The Phantom of the Opera...?

Question

Do you prefer the book, movie or musical? If you are strongly against one (I know a lot of Lereox and Kay fanatics who hate the 2004 movie), why? I'd prefer it if you didn't answer if you've only watched the movie. I'm really curious to know your answers!

Answer 1

The musical!

I'm simply a musical person. [:

Answer 2

My favorite is definetely the movie, however I enjoyed the other two very much. Personally, I don't feel that that original novel was very well written, but the story itself was of course very good. Kay's novel was much better, possibly the best book I've ever read. And as much as I liked the musical, I don't feel like I would have been able to connect with it nearly as much if I hadn't already seen the movie and read the book.

Answer 3

I like Leroux's original book the best.  After that, it gets hard to rank order.

Perhaps it would be simpler to say that Kay's book was also very good in my opinion, and the musical is one of my favourites.  I don't like anything about Sarah Brightman's Christine, though.  In that regard, the movie was astronomically better.  The one thing that stood out as completely wrong in the movie was the Phantom's voice.  Although I understand that Erik is entitled to be somewhat rough around the edges, it was very difficult to believe that he would have the ability that he could teach the young Christine to sing as well as she does.  For that reason, I think they should have cast a better singer in the title role.