The new, live-action version ofBeauty and the Beastis a hit, and it certainly gives audiencesmorethan the classic animated version.Bill Condon’s movie treats the Disney movie as a lavish spectacle complete with new songs, expanded plot points, and even variations on the characters. It’s very much in line with the animated original, but it also piles on more stuff as way to leave its own mark.
While there are lots of minor variations along the way in terms of lines of dialogue and even lyrics from the songs (Josh Gadgets major points for his new ending to “Gaston”), I’m going to go through the major changes we see along the way. [Spoilers ahead for the newBeauty and the Beast]
The new movie has added four new songs. “Aria”, “How Does a Moment Last Forever”, “Days in the Sun”, and “Evermore”, and while none of these songs are outright bad, none of them are incredibly necessary. Keep in mind that all of the songs in the original movie are pretty much perfect and instantly memorable. In fact, they wisely cut the song “Human Again”, and while you can still see it on the DVD and Blu-ray, it’s a plus that it’s been lost to time.
The biggest problem among the new songs is “Evermore”, I pretty tune that’s completely misplaced in the narrative. It feels like someone said, “We need a song here,” and completely ignored the narrative momentum of the story. That’s the problem when trying to re-adapt a musical, something that already was balancing musical numbers and plotting. By having Beast (Dan Stevens) sing a sad song as Belle rides away, we’re losing the urgency of the moment as well as overdoing something that’s already painfully obvious. It’s an added song for an added song’s sake, and if they had tweaked it and perhaps placed it elsewhere to denote Beast’s emotional awakening and fears of being hurt, it would have had a greater impact.
To its credit, Condon’sBeauty and the Beastdoes some cleanup on some aspects that the original glossed over. If you follow the math of the animated movie, the Prince was essentially a 10-year-old boy when he was cursed, which makes the enchantress far meaner and less understanding. The new movie cleans that up by showing that the Prince was an adult and deserving of his fate. The film also explains that the enchantress’ curse made everyone in the village forget that the castle and its inhabitants existed, so that closes another plothole. Finally, Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson) explains that the reason the servants are cursed is because they did nothing to curb their boss’ bad behavior. It’s a flimsy excuse, but for people who thought it was unfair that the servants were also transformed, they now have at least a reason why that happened. Condon’s movie also tries to up the stakes by show that when the curse isn’t broken, the servants become objects rather than what the animated film implied, which is that they’d still be “alive” in some sense.
Condon’s film also makes a callback to the originalBeauty and the Beasttale. In the animated version, Maurice (Kevin Kline) is captured after the servants try to make him comfortable and he’s discovered by the Beast. In the live-action film, as in the original novel, Maurice is taken prisoner when he tries to take a rose from the Beast’s garden.
Where the new film makes some additions is to Belle and Beast’s backstories. Essentially, the movie tries to ground the story in a bit of reality by saying that Belle and her father lived in Paris but they left her sickly mother behind. Essentially, both Belle and Beast’s mothers died from the plague, and while I suppose it’s nice that they can bond over a shared lost, it’s the kind of illumination I was never really asking for from the original movie. I’ve seen the animatedBeauty and the Beastcountless times and never thought, “What happened to Belle’s mom?”
The film also tries to bring in more Maurice by having Gaston (Luke Evans) and LeFou initially believe his story, or at least to the point where they’re willing to go on a journey with him until they tire of his tale and Gaston actually hits Maurice! Then they leave Maurice in the woods to die, but he’s rescued by the Enchantress (who keeps awkwardly popping up; she’s also there when the Beast “dies”), and then in a roundabout way they want to lock him up in the asylum.
The Characters
The only two characters who are significantly different than they’re animated counterparts are LeFou and Maurice. In the animated film, they’re far more cartoonish. LeFou is a simpering sycophant who’s all too eager to serve Gaston’s whims. Gad adds a lot of humanity to the character, showing his reluctance to engage in some of Gaston’s more nefarious schemes. He also clearly has a huge crush on Gaston, but eventually decides he doesn’t want to be a bad guy while the animated LeFou never reforms. As for the “gay moment”, that depends on whether you think smiling at a guy and then a half-second shot of him dancing with that guy qualifies as a gay. Personally, if Disney wants credit for having a homosexual character, they need to do far more than what they did with LeFou.
As for Maurice, he’s not really a doddering figure like he is in the original. If anything, he’s a delicate, melancholy craftsman. He hides what happened to his wife from Belle, and he still seems haunted by the loss of his wife. It’s a much sadder, more human figure, which is why they can’t take the shortcut of “Crazy Old Maurice” and instead they have to build him up more to sell throwing him into the asylum.
