I grew up in the late 90s and 2000s with an older sister and a dad that loved Disney, so of course, we were all about the Disney princess movies in my house. I grew up in love with Cinderella and Mulan and Ariel and of course, Belle. I watched those movies so many times a week everyone in my house had the songs memorized almost immediately.
When the news came out about a live action Beauty and the Beast, I about lost my shit I was so excited. I saw the new Beauty and the Beast movie the day after it came out and I couldn’t contain my excitement. My girlish screams and the memories of all the songs from the 1991 version of Beauty and the Beast came back to me. Throughout the movie, I was looking for all the possible hints that I could find relating to the original movie as well as the tale that I have recently read and fell in love with. There were so many good things about this movie; I don’t even know where to start! When a song started I immediately started singing along, knowing every word after so many years, and when the new songs that Bill Condon (director) and Alan Menken (music composer) created came on, I became ever more excited. I loved the new additions to the movie and I didn’t even know that that was possible because I was so in love with the original version before seeing this one.
Due to Emma Watson playing Belle, I noticed many changes in her character that made her even better than I expected. Emma Watson is a feminist, so she created her role as Belle to be more of a “feminist” role than it has been in the past, in the cartoon Disney Film and in the original fairy tale. Watson had Belle doing more work for herself than before and she was able to stand up for herself to the Beast and to everyone else, whereas in the original she was a shy and beautiful girl that didn’t know how to stand up for herself at times. Watson acting as Belle was the perfect choice because she knew exactly what the character needed to give it that extra push and three dimensional “persona”, so to speak. She, along with the new additions of the songs as well as the amazing graphics made this movie so enjoyable.
One of my personal favorite parts about this movie was how they decided to show the Beast transforming into a Beast form his human form. I found it very interesting that they decided to start by creating their own story, and making it their own along with the original 1991 version, instead of just recreating the exact same version in a live action format. This new version was better than the old because it related more to the tale than the original, and after reading the tale for the first time a couple of weeks ago, I found it extremely entertaining to know that they writers and creators of the new version of this movie, really put a lot of thought into the details of each part of the movie. The rose was a huge part in both the fairy tale and the 1991 version of the movie, and I love that they combined the two and made it an even bigger importance in the 2017 version. In the tale, Belle asks her father for a rose when he goes away for a few days, but that did not happen in the original version, but they tied it back in in the new version, which was nice to see. The new version was also better, because they explained everything so much more than they ever did in the original animated version. In the end, when everyone became human again, it was really cool to see all of the pieces from the beginning of the movie connect to the end of the movie. The director and creators of the movie connected the people in the beginning of the movie when the Beast turned into a Beast to the people that were transformed into the objects in the castle, so being able to put that all together in the end was a really cool addition to watch.
If you haven’t seen the new Beauty and the Beast yet, you are truly missing out, if you ask me, because it is so amazing to watch. The graphics and the colors and even the acting was outstanding and I have never fallen in love with a movie so quickly than I did with the 2017 version of Beauty and the Beast.
