Gary Trousdale
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Beauty and the Beast (2017)
Directed by Bill Condon
influenced by Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Plot Music Visuals
“Beauty and the Beast” is far from spectacular, and it’s certainly leagues away from touching the iconography of the 1991 animated version, but it’s more than fine as a beautiful and touching homage to a film the writers, directors and stars clearly adore.
Now, however, we have a remake of an undeniable classic—1991’s “Beauty and the Beast,” which had already been reworked for Broadway, and it’s more a direct copy than a remake.
While the recent versions of Cinderella and The Jungle Book featured small amounts of music from their animated inspirations, Beauty and the Beast goes all in, not only using all of the songs from the beloved 1991 film, but also adding a few new ones (the better to garner Oscar nominations).
The only way Disney’s live-action remake of its own “Beauty and the Beast” works is if you don’t compare it to the 1991 animated masterpiece.
To say that the first trailer for Beauty and the Beast was evocative of the 1991 animated classic would be an understatement; it was a live-action carbon copy, and if Disney’s remake of Cinderella was any indication, we were in for yet another tedious — if visually stunning, well-acted, and beautifully designed — exercise in nostalgia.
Enchanted (2007)
Directed by Kevin Lima
influenced by Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Visuals
And the five new songs by Stephen Schwartz (“Pocahontas”) and Alan Menken (“Beauty and the Beast”) ride a similarly fine line between parody and celebration.
The woodland cottage where Giselle lives is a dead-ringer for Aurora's hiding place in Sleeping Beauty, and the rest of the design freely blends elements of Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast .
Songs from multiple Oscar winners Alan Menken ("The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin") and Stephen Schwartz ("Pocahontas," "The Prince of Egypt") and splashy, polished dance numbers complete the package.
His animation background taught him to think out gags visually: There's a thigh-slapper where Giselle runs up a hill in Central Park, arms outstretched, in an echo of the famous shots in "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Sound of Music."
Although the fish-out-of-water Enchanted parodies nearly every Disney movie and many of their songs, it's still unique and really entertaining, especially with music and lyrics by Alan Menken ("Beauty and the Beast") and Stephen Schwartz.
Lima worked on Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, three of the better Disney animations, and his live-action resumé includes 102 Dalmations and Eloise at the Plaza.
And the longest section, with that nasty troglodyte, incorporates both one of Carax' earlier works (the same character showed up in his contribution to the 2008 anthology film "Tokyo!") and a bit of Cocteau's "Beauty and the Beast."
Check out the headstones in Père Lachaise Cemetery, where Merde sprints through on his Beauty and the Beast quest, and you’ll see both direct jokes (“Visitez mon site”) and indirect ones.
Sure, we see the shout out to Beauty and the Beast, but the real world work, especially the scenes where Lavant is dealing with true tragedies, become all the more powerful and engaging.
Carax stuffs his film with innumerable film and literary references — Vidor, Merde’s “Beauty and the Beast” motif, 1960’s “Eyes Without a Face,” nods to Franz Kafka and quietly horrifying Kubrickian darkness — as one would expect from a director who got his start writing for the French film journal Cahiers du Cinema.
But there's dazzlingly bizarre comedy, too, as in a "Beauty and the Beast"-inspired sequence where Oscar absconds with a fashion model (Eva Mendes) and takes her into the catacombs beneath a cemetery.
Warm Bodies (2013)
Directed by Jonathan Levine
influenced by Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Themes Plot
There are also a couple of coy allusions to Romeo and Juliet, from a balcony scene to the leads’ names, but it’s equally interesting to compare the movie to films like Beauty and the Beast, Ghost or Twilight.
With every bite, R becomes increasingly drawn to visions of Perry’s gorgeous girlfriend, Julie (as in Juliet), who is seconds from becoming a zombie’s lunch herself when R rushes to the rescue and hauls her back to his lair, a la “Beauty and the Beast.”
Thus begins a story with underscored parallels to "Romeo & Juliet" (note the names), as well as to tales like "King Kong" and "Beauty and the Beast," with R starting to evolve and become more human while Julie gradually accepts that he doesn't want to eat her.
