Tag: Cinderella

Beauty and the Beast, and the Case of Disney Getting it all Wrong

I have certainly missed the craze of analysis over the Disney live action films. That all happened after the release of the live action Beauty and the Beast, with some people ranting and raving about how much they loved it, and others harshly criticizing the film for its lack of originality. I am far from the first to talk about this film, and I will not be the last. However, I’ve noticed that most criticisms of the film often ignore certain aspects that I felt were especially irking, and fail to connect what happened in this film to the overall live action trend. So I thought I would put in my own two cents, and see where this takes us.

Now, the whole Disney live action trends started with the success of Maleficent in 2014 and Cinderella in 2015, both of which provide different perspectives of the stories told. Maleficent  provides an alternative look at the tales of the original 1959 classic Sleeping Beauty, although it was a rather half-baked attempt. I thought that Disney might be getting their footing with the release of Cinderella and Jungle Book, which flesh out relationships and motives and situations just a bit more, without only repeating the story.

I was proven greatly wrong, however, with the release of Beauty and the Beast in 2017.

Not only was the film a straight copy-paste of the original story with almost no additions, but the changes they did make just degraded an already good story. This film, like the other three before it, attempted to correct past criticisms of the original work, despite the fact that the film they are trying to correct something that is negligible. Cinderella provided insight on what happened to her father, which the original film failed to do. It explained why Cinderella dealt with the abuse, something the original film didn’t do. This film tries to elaborate on how the magic works in the castle, something that the original film didn’t need to do.

There it is, folks. This film tries to provide logic to a world of magic, something that didn’t really need to be elaborated on. Like the magic dishes, and some other things that move in the house. Not everything that moves needs to have a soul attached to it, which in turn explains the trashed furniture in the West Wing. The Beast didn’t just straight murder his servants. You can assume that a castle would have furniture in it before everyone else got turned into furniture.

Which leads me to my next problem with the film- the fact that the furniture explain the West Wing to Belle completely ruins a major plot point in the film. They not only convince the Beast to give her a better room, rather than let him make the decision for himself, but also give her a tour of the castle, mentioning the West Wing and thereby ruining the impact of Belle actually going to the West Wing. The betrayal aspect of her going to the West Wing despite his wishes is lost.

Which leads me to my next point: they completely wash out the relationship between Belle and the Beast. They ruin the complex relationship between the characters, making Beast an asshole who needs a life coach, and Belle the life coach, rather than having them learn off of each other. Belle was kind and patient, but could also call out the Beast’s bad attitude in the original film. In this one, they just fight, and he never learns to do better. Their relationship becomes basic and Hollywood-style, and the ending doesn’t feel like it was deserved.

Now, in a turn away from the more interaction aspect, I am going to turn more to the other issues I have with the film. This one can be narrowed down into bullet points.

Belle’s voice:

Why, why, why didn’t they just have an actual singer dub Emma Watson’s voice? Hollywood has dubbed hundred’s of actor’s singing before, and the attempt the avoid this in this film ground my ears out. They auto-tuned Emma Watson’s singing to the point where it sounded like a robot made it, heavily contrasting from the fact that literally no one else has a robotic voice. Literally no one else.

What made it worse was the classic reprise of the song “Belle”, where Belle has a powerful soliloquy (done flawlessly by the original voice actor Paige O’Hara). In the live action version, we just get a shotty, robotic voice that just washes out with the music. Every time she opened her mouth the sing, I would be ripped out of the moment.

Belle’s Dress:

I know they tried to do what they did in Cinderella with giving the dress a much needed update, but it really wasn’t necessary. Unlike Cinderella’s kind of odd-looking dress in the original, there was nothing wrong with Belle’s dress. In fact, her’s was a favorite among many, and was a popular costume for young children. The fact that they tried to change it to something as blase as they had in the live action film got some much deserved out-roar. How do you replace such an iconic dress with something that looked like three pieces of yellow tissue paper stuck together? It just doesn’t make any sense.

Gaston:

Why try to make him unlikeable? The whole point of his original character was that he was attractive, popular, and charismatic, and was easily able to influence the ignorant townsmen into joining him for the “final battle” at the castle.

In this case, he’s a character that is considered untrustworthy by the town, leading to Le Fou paying people to sing and up Gaston’s ego. Such a move was totally pointless. You should have just kept him the same. It would have saved a lot of time on the pointlessness of trying to make him a complex character. Focus on fleshing the two main characters out, not the villain, who didn’t need to be fleshed out.

