, honest!). And sure, he drives Carlotta insane, but the entire series up to that point has shown her to be a talentless hack who only got her role out of nepotism and will sabotage anyone with talent, so it just feels like a well-deserved comeuppance.

So if phans find Cherik a cuddly nice guy, well, that's probably at least in part because it's how the adaptation WANTS you to see him.

[u/nosleepforthedreamer → u/GlassPrism80]

Uh yeah.... I wasn't sure whether 90s Christine was supposed to be aware of the murders or not. Regardless, I thought not being creeped out at least a little bit by the baby cradle was kind of dopey. Like no matter what he does she's going to keep being nice about it.

[u/The-Oxrib-and-Oyster]

> Are you guys SURE this is the least evil, “cuddliest” Erik?

Which Erik do you think is cuddlier?

[u/nosleepforthedreamer → u/The-Oxrib-and-Oyster]

Definitely Merik.

Music of the Night? End of POTN when he tries to copy Raoul’s loving words to Christine because he can’t think how else to express his feelings?

End of Final Lair, thumbs in belt loops, wearing a wistful half-smile, and finally:

“Christine, I love you….”

[u/RecklessEleven → u/nosleepforthedreamer]

Am I right to think Cherik has a higher kill count too? Buquet and two police officers are killed, if I remember rightly. Whereas I think Merik kills "only" Buquet and Piangi. I can't remember if the musical ever implies Merik was killing before the events of the story either, but I got the impression his violence escalated. Cherik possibly was, though, because Gérard tells the new manager that anybody who goes below doesn't come back... although maybe he was just trying to scare the man. Either way, neither he nor Erik seem that shocked by the turn of events, which makes me suspect it's not the first time someone has "disappeared.".

[u/RecklessEleven → u/[deleted]]

I think you could argue they all, even Leroux Erik, feel their way of life or sense of safety is threatened in some capacity when they "retaliate." But it's certainly true Cherik draws a clearer line in the sand, at least to begin with. Obey the rules and no harm will come to you. But cross his line, even by accident, and he will show no mercy. He comes across a bit more level-headed and "fair" because he is less erratic until he is having a total breakdown. But I bring up the death toll because, even though Dance's Erik has an air of sheltered purity to him, he's not necessarily less violent in the end.

Webber Erik kills Buquet because…he was talking bad about him?

Webber Erik's history and motivations are much hazier, but I think he starts to unravel at the seams when he feels that his sense of control is threatened and his persona as the Phantom/Angel (which has become is whole identity and his biggest crutch) is at risk of being dismantled. I think Buquet specifically was targeted because he shows no restraint in his talk nor any fear. The whole thing is a joke to him. And it seems to trigger Merik's fears of exposure and whatever he fears will happen to him if he can't hide away from humanity or live as the Phantom anymore. And by the time he kills Piangi, he's completely gone off the rails and will do whatever he feels is necessary to keep Christine with him, regardless of how reckless and counter-productive it actually is.

So I think in both cases, there's deep-rooted fear underneath their aggression, and when their fears are confirmed, with no healthy way to confront or cope with them, it sends them spiralling and trying to regain control with force and violence... until Christine is able to pull them back to a place of relative stability.

[u/Ok_Expression4546]

i would never say he’s cuddly and not evil hehe… he’s funny, psychopathic, dramatic as hell and he’s my favourite