Yep. While they had top character designs for the mains, the “transformed prince” looks like a design afterthought, done by the studio apprentice. Not just second tier character, more like a sketchup in a hurry.
I almost expected Belle to say “That’s it? Can I have my beast back, it looked better!”
tias@discuss.tchncs.de 18 hours ago
Hollywood literally cannot tell a “looks don’t matter” story without sneaking the looks (or status) back in by the third act. The Beast turning into a generic prince. She’s All That spends ninety minutes insisting personality matters, then resolves it with a makeover. The Princess Diaries goes one further: “you’re fine as you are” turns out to mean “you’re fine as you are, also you’re secretly a princess.”
I don’t think the people writing these endings believe the lesson themselves. An industry that runs on headshots and red carpets isn’t positioned to sell “looks don’t matter” with a straight face, and that disbelief leaks into the third act. Shallow people writing a story about looking past shallowness was always going to end with someone getting hot again. What bugs me is that they sell this corrupted message to our kids, repeating the cycle.
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Yeah he should’ve been turned into a middle aged balding guy with a potbelly. The original story was basically an allegory about arranged marriage. It was written for young girls who would be wedded to an older man. To teach girls that their old future husband might look like an ugly monsters but they might possess a good heart.
HonoraryMancunian@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
At least Shrek bucked the trend
LordKitsuna@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Yes and no, they bucked it by just making the princess also “ugly”. Thus “fixing it” we still didn’t get the looks don’t matter you can get the pretty one as an uggo story
Tja@programming.dev 9 hours ago
Howard and Bernadette in big bang theory. Or Leonard and Penny.