The Plot Overall:

Last but not least, I have a problem with the plot overall. Let’s face it- it’s just a pure retelling of the original story, with some pointless additions slapped on to take up more time. There was nothing of real value added, degrading the plot of the story. What was changed really had no purpose, unlike the films before it (except Maleficent, but that’s for another time). I came into that film expecting something and left it feeling like the original story was just wronged. Which doesn’t make sense, as the live action version and the original were both made by the same company.

But, that’s the problem with the desire to make money and deal with criticism. It just didn’t work here. It turned what was once an Oscar-nominated film into a straight mess. It was just unnecessary.

The Dark Tales Behind Disney’s Classic Films

It’s no surprise that when Disney does a retelling of a classic fairy tale, they definitely make it more “kid-friendly”. The once morally imbued and rather dark stories have found themselves remembered as sweet and innocent tales, one of happily ever afters and all the like. But what are the original tales? How were they in their most original form, and how has Disney mellowed them out?

I think to answer that, we have to look at the oldest Disney feature length film, Snow White. Much of the first part of the film follows that of the German story- the Queen is vain, and tries to kill Snow White when she surpasses her in beauty. But rather than telling the Huntsmen to retrieve her liver and lung, the Queen instead asks for her heart.

From then on in the story, Snow White still goes to the house of the seven dwarves to live there. But rather than try to get rid of Snow White once, the Queen actually attempts to kill her three times: first with lace, then with a poisoned comb, and finally with a poisoned apple. When Snow White is in a death-like state, the Prince stumbles upon her glass coffin (that the dwarves had placed her in rather than let her be buried in the ground), and immediately falls in love with her appearance. He persuades the dwarves to let him take her coffin so that he could look at her, and as his men lift her coffin, the piece of apple she had bitten falls out of her mouth. She wakes up, and they decide to get married, inviting the Evil Queen. The Queen, not knowing that the other queen was Snow White, attends the wedding, and is forced to dance on hot coals until she drops dead.

The next big fairy tale comes from the french original of Cinderella, also documented by the Grimm brothers. In this book the father never disappears, but is complacent in letting his second wife and stepdaughters turn Cinderella into a house servant. She works all day and all nice, cleaning the fire place, and doing other chores, and must sleep next to the fireplace at night, covering herself in ash and dust. She was given the name Cinderella, as a way to taunt her. Everyday she goes to her mother’s grave and weeps, and finds that a white dove hangs above her grave, granting her wishes.

On the dawn of the festival that the Prince was hosting, the stepmother forbid Cinderella from attending the ball, insisting that she was too dirty and embarrassing. Cinderella went to her mother’s grave and wept, calling on the bird to throw gold and silver down upon her. For three days she called upon the bird to dress her extravagantly, attending the ball and gaining the sole attention of the Prince. She keeps evading the Prince so that she couldn’t be recognized, but on the third night, the Prince had set a trap, causing her to lose one of her (golden) shoes.

The Prince decides to use the shoe to find her, and goes to the house of the Evil Stepsisters. They both try on the shoe, the older one cutting off her big toe and the younger one cutting off her heel to fit in the shoe. The Prince initially takes each one, only to be turned around by birds. Finally, despite the protest of her family, the Prince places the shoe on Cinderella, and realizes it’s her. They host a wedding, and the Evile Stepsisters try to go to Cinderella to gain her favor, only to have their eyes poked out by pigeons.

The third classic fairy tale I’m going to talk about is Sleeping Beauty, or Sun, Moon, and Talia. In the story, there is no slighted fairy (that would come in later versions), but rather a horoscope cast that she would face danger at a spinning flax. Aurora (or in this case, Talia), finds an old woman spinning as a teenager and asks to be taught how to spin. She gets the flax trapped in her thumb, and falls into a deep slumber, one that she cannot be woken up from.

She is left in the palace seemingly abandoned but attended by fairies, when one day a King stumbles upon the palace while on a hunt. He climbs a latter into her room, and is stunned by her beauty. After trying to wake her initially (unsuccessfully), he decides rather to rape her and be on his way, forgetting about her. Nine months later Talia gives birth to twins in her sleep, one boy and one girl. One of the children, trying to find her breast, actually sucks on her thumb, sucking the flax out and waking Talia up.

Not long later the King comes to see her again, and is joyous at finding her awake and with children. They fall in love after a few days, and he leaves again, promising to take her and the children with him next time.

The King’s first wife, realizing what has happened, plots to have Talia and the children killed, but is ultimately unsuccessful. She had ordered the twins to be cooked up and served to the king, but the chef, being kind-hearted, keeps them alive. She also tries to have Talia burned alive. But the king appears just in time and has his wife burned alive instead, marrying Talia and living with the children.