Talk:Beauty and the Beast Original Screenplay/@comment-1672596-20140820002438

Anyone else prefer this screenplay over the final film? Honestly, I really can't see how exactly it's as dark and dramatic as Katzenberg claimed when he had it rewritten (Come on, the Disney version of Cinderella was darker than this screenplay due to explicit parental abuse and a broken family, and most kids could handle it. Granted, kids probably wouldn't handle Ariel dissolving into seafoam via suicide, if being exposed to Senator Kelly's death in the first X-Men film is anything to go by, but still... Not to mention that unlike the Bimbettes, where the only thing besides crushing on Gaston that even hints that they were internally ugly and impure is simply the fact that Belle's the heroine while they're... well, her foils, we actually SEE precisely how Drizella and Anastasia were internally ugly compared to Cinderella.). In fact, ironically, the final film came across as far more cynical considering the depiction of most of the villagers as being either extremely stupid or psychopathic (especially evident with the reprise to the Gaston song, where the lyrics made very explicit and clear that he was plotting to blackmail Belle involving persecuting Maurice for madness under false pretenses [ie, making him out to be dangerous when he is in fact harmless, if a little eccentric]), a not-so-subtle take that to Christianity being inserted into the film (the whole failed wedding scene. Even worse when you realize they don't even show or hint at a wedding between Belle and Adam not only in the ending of the film, but even in the midquels, especially when that failed wedding wasn't even necessary), there are quite a few scenes where you're not even sure why Belle is hinted to be internally beautiful from her actions (like, for example, her shoving Gaston into a mudhole. Yeah, he did act like an arrogant jerk during the proposal, but did she really need to go that far? Especially her smirking when he fell into the mudhole? At least give her some shock and horror in her facial expression to imply she did not actually intend for him to fall into the mudhole. And honestly, her foils, the Bimbettes, actually came across from the little we see of their behavior as being more pure of heart than Belle herself since outside of crushing on Gaston at all, we don't see any particularly nasty behavior from them [unlike Gaston, who we very clearly see as being disgusting from his actions], which is a huge flaw in the film especially when the point is that true beauty comes from within, with the implication that Belle actually has true beauty), and frankly, with a few exceptions, most characters are very unsympathetic at times (yes, even the Beast, one of the few characters who was actually sympathetic, got a bad point by, ironically, letting Belle leave as his first "selfless" act, especially when it nearly doomed his servants to staying as enchanted objects). It also doesn't help that the implications in the opening song that Belle is an outcast specifically because of her ability, never mind her love of reading, sounds like something taken straight from a women's studies course and feminist propaganda (namely, women not being intelligent or educated at all until the 1960s), even though there were plenty of instances this was conflicted (her visiting a bookstore as a regular, for starters, especially when the mere presence of a bookstore would economically imply that a majority of the villagers are literate, not to mention the implication that most of the villagers are Christians, which means they most certainly had to read at least the Bible especially given it was the late 18th century). Heck, their treatment of Belle herself wasn't even that bad. I can name instances where the entire townspeople treated someone far worse (like how most of Springfield actually tried to drive Bart to suicide all for a failed catch in Little League in "Boys of Bummer".), yet more than a few times it seemed more like Belle is driving them away than her actually being persecuted. And one last gripe is that the final version doesn't even follow the source material at all. Even Disney's The Little Mermaid was far closer to its source material than the final film was to its source material (and keep in mind that one of the complaints for the movie was changing the ending).

With this screenplay, from the little I've seen of it, we actually can sympathize with Belle and her family's plight, we actually do see an actual effective foil with Belle (her aunt Marguerite, who we can definitely see as being extremely bad and internally ugly even if she was somewhat beautiful. And her presence more than makes up for the removal of Belle's wicked sisters in the original tale), Belle's overall behavior in the film was far better (her refusing to marry Gaston was definitely a lot more polite than in the final version, which, if anything, made her about as big a jerk as Gaston. At least do the scene in a way that actually does have Belle in peril and actually left her with no other option but to knock him in the mud, and also have her show some remorse for having to do so), and we don't have an unnecessary demonization of a specific faction of characters in order to have a cynical attempt at making the target audience see that the bad guy is an actual bad guy.

Plus, isn't it ironic that this screenplay was rewritten on Katzenberg's command for being "too dramatic and dark", yet he ended up promoting the exact same thing for Toy Story (and nearly got it's production cancelled as a result) in a manner far more obvious than in the original draft (heck, it was ironically closer to the "lighter and softer" final film) that he had earlier decried for the original draft when it doesn't even match it as much as he claims?