Everyone underestimated Erik
So what I really love about POTO is how they underestimate him at every turn. I'm gonna specifically talk about the 2004 movie cause it's the only one I've seen, and idk if We Have All Been Blind is in any of the other musical productions.
But I really love how in that song Raoul is like, we use Christine as bait, we make sure the doors are barred, the police are there, and they're armed, problem solved. Like they were totally expecting him to announce his presence like in the Masquerade scene or something. It's especially baffling because the Phantom disappears into the floor below in Masquerade and the room of mirrors, and they never seem to consider that maybe the rest of the Opera house also has hidden contraptions. Especially when the door to Christine's dresser room was locked and she just seemed to vanish. His methods were always so sneaky they couldn't really be connected to him, but who else would be responsible besides this man making constant threats and minutes later said disasters happen?
Like sure they didn't know Carlotta's throat spray was replaced, but he deliberately told them to cast Christine as the duchess and to keep Box 5 empty, and his voice booms out reminding them and then minutes later she sounds like a toad, leading to Christine taking her place. Then there's Buquet's death, in which a seasoned stagehand happens to fall in a way that hangs himself in front of everybody. Exactly the disaster beyond their imagination occurred.
Like I really enjoy the humanity of it, cause people do tend to dismiss things as accidents and hurry to move past the discomfort and fear to pretend everything's okay.
Like they never even considered what they might NOT know, they were more concerned with their egos and catching him and moving on. I don't think they ever really took him as a serious threat. They also just didn't anticipate the lengths he would go to for his obsession. When people get desperate they tend to get wild and unpredictable, and they didn't account for just how much damage he might be willing to cause just for her.
It also frustrates me that Raoul just totally forgets Madame Giry's warning. Josef Buquet was hung in front of his eyes, she outright tells him to hold his hand at the level of his eyes. He at least has the excuse of being disoriented from almost drowning and the fear of losing Christine forever, but when you know the murderer likes to strangle people with a rope I'd like to think I would've remembered that. Like they just always seem to operate under the assumption that he's rational and will behave as they expect him to. Raoul still seems to think he can talk the Phantom down when he already knows the Phantom hates him and wants to kill him, and he's in an extremely emotional state being humiliated with being unmasked at the height of his emotional plea for Christine to choose him, along with the threat of losing her.
Anyways sorry this might be a bit all over the place I just love Phantom and analyzing it and it's just such a good piece of media. It feels very realistic to how people might act IRL