After stowing Julie away in the derelict 737 plane R calls home, a Beauty and the Beast effect—or as the DSM calls it, Stockholm Syndrome—comes into play.
Before you can say “Beauty and the Beast” (or maybe, “Luke and Laura”), Julie begins so see something attractive in R. per formula, this something is premised at least in part on her strained relationship with her dad, the odious General Grigio (John Malkovich), who lost his beloved wife to corpses and so bears a grudge.
A scene of Belle racing across a grassy hill overlooking her village while singing the reprise of "Belle" echoes a similar moment with Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.
Ashman understood the power of a heroine's monomythical musical announcement of yearning for adventure, patterned on The Wizard of Oz's "Over the Rainbow" ("Belle" also finds visual touchstones in The Sound of Music and Gone with the Wind).
Tangled (2010)
Directed by Nathan Greno
influenced by Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Dialogue
"Tangled" is reminiscent of the successful run of movies Disney made in the early 1990s and would fit right in with those films which included "Beauty and the Beast," "The Little Mermaid" and "The Lion King."
It's astonishing to think that Tangled is Disney's first traditional fairy tale since 1991's Beauty and the Beast .
The fact that Alan Menken (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast) wrote all the tunes makes it feel like it’s 1990 all over again, albeit with computer-generated, rather than hand-drawn animation.
An early song performed by Broadway diva Donna Murphy, "Mother Knows Best," calls to mind Frollo's lyrics in Disney's greatest achievement, The Hunchback of Notre Dame: "The world is cruel/the world is wicked/it's I alone whom you can trust in this whole city/I am your only friend…"
Reminiscent of the classic original Disney adventures “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” and “Treasure Planet,” the Mouse House’s latest, an homage to 1950s science fiction called “Strange World”, is a fitting lesson on the ethos of climate change and humanity’s ability to protect their homestead.
You can read the inspirations clearly even in the promotional material: early 20th-century adventure serials, sci-fi pulp fiction like “Fantastic Voyage” and “John Carter of Mars,” the tentacled horror of H.P. Lovecraft, “Avatar,” “Atlantis: The Lost Empire,” “Journey to the Center of the Earth.”
Strange World transported me back to my childhood days of watching imaginative Disney tales like Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet .
In a historical context, Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira introduced the concept of anime to a larger Western audience than ever before, and John Lasseter's Toy Story proved that computer animation was a viable creative outlet, while Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale's Beauty and the Beast became the first animated feature to be considered for a Best Picture Oscar.
John Lasseter (creator of Toy Story), along with Donald Ernest (producer of Aladdin) and Kirk Wise (director of Beauty and the Beast), oversaw the English translation.
The most popular film in Japanese history has been imported by Disney, which has commissioned this English-language version lovingly supervised by American animators John Lasseter (“Toy Story”) and Kirk Wise (“Beauty and the Beast”), both of whom owe Miyazaki an enormous artistic debt.
Two American animation luminaries â?? Pixarâ??s John Lasseter and Disneyâ??s Kirk Wise (the director of several animated features, including Beauty and the Beast ) â?? were recruited to convert the Japanese version of the movie into one for English-speaking audiences.
In recording sessions directed by Kirk Wise ( "Atlantis," "Beauty and the Beast"), Chase and her fellow voice-talents (Suzanne Pleshette, Jason Marsden, Susan Egan, David Ogden Stiers, Lauren Holly and John Ratzenberger among them) have inhabited their characters so well that this film never suffers the kind of distracting awareness of an awkward translation that plagued the 1999 U.S. release of Miyazaki's "Princess Mononoke."
Never a matinee idol, the actor has done his time under prosthetics before -- he has suffered for our entertainment in TV's old "Beauty and the Beast" series, in "Star Trek" movies, and in "The Island of Dr. Moreau" -- but here, at last, he gets to play an expansive, witty lead, and he treats it like payday.
Underground, the scientist watches over his paranormal brood, including the grown Hellboy (Ron Perlman, in a kick-ass version of his Beauty and the Beast persona) and an agile fish person who can feel the past and future (the body of Doug Jones, matched by the voice of David Hyde Pierce).
