Beauty and the Beast is Secretly a Failed Superhero Origin Story
The new live action remake of the classic 1991 animated Beauty and the Beast came out last weekend, and it tried to pour some asphalt into the plot holes Disnerds have been cheekily pointing out for years (not me, of course, but like, okay yeah me). Unfortunately, in the process, it opened more cracks in the plot pavement than a Philadelphia winter.
(Spoilers ahead!)
Why did the Enchantress curse the servants too? Oh, because they didn’t stop Beast’s dad from raising him to be an asshole. Why didn’t anyone in the village know there was a haunted castle with a buffalo shaped prince just up the hill? The curse makes everyone forget! Who is this Enchantress anyway? Idk, this bitch named Agatha who lives under a bridge. What happened to Belle’s mom??? Uh…we didn’t really think that was a plot hole last time, just assumed she got sick and died because that’s what Disney moms do…but I guess we can spend a good ten minutes and a boring musical number on that whole thing, if you really want, because the Enchantress also gave the Beast a magical book that can immediately transport them anywhere in the world just by thinking about the place.
Wait. WHAT!?
That’s a super power! Seriously. There are entire movies about people whose only superpower is instant teleportation. That is definitely a power worth tolerating extra butt hair for. It’s not like Belle and Beast just “saw” the shack in Paris “as if” they were there, Belle brought back a physical object. So they were obviously literally in Paris one second and then immediately back in whatever bumblefuck village Prince’s satellite royal castle resides in. I know Hermione is used to apparation so this might not have seemed that incredible to her, but for a girl who sings a whole auto-tuned number about “wanting adventure in the great wide somewhere,” she sure seems remarkably uninterested in the ability to travel to any location in the world instantaneously. Seriously, screw dancing, Beast, let’s go to the Arctic and see some penguins!
And when Belle sees that her father is being dragged away by a literal mob with torches and pitchforks, she just ambles her way out of the castle and rides Philippe all the way down the mountain to rescue him, when she could just open the book, grab Maurice, and be back in the castle in time for that evening’s musical number.
In fact, reviewing the abilities the Enchantress gave Beast, he has…
1. A Magic Mirror that lets him see anything or anyone at any time
2. A Magic Book that lets him instantly travel to any place in the world whenever he wants
3. Superhuman Strength – including the ability to jump inhuman lengths
4. Intelligent Inanimate Objects that will loyally help him fight his enemies
5. Enormous Wealth and Social/Political Influence
Guys. The Enchantress wasn’t trying to punish the Prince Beast for being shallow. She was trying to turn him into a crime-fighting superhero! But Beast was too dumb and emo to figure it out!
It makes way more sense. I mean, Gaston called the Enchantress a hag to her face, and she did nothing about it, so it doesn’t seem like her main priority is teaching privileged white boys not to care about appearances. She was trying to make the Beast a Warrior Prince. She was probably tearing her hair out watching him mope in the castle the whole movie like “FFS, dude, how hard is this? I gave you all the tools to have a superhero origin story. I even gave you a Tragic Backstory™, a generic strong-independent-woman love interest, and a built in snarky-rich-boy-turns-altruistic-hero story arch! That is literally the MCU formula! Go fight crime!”
The Enchantress didn’t break the curse at the end of the movie because he found a woman who was okay with borderline bestiality, she just finally gave up on the Beast’s prospects as a superhero. “Even with all the powers I gave you, you were still taken down by a fuckboi in a ponytail!? That’s the 17th century version of a man bun! Whatever, have fun dancing with the cutlery. I’m out.”
Maybe you’ll have better luck with peasants in America, Enchantress.
