Beauty and the Beast: a fairy tale

Once upon a time, there was a great animated movie from the kingdom of Disney. It was so good, it was hailed as one of the best in an era of bests, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture (not best Animated feature, mind you.) To John, it was one of his all-time favorite Disney movies.

Time passed, and the film aged well in the intervening time. John noticed that Disney was remaking its old animated movies into live action features, a trend that produced films such as Cinderella (2015), Maleficent (2014) and The Jungle Book (2016). The results ranged from meh to pretty great, so John had his reservations.

So it came to pass that John saw the new Beauty and the Beast live action film, directed by that guy who directed a number of Twilight films.  After seeing it, he generally appreciated what he saw, but he found something lacking.

Maybe, he thought, it was in the fact that certain things translate better through animation, where the CGI Beast ended up less expressive. Maybe, it was because of the bland color palette that consisted mostly of shades of dark blue and gold. Maybe, it was because he heard autotuning during some of Emma Watson's songs. Maybe, he surmised, it was because the most important scene in the film, the ballroom scene, felt flat and lifeless compared to the technical wonder of the cartoon.

And despite a plot that ties everything neatly together and new songs by original composer Al Menken, John thought the film was lacking when it was developing the most important part of Beauty and the Beast's plot, where the Beast warms up to Belle and vice versa, set to the song "Something There."

John exited the cinema and looked at the crowd who enjoyed the film. In trying to determine why, he searched far and wide within the landscapes of his mind and he realized that a wizard was casting powerful magic on these people. This wizard's name was Nostalgia. Nostalgia had been put to work by Disney before; exerting its power in the most recent Disney venture, that of a Rogue and her band of space misfits.

John admitted to himself, "The parts of this film that I enjoyed, the parts of the film that affected me the most were effective only because of that previous film. Without it, the film falls apart." And that, he realized, was the weakness of Nostalgia's magic. He imagined Nostalgia locked up in a corporate castle, forced to do the dirty work of unfeeling men in suits, with no prince or princess charming to save him. And that made John sad. He wished that one day, films can be made without relying too much on Nostalgia, because overused magical powers tend to weaken over time. Wishful thinking, maybe, but if love can turn beast into man, anything is possible.