In Which Faceman Discusses Beauty and the Beast…in Three Parts

Exactly. Gaston is a narcisstic douche, a mash-up of the stereotypical football jock and oversexed frat boy.

Belle is nothing but a trophy to him. Gaston isn't capable of loving anyone but himself.

I used to think you were the biggest dick of WF, apparently it's @Faceman .

Has your mom not let you see Beauty and the Beast yet? I understand. I found the beast a bit scary for my one year old too.

I haven't had time, I don't get weekends and President's day off, "lawyer ".

Ok. Well that sucks that you haven't had a day off to watch it between 1991 and now.

I saw the original, not the live action.

My analysis is of the original. The live action will have the same fucking plot probably.

And I rated it TL; DR, which is quite literal, so I didn't know that because I didn't read it.

I'm not a huge fan of remakes of classic movies to begin with.

But Disney is being especially lazy with some of their remakes.

The plots are exactly the same and they have even recreated the same scenes frame by frame in live action.

Well Maleficent wasn't too bad. At least with that one they tried to do something a bit different and show the fairy tale from the villain's perspective.

I'd like to see someone revisit The Black Cauldron. That was another instance where Disney screwed up the source material. Someone should do a Netflix miniseries of the whole Prydain Chronicles.

This seems like a good place to dump this:

http://bibliodaze.com/2017/02/the-i...why-disney-should-stop-diminishing-her-power/

The TLDR version is Belle is the feminist model from which every other Disney Princess (and Queen in Elsa's case) has been modeled, and then toted as Disney's first feminist Princess.

Hell, they wouldn't even need to go live action for Black Cauldron to be redone...they could turn that one over to Pixar and let them go to town...and maybe redeem themselves for the decision to turn Cars into a franchise.

That's probably my all time favorite fantasy series. I actually enjoy those books more than even the works of Tolkien, Martin, or Rowling.

Sierra Entertainment (the company which made the old King's Quest video game line) made a Black Cauldron video game using the same engine as the King's Quest games. It was closer to the source material than to the Disney film. I played the shit out of that ad a kid.

True fact: The Black Cauldron was such a flop for Disney it almost took the company down. The director insisted on everything being hand drawn to the old Disney specs but because the theme was darker than parents were used to seeing in Disney films they kept their kids home.

It was also, IIRC, the last animated film they made before Eisner took over and made the changes that resulted in The Little Mermaid, which pretty much saved the company.

Alert me when:

1 - Disney gets off it's ass and releases the blu-ray of The Black Hole, and...

2 - Disney gets off it's ass and remakes The Black Hole, written & directed by someone with the balls to keep the batshit crazy ending with the gravity well leading to Heaven & hell, with damned Reinhardt encased for all eternity inside the shell of Maximillian.

That was some seriously messed up shit that freaked my 9 y/o mind.

Next you're gonna tell me that The Lion King is just Hamlet with animals.

Or that Frozen is just a gender-swap remake of Batman & Robin.

Yep....Disney was floundering in the 80s, getting their asses kicked creatively by Don Bluth (who was also once an animator at Disney). Plus, the movie was fucking boring....the hero whined enough to piss off even Luke Skywalker and I've been told the princess character was dumbed down considerably. I'll have to take their word for it, because I got sick of the film 12 minutes it.

Coming of age during the Disney Renaissance, my generation took it for granted that Disney was the go-to studio for kids stuff, but honestly? The kids of today have it a *lot* better. Not only do they have more studios catering to them, the studios are doing it well. We had a lot of Disney knock offs that copied the singing and dancing but not the heart and soul of the storytelling. Thankfully for the most part, the Pixar knockoffs have mostly understood that the medium was a means and more seem to be writing good stories.

Oh, and kids' shows! I'm truly jealous about that! Growing up, it seemed like half the current shows were just gross-out humor, but the writing of stuff like Avatar The Last Airbender could be applied to adult shows. Hell, Regular Show is probably one of my favorite non-anime animated shows ever that isn't South Park or the first five seasons of Archer.

Well, this guy argues it's inspired by Shakespeare, but just not Hamlet



Also relevant to this thread:



First of three parts discussing the original 1948 film

Would love to see that.

Fuck that's long. What's the TL;DR? Which play(s) is he claiming Lion King is based on?

Because I think it's pretty transparently Hamlet, right down to Timon & Pumba=Rosencrantz & Gildenstern. There's a loose argument to be made for Macbeth, but it's mostly Hamlet-based.

This was my take as well. He never comes off as being in love with Belle. He's disrespectful to literally everyone in that movie, right from when he's first introduced. It's not about him loving or even lusting after her - it's about her rejection of him. He strikes me as someone who has never been turned down by anyone for anything. This is also why he shows no real interest in any of the women who literally throw themselves at him. It wouldn't surprise me if Belle was literally the only woman in town who hadn't been a conquest yet for him. Everything he did, including getting her father locked away as a back-up blackmail plan, was toward his conquest of her. Yeah, there's that Stockholm syndrome aspect to her, but even if the Beast isn't "the good guy," Gaston is still very much a villain.

I think it's more King Lear.

I thought it was Kimba: The White Lion.

Speaking of...

Feminist? Sure, I guess. But maybe she's actually just the town weird girl. Nothing wrong with that at first. But she falls in love with her captor. Who is a beast.

I think all parents can agree that they hope their daughters get the same opportunity!

If she was "weird" they did a poor job of setting that up.

The only thing the town whispers about with her is *GASP* she reads books!!! Oh noes, an ejumacated woman--burn the witch!

Surprise!

Part IV - The Cure for the Curse is Inapposite

In order to break the curse, the beast must, by his twenty first birthday, fall in love with a girl and get the girl to fall in love with him. This herculean task may be meaningful if the witch wants to show the beast how hard it is to convince normal people to see the good in ugliness. But when we break it down, we see that this poor ten year old boy has been tricked from the start.

First, if convincing someone to see the good in ugliness is as hard as the witch believes (she gives him about ten years to get it right) then why was she so quick to condemn the prince when he didn't do so in a few minutes? Essentially the beast is tasked with the same goal that the witch failed at - convincing someone else to see the good and beauty in what outwardly appears to be ugly. One could say the witch failed at this very task. But from the witch's point of view, the prince failed at seeing beauty and for that he needed to be punished. Severely.

Second, the one who must do the heavy lifting in this film is Belle. She is placed in the role of the prince and if she fails to fall in love with him, it is apparent that no witch will be coming along to curse her anytime soon. So the witch has turned all this around, further justifying the beast from hunting her down and viciously slaying her in Act III of the film we didn't get to see.

In sum, the beast must break the curse by succeeding at the very task the witch failed at. But if he fails to convince someone to love him, as the witch failed to convince the prince to see her inner beauty, the other person won't be transformed into a beast as he was. Lesson learned.

Pretty sure what little I paid attention to in that movie was ripped straight out of some barely literate 12-year-old girl's Mary Sue fanfic.

ooo do the jungle book next.