For proof, witness his superlative work in TV's Beauty and the Beast or his magnificent 1981 screen debut, Quest for Fire.
Ron Perlman melted hearts as the lion-snouted protagonist in television's "Beauty and the Beast,'' causing a revolt among the show's multiple-cat-owning romance fans after it was canceled.
Perlman is no stranger to performing while encased in identity-obscuring makeup -- he was a multiple Emmy nominee for his work in the 1980s TV series "Beauty and the Beast."
He also demonstrates his ability to present a range of emotions, as this character is far cry from the rage-filled but docile and loving Beast in the TV series Beauty and the Beast.
Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959)
Directed by Henry Levin
influenced Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)
Themes
Atlantis: The Lost Empire calls to mind all manner of vintage fantasy adventures, but none more so than the 1959 live-action classic Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Elements from such films as Ralph Bakshi's "Wizards," "The Iron Giant" and "Beauty and the Beast" are evident, as are the aforementioned Jules Verne adaptations to the screen.
The Book of Life (2014)
Directed by Jorge R. Gutierrez
influenced by Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Characters
But Joaquin acts so much like Gaston in "Beauty and the Beast," the ending is a forgone conclusion: What heroine chooses a vainglorious soldier over a sensitive songwriter?
Channing Tatum's Joaquin borrows more than a few personality traits from Beauty and the Beast 's Gaston (his idea of a romantic gift is an autographed picture of himself) but he replaces the latter's cruelty with a naïve likeability.
Channing Tatum does lunk-headed well as the burly and egomaniacal soldier Joaquin, who makes the ladies swoon like an imitation Gaston a la Beauty and the Beast.
Frozen (2013)
Directed by Chris Buck
influenced by Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Music
At one point, former animation A-listers Linda Woolverton and Alan Menken were involved but, although neither lent their talents to the final version of Frozen, Christophe Beck's score echoes Menken's work for The Little Mermaid and the mix of whimsy, romance, and energy Woolverton brought to Beauty and the Beast is in evidence.
Here, they push boundaries further much as they had in 1991 with Beauty and the Beast.
While Disney figured out the latter in 1989, the former continuously proved troublesome as it failed to come together in both the 1990s and 2000s, with its most recent stint in turnaround coming after a version from Beauty and the Beast’s creative team (Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise, Linda Woolverton, and Alan Menken) fizzled.
It returns to the late-’80s/early ’90s Alan Menken/Howard Ashman Broadway musical style that rejuvenated the animation division with The Little Mermaid (1989) and Beauty and the Beast (1991) while also fully embracing the vast visual possibilities of computer-generated animation, whose ability to render glistening vistas of sun-dappled snow, weirdly refracting walls of ice, and the intricacies of the most delicate of snow flakes makes the idea of the film being done any other way almost unthinkable (for some time the plan was to produce it using traditional hand-drawn animation).
…defeated not just Walt Disney but also the well-oiled machine that the Disney studio became in the 1990s, when even Victor Hugo's grim novel of society and fate, The Hunchback of Notre Dame , was successfully crammed into the formula of a 90-minute animated Broadway-style musical.
Mary Poppins has often been suggested as Walt Disney's favorite amongst all the many films he produced in his 65 years of life; whether that's so, it certainly remains one of the best films ever produced by his company, indeed one of the best American films of the 1960s, just about the only film that can be idly compared to The Wizard of Oz as a masterpiece of family cinema, in terms of its technical ambition, emotional honesty, joyous energy, and glorious soundtrack (to me, Mary Poppins vies with only Pinocchio and Beauty and the Beast and perhaps The Little Mermaid as having the best songs of any Disney feature).
It’s the best of the first wave of Disney live-action features, and the most complete and satisfying musical of any kind that the studio produced until Beauty And The Beast came along.
Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson
influenced by Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Themes Plot
Like “The Twilight Saga” and its tale of a forbidden love shared by a human girl and vampire boy, “Fifty Shades of Grey” has its parallels with “Beauty and the Beast,” not to mention “Cinderella” and “Dr.
