Thread:DisneyTriviaBuff/@comment-1672596-20140627014513/@comment-1672596-20140718152110

Thanks. In fact, from the little I saw of it from your edits, I actually felt it was better than the original film in at least some respects. Certainly, it was far closer to the original tale than the one we got (I mean, honestly, the one we got was so different from the original tale that probably the only similarities to the tale aside from the name of the tale was that the Beast got cursed and Belle undid it, that's it). I wonder why they vastly rewrote the film, though? It didn't seem to have any severe problems that couldn't be fixed without redoing it from scratch, unlike the Black Friday reel for Toy Story where there was little to no redeeming value to several of the characters, especially Woody.

In fact, to be frank, a few instances with the film we actually got actually made the story even worse, almost cynical in some respects. After all, the song of Belle, which was intended to indicate the oppression Belle felt in the village for being different, came across as her being somewhat snotty since literally the only things that were shown were that the villagers viewed her as somewhat odd and not like the rest of them. That's it. A simple acknowledgement that she wasn't like the rest of them. Had they, I don't know, treated her in a similar manner to how Cinderella's own family treated her, or even how the Griffins treated Meg from Family Guy, heck, even, as distasteful as this may sound, how Springfield treated Bart in Boys of Bummer, I could see why the village life would have been bad, but the problem is that we don't see them actually treating Belle badly other than citing her as being different.

Plus, their choice of a villain in the final version comes across as weak, especially when the opening had the enchantress crossing the moral event horizon by cursing all the occupants in the castle, even characters who had absolutely nothing to do with Adam's bad behavior at all (ie, the animals and children), not to mention being implied to have cursed the entire forest and the wildlife there to become dangerous, and isn't even made into a villain at all. At least with the original screenplay, the furniture wasn't stated to be transfigured servants. While Gaston ultimately had the same motive, at least he was the heavy, not the main bad guy (that being Marguerite).

And speaking of the curse, I know the villagers viewed Maurice as somewhat eccentric, but honestly, when the cursed forest is literally at your back door (as made clear in the Mob Song), and the scope of the curse would probably be similar to a nuclear bomb going off, it's extremely unrealistic that the villagers would treat Maurice like dirt and not even be aware at all of a Beast being nearby, not even suspect it, until Belle really blew it by exposing his existence with the mirror, especially when a spider-like walking carriage most likely dropped him off in the village square (as implied by Maurice being somewhat lacking of snow despite there being a blizzard outside).

Plus, for being a beauty, Belle seemed to look kind of plain, especially in comparison with characters like that redhead who asked the storeowner about his wife, the triplets, and that feather duster's human form. What makes it worse is that, other than the redhead (who was implied to have stolen ham, since she wasn't seen paying for it, and based on her saying "Bonjour" to the store owner, she had likely just arrived; plus she flirted with what was clearly a married man and knew it; and she may have herself been married (and that's largely because of her wearing a head covering as back in that day women who were married covered their heads), meaning she was an adultress), and possibly the Feather Duster (as she was shown to be somewhat "loose" in a brief scene with the womanizer Lumiere), none of them were actually shown with any villainous natures, and in the case of the triplets, from the little we see of their character, they came across as more internally beautiful than Belle did in the entire film (they went to Belle's wedding when they didn't know about Gaston being the groom, thus implying that they valued Belle as a friend, which is especially telling when she's the village pariah; and their reactions, and lack-of-presence indicated that they didn't even know much of the plan Gaston had, and certainly didn't agree with the little they did know), which would be a disaster for the moral. The point to Belle's beauty in the original tale is that she was both physically beautiful and internally beautiful, to contrast with her sisters who while beautiful on the outside, were monsters on the inside. Literally the only characters intended to be villains who actually were shown to be ugly on the inside were Gaston and LeFou, maybe most of the mob as well since they were implied to have known about and agreed with Gaston's plot. While the original draft didn't include Belle's wicked sisters, they more than made up for it with Belle's aunt Marguerite, who definitely was depicted as a huge jerk.

And the reprise to Gaston, well, let's just say that it seemed more like the screenwriters/songwriters were cynical about whether children would get that Gaston was a villain, even when some of his actions earlier would probably have made slightly clear that he was, considering the entire reprise would, had it happened in real life, resulted in Gaston's downfall and fall from grace from the village's view, not have them cheer him on for what was blatantly an amoral plan that would most likely only benefit him. It also doesn't help that the final film's strong implications that reading wasn't allowed in the village, at least not to women, despite not only the presence of a bookstore, but also the villagers being implied to be Catholics, would actually nix that idea, seemed to be agenda-pushing. And also, considering I just got out of College and it's been a nightmare where some of the literature courses basically pushed agendas and made references to things that didn't even occur at the time the works were actually written, plus researching how intellectuals screwed us Christians over for communism... well, you can pretty much guess what my views of Belle being a bookworm are right now.