Seems like most of us are looking for at least a temporary distraction from reality (hmmm, can’t put my finger on why). Well, Beauty and the Beast is promising two-plus hours of enchantment and Hermione swirling in a pretty dress. The first full trailer was released today, and I have a few thoughts.
This music is so nostalgic. Damn the manipulative way they can tap into the emotional center of my brain. Alright, I guess I’m in this now.
Why is Maurice… kind of hot? Is Maurice… kind of hot?
And now, the moment Belle asks the Beast to step into the light and she sees his horrifying face for the first time….
Ahhhhhhhh! CGI!!!
Just a note: It’s going to be a little bit hard not to see this headstrong girl in an enchanted castle who loves reading as Hermione.
Hot take: it’s weird that Lumiere has a full human body.
DEMON CUP.
Gaston has an amazing BumpIt.
Gaston is very, very attractive. I hope there’s already Luke Evans fanfic.
Maybe co-starring this guy.
- Get it, Gaston
Okay, yes, Maurice is actually hot.
No songs this entire trailer. So they’re really pretending no one’s going to burst into song in this movie, huh?
Based on their wigs and aesthetic, this is taking place in pre-revolutionary France. So even when Belle does marry the prince, and the curse is undone, they still have, what, two years tops before the next Gaston-type leads another angry mob into the castle, this time to get the royal family into a guillotine.
Personally, I hope the live-action movie leans into it. Maybe Beauty and the Beast will finally become the metaphor for the French revolution that it was always meant to be. I point you to my tweets, from last April:
https://twitter.com/DanaSchwartzzz/status/719937539445010432
To continue the metaphor: Belle, with her love of books and learning, represents the clergy (the First Estate), or the class of non-nobles that would have access to education and literacy. The Beast represents the Second Estate, the out-of-touch nobles (see above tweets). When Belle and the Beast fall in love, it’s a betrayal of the Third Estate, or the common people, led by Gaston. The educated and the wealthy in collusion, isolated away from everyday, hardworking Frenchmen who just try to afford their dozens of eggs a day.
But in the end, or at least this end, Gaston is defeated. Beauty and the Beast is a fantasy, a retroactive version of the story in which the Reign of Terror never happened (indeed, in which the writers of the story are aware that Gaston would have led something that would be known as a “reign of terror.”)
Of course, it doesn’t actually happen that way. But it’s fun to pretend.