Part “Cinderella,” part “Beauty and the Beast,” part “Jane Eyre” meets “Story of O,” the film is based on the 2011 best-selling fangirl fiction sensation by pseudonymous Brit E. L. James, and it is a giggle-inducing letdown after all the heavy-breathing buildup in a media desperate for something people want to hear about.
Mulan (2020)
Directed by Niki Caro
influenced by Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Visuals
Unlike other live-action takes on Disney animated classics such as Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, Mulan features no singing.
But those put off by the carbon copy renderings of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin , and The Lion King might be in for a pleasant surprise.
I would compare the intense/suspense/fighting to that of the new live action Beauty and the Beast.
So though there is no real cinematic need for Mulan 2.0 to exist –just as Disney’s updates of The Lion King , Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin could be erased from history with little cultural consequence – Caro offers and accomplishes far more with Mulan than Mulan asks of her.
Recent members in its billion-dollar grosses club, from “Beauty and the Beast” to “Aladdin” to “The Lion King,” all became smashes through careful, hemmed-in strategies of reminding folks, every minute, of the originals.
Although better than its immediate predecessors, Hercules and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and its successor, Tarzan, its memory and legacy have never been protected by Disney the way that “The Big Four” (the fourth member being The Little Mermaid) have been.
As much time as he spends trying to reinforce the "Beauty and the Beast"/"Dr.
The Hulk and Betty are supposed to have a King Kong/Beauty and the Beast sort of bond, with maybe a touch of David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986).
Thanks to Lee and his able cast, however, "The Hulk" generates tenderness as well as tension, not only in eerily touching father-son confrontations but in sequences featuring Bruce's colleague and ex-sweetheart ("Beautiful Mind" Oscar-winner Jennifer Connelly), which carry echoes of "Beauty and the Beast" and "King Kong."
The Shape of Water (2017)
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
influenced by Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Themes Plot
Del Toro constantly evokes shades of “The Creature Walks Among Us,” and “Beauty and the Beast,” while also channeling Woody Allen’s “Purple Rose of Cairo.”
It’s a “Beauty and the Beast” situation, including the eternal question of who’s the real monster here.
The wildness of broaching sexual taboos—explored in films as diverse as Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast , Jack Arnold's Creature from the Black Lagoon, del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army , and Vincenzo Natali's Splice —is ignored by The Shape of Water, which preaches of the power of romance without acknowledging the work and joy of adjustment that goes into fostering and maintaining love.
“True Blood,” Beauty and the Beast, and Twilight aside, the notion of romantic love between humans and otherworldly creatures has been a popular theme throughout storytelling history.
Of course, this being a del Toro film, Elisa and the creature fall in love, evoking memories of Beauty and the Beast and King Kong, which are basically the same thing.
To del Toro's credit, The Shape of Water aspires to a little more than "daring to dream" (La La Land) or "finding the beauty within" (Beauty and the Beast).
The Greatest Showman (2017)
Directed by Michael Gracey
influenced by Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Characters
Smartly, the filmmakers — who include screenwriters Jenny Bicks and Bill Condon (the latter directed the live-action Beauty and the Beast and Dreamgirls and wrote the film version of Chicago) — also know how to keep a four-quadrant family musical from sinking into Chitty territory by employing devices that also will please the Broadway crowd, particularly the Bob Fosse-like opening number as well as sensational choreography throughout.
No small factor is that one of its co-authors was Bill Condon, a fine filmmaker and film writer previously known for "Gods and Monsters," "Kinsey," "Dreamgirls" and "Beauty and the Beast."
But in the script by Jenny Bicks ("Sex and the City") and Bill Condon ("Beauty and the Beast"), his lowly upbringing still makes him yearn for acceptance among the upper-crust swells.
Williams' acting chops are completely wasted in a film where her part essentially demands that she smiles as purely as Belle strolling through town in Beauty and the Beast.
Let's hope that Atlantis: The Lost Empire, directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, the team behind 1991's Best Picture-nominated Beauty And The Beast and 1996's less-than-great Hunchback of Notre Dame, is not an indication of a return to the low standards of the'70s and '80s suffered by the Walt Disney Pictures animation department.