Jeremy’s Tophunder №81: Beauty and the Beast

8 min readJun 18, 2020

To be honest, I’m not quite sure why this movie is named “Beauty and the Beast” rather than “Gaston’s Incredible Physique, Bravery, and Overall Aesthetic.”

I’ve had arguments with people about this movie for the last several decades. My stance was, is, and always will be that Gaston is the true hero of the story, who goes to great lengths to save his village from a dangerous beast. You’re free to disagree with me, but trust me when I tell you that I’ve spent -way- longer thinking about this than you have, and -way- longer than anyone reasonably should.

Let’s say you live in a small village in a rural area, sometime in the 1700s. There are no major cities nearby, but, several miles away, perhaps a day’s walk, is a giant castle that nobody seems to go in or out of. Most of the people in town don’t even seem to know that the castle exists at all. But a villager stumbles upon the castle, is gone for a while, and then returns. He tells you that the castle is inhabited by a giant and hideous beast. Naturally, you don’t believe him, because (a) he’s kind of a loon, and (b) beasts aren’t real. But then his daughter goes missing for weeks, maybe even months, and then returns to the town to confirm that yes, in fact, there is a giant beast in the castle.

Now, imagine you’re the de-facto town leader, and everyone is looking to you in confusion. You’ve suddenly learned that not only do beasts exist, but there’s one that lives in a castle not too far from here, and knows that this village exists, because two people have been to the castle and since returned. Which viewpoint sounds more reasonable to you:

A. The Beast is dangerous and poses a real and immediate threat to your community

B. The Beast is secretly a prince that was put under a spell by a vindictive enchantress

(Hold on, before we go any further, I need to rant about this for a second. In the song “Be Our Guest,” Lumiere sings a line that goes “Ten years we’ve been rusting/Needing so much more than dusting,” which strongly implies that the enchantress levied the spell against the castle 10 years ago. BUT ALSO, the spell only breaks if the Beast finds love — and someone to love him back — before he turns 21. So, if we do the math, this means the spell was placed on this kid when he was, yes, that’s right, 10 years old. Are you KIDDING ME? First of all, where the hell are/were his parents? Second of all, how do you expect an 10-year old to respond when a haggard old woman knocks on his door asking for shelter? The enchantress plays a colossally mean trick on a 10-year old, and then curses him to be a beast, and the only way to break the curse is to find love not only *while looking like a hideous beast* BUT ALSO *during the time period where he is the most awkward he will ever be in his life* AND *while he has absolutely nobody his own age to interact with to develop the requisite social skills to correct the first two insurmountable obstacles.* THIS is the premise of the movie. We’re all on board with this. This enchantress is clearly the villain. And YOU dare to get mad at ME when I try to make a convoluted argument for why Gaston is secretly the real hero? In the immortal words of White Goodman — Spare Me.)

Okay, so, your two options — go to the castle to kill the Beast, or believe the testimony of this old kooky guy (who seemingly every last person in town assumes is several fries short of a happy meal) and his daughter (who walks through town with her nose firmly buried in a book, quite oblivious to the fact that literally the entire village is singing a song about her)?

OBVIOUSLY you’re going to kill the Beast.

Seriously, how is this even a debate?

Gaston is the true hero of the movie. The first hour is clearly setting him up to be the jerk with a secret heart of hold, like Han Solo, Rick Blaine, Tony Stark, Wolverine, and so many other classic movie heroes. But the movie robs him of his third-act turn, because it’s a Disney movie and the filmmakers were cowards. That’s my argument.

Go watch the first hour of Beauty and The Beast, and then watch the first hour of Star Wars: A New Hope, and explain to me the tangible differences between Gaston and Han Solo. I’ll save you the time — you can’t.

Actually, there is one difference. Han Solo’s best friend doesn’t rally the other patrons of the Mos Eisley cantina to sing a sweet song about how awesome he is.

What a bad ass. How could anybody not like this guy?

(My favorite part of the song is when the chorus sings “No one hits like Gaston/Matches wits like Gaston,” and during the “Matches wits” line, they show him intently poring over a chessboard before ceremoniously slapping it off the table. Always gets riotous laughter out of me.)

But let’s actually talk about this for a second. How many Disney “villains” have their own song? It’s certainly not all of them. Jafar never gets a song in Aladdin, the bad guys from Mulan don’t get a song, Hades didn’t get a song in Hercules, Prince John from Robin Hood never sings, Cinderella’s evil stepmother never gets one, and the early Disney classics (Snow White, Sleeping Beauty) were released before they came up with the idea to give villains songs in the first place. But more noticeable than that — how many Disney Villain songs are specifically *about how great they are*?

Even the villain songs that are self-indulgent and grandiose (Be Prepared, Poor Unfortunate Souls) are done in a way that the implication is clear: This character is The Bad Guy, and this megalomania is a decidedly negative trait. Other villain songs are straight-up takedowns (Cruella de Vil), and others are so overtly evil that there’s no confusion whatsoever (Mine, Mine, Mine & Savages). Gaston is really the only “villain” song where everybody agrees that the “villain” is awesome, but decidedly not in an effort to convince the audience that the bad guy is bad for compelling reasons. He’s just a cool dude.

Again, I’d argue that the movie is setting up Gaston for a classic (if not cliche) third-act turn, where he becomes the hero. They obviously didn’t go in this direction, because they’re cowards. I’ll go to my grave thinking this.

As for the rest of the movie?

It’s okay.

The relationship between Belle and the Beast seems pretty forced, if we’re being honest. They don’t really have any true moments of connection. It’s a little disappointing that the only song the Beast sings is a duet (and it’s by far the worst song in the movie). The animation is a bit lazy in a few very noticeable spots, most egregiously in the movie’s final scene when Belle and Prince Still Never Learn His Real Name dance around the grand ballroom while everyone around the perimeter of the room stand completely motionless. Yikes.

But there are some high points. Belle is a good character, and her introduction song is really good. Be Our Guest, meanwhile, might be the best Disney song of all time. Granted, it’s not even my favorite song in this movie, but if I’m being objective, I can’t deny how absolutely awesome it is.

So, while “Beauty and the Beast” isn’t quite my favorite Disney movie, “Gaston’s Incredible Physique, Bravery, and Overall Aesthetic” almost certainly would be, if that were the movie. But it’s not. So we’ll have to settle with the movie we have. I still love it. It’s great. I think top to bottom, it’s probably the best music in any Disney movie (not necessarily my favorite, that probably but not definitely goes to The Lion King, but the best). Every time I re-watch it, I think I’m going to be less impressed, but once Be Our Guest comes, I can’t help but think, “yeah, this is amazing.” It’s just another spectacular movie in a consistently spectacular run that Disney put together in the late 80s and 90s, and while I didn’t rank it nearly as high as I did the other Disney animated movies on my list, it’s still an all-time classic.

(For a refresher on the project, I introduced it in a Facebook Post on Day 1)

Here’s our progress on the list so far:

2. A Few Good Men

3. The Social Network

4. Dazed and Confused

5. The Shawshank Redemption

6. The Fugitive

7. The Dark Knight

8. The Departed

9. Saving Private Ryan

10. Inglourious Basterds

11. The Big Short