Going back to Princess and the Frog, this is exactly why I think Disney is making a huge mistake making this and Rapunzel. People are so blinded by the received wisdom that the Princess stories are "good" and the other stories are "bad" that Disney are asking for trouble. I doubt any film could actually live-up to the expectations in these princess fans heads. We're already seeing each trailer and each small scrap of information about the film being picked on and repeatedly analysed just from these threads.
Personally, I think you're being overly harsh here. Every scrap of information would be over-analyzed for
any Disney film (even Tim Burton's
Alice In Wonderland is being given the same treatment in its thread)--its being a Princess film really has nothing to do with that.
And, yes, I'm a little pissed off that people constantly view
Rapunzel and
TP&TF as a repeat of past films or, rather, that all the "princess" films are the same. Yes, they have common elements, but do you think of
Snow White as the same as
Sleeping Beauty? Or
Cinderella the same as
Beauty and the Beast? I don't think of any of them the same. Just because Disney decided to create a line where they all whore themselves out to make Disney money doesn't mean the films aren't separate and independent of one another. And
Rapunzel is one of the few well-known fairy tales left, the fact that it has a princess doesn't make it any less relevant for that.
(Sorry to everyone for helping this thread veer somwhat off topic, but I'm going to anyway)
Beauty and the Beast is a thin story where events around the characters have little consequence because its basically presented as destiny. Hercules is a true, "hero's journey" type story. Hercules risks it all, no one in BatB risks anything.
Although I do love
Hercules much more than
Beauty and the Beast, I'm not sure this is true. For one, Hercules' story is treated in a similar way to Belle and the Beast's. At the very beginning of the movie, we already have the Fates (and the Muses) telling us that Hercules will eventually save Mt. Olympus from Hades. And, yes, while they leave open that Hades could kill Hercules and fix the problem,
B&TB leaves open the fact that Belle could always turn away from the Beast. In fact, it's this sacrifice that Beast makes that results in his happy ending. Belle asks to leave to save her father, and the Beast obviously doesn't expect her to return. Who would return to a Beast? Even the servants are shattered that she left, as they don't expect her to return either and the time's almost up. The fact that the Beast no longer forces her to stay with him shows that it's her choice to love him--he can't make her feel something she doesn't and has given up trying. Where's this story of "destiny" and "no sacrifice" you were talking about? I thought the Enchantress told the Beast he would be human
only if he found true love before the last petal fell--not that he would find his true love, see the error of his ways and live happily ever after automatically. It wasn't a guarantee. She wasn't blessing him with a good fate. Whether he ended up blessed or cursed was his problem to deal with. In other words,
he made his fate. It wasn't decided beforehand.
As for Belle's decision to take her father's place in Beast's prison not being a sacrifice...
are you freaking kidding me? She didn't know what would happen to her with the Beast. He could have killed her, tortured her, ate her, raped her, whatever you could think of I'm sure a young woman being imprisoned by a monster would have thought of. Not to mention she traded her
entire life with no hope of finding love, of being happy, of ever having freedom again for her father (with no hope to see him again, or to even say goodbye--"I'll never see him again! I never got to say goodbye..."). If she had stayed free, there was a chance she could eventually leave the village and find a new, better home. Not so in a prison. Which is the whole reason she hated the Beast for the first half of the movie. So, to get to the point, this argument that there were no sacrifices in the film is pure nonsense to me.
And, yes, Gaston is a brute and was never presented as anything other than that. He was supposed to represent the entire regime that repressed Belle in the village. Are you honestly going to hate the film because they didn't give you the character you wanted? What next--hate the Evil Queen because she wanted to kill Snow White because of vanity and not something more realistic/credible (like a psycho-obsession with her dead fetus, as in the Sigourney Weaver take on the story)? Or, really, any of the Disney villains that are fairly one-dimensional.
Also, Belle's growing love for the Beast is also put into a song. "Something There" clearly shows to the audience that Belle is beginning to see something beneath the Beast she sees. I think the romance in Beauty and the Beast is not so clearly obvious because we have the Beast and Belle growing separately as characters while their romance grows as well. For example, the Beast lets Gaston go because he realizes that killing him is only something a Beast would do (which Gaston shows himself to be), instead of Belle stepping in to stop him.
The only thing I can really agree with you on is the servants being stereotypes used to bypass actual character development. I only wish "Human Again" had been able to make it into the original release, so that their point of view had been expounded on more. Although you comment that they try their best to play matchmakers despite the consequences for Belle does kind of show their desperation. Not only for the Beast's sake, but for their own. As for their relevance, I've always felt that they were important because they are an extension of the problem the Beast has to overcome within himself. Being a selfish person doesn't just hurt the person in question, but it hurts those around them as well and the servants are a reflection of that. They were just caught in the crossfire and their happiness is as tied to the Beast maturing as his own is.
You know, it is possible to make your point that
Hercules is a classic film equal to its predecessors without trying to tear down another in the process.
I know the film is a few years old, but still, spoiler warnings would be nice.
