In the Original Beauty & the Beast, the story is about sacrificial love. In the Live Action, it’s about freedom. One is fundamentally selfless, the other is not.
In the Original The Little Mermaid, Ariel is willing to sacrifice everything to go where she is understood (by Eric.) In the Live Action, Ariel is willing to sacrifice a few things to go where she can explore some more. Another “let’s change the main theme from love to freedom.”
In the Original Mulan, Mulan left her family to save her father and prove she could do things right—when all along, her father loved her regardless of how well she performed. In the Live Action, Mulan left her family to save her father—even though all along she had chi superpowers that she was dying to use anyway. Once more, the remake subtly shifts so that the main character values something within themself, taking the spotlight off of sacrificial love.
In the Original Aladdin, Jasmine teaches Aladdin trust. In the Live Action, Jasmine teaches Aladdin nothing because she’s busy wanting to be Sultan.
What I’m saying is, it used to be enough for female characters to have actual character and integrity, and their stories highlighted those aspects of their nature. Then every other character in the movie learns from or changes because of the Princess’ heart. Nowadays, her character is not powerful. It’s what she does, what she forces and fights her way into, that is focused on—usually to the detriment of all the other characters around her.
In Aladdin, the main character does not believe anyone will see him for who he really is and still choose him. He doesn’t trust anyone in Agrabah to love him the way he is. But when Jasmine first meets him, she trusts him. When she sees him again as a suitor, she trusts him again, despite knowing he lied to her. When he is faced with the reality that he, not Jasmine, has to be Sultan, that’s when he wakes up and realizes that not only does he have to trust Jasmine with the truth, but he can trust her with the truth the way she trusts him.
In Beauty and the Beast, the Beast starts out hopeless and brutal, and then gains hope. Not because Belle talks him into it with powerful-woman speeches or savage one-liners. Not because she hunts down the Enchantress and defeats her, breaking the spell. But because the Beast witnesses that Belle is the kind of woman who’s love and compassion would give up freedom. He’s betting that kind of love can break his curse, even though he started the movie with “who could ever learn to love a Beast?” And then her continued love for him teaches him how to love her, sacrificially.
In The Little Mermaid, Ariel sacrifices her tail and her safety to have a chance at being with Eric—because she knows she understands him, and he can understand her. That, in turn, reinforces Eric’s one big character trait: he believes in the idea of “the right girl” and when he learns that Ariel is a mermaid who saved his life, he sacrifices his life and safety for her, too.
I can go on and on.
My point is: If you’re a Princess in a Remake, you make decisions based on what you want, not on what you love.
I hate hate HATE all those 2edgy 4me theories about kids shows. Like Angelica dreaming up the rugrats, or the ed, edd, and eddy children being ghosts, or literally anything that takes a lighthearted and fun kids show and has to turn it into some tragic take of rape or murder or misinformed mental illness.
So you know what? From now on I’m gonna do the exact opposite. Every cool grim-dark show is now because of a bunch of children. To get us started:
Game of Thrones: A middle-school DnD campaign with the most angry, vindictive DM who has promised to kill everyone’s player characters (and their family) by the end.
The Walking Dead is actually a bunch of kids playing zombie apocalypse in their neighborhood and every time someone “dies,” it’s because their parents called them home for supper.
Breaking Bad is actually just a fanfic the students in Mr. White’s class write about him because no one has any idea what he does with his free time and the running jokes about it got wildly out of hand.
today the priest said “our heart possesses what are our mind cannot comprehend” about the Trinity and it’s going to be part of the fabric of my personality moving forward
Me: Psych is a funny feel-good show, I don’t come to it for its emotional depth or award-winning acting, I love it for what it is, and part of that is accepting the levels of cheese-
Corbin Bernsen: has his voice do that little shake after Henry saw that there were shots exchanged at a bar where Shawn was and then Shawn wasn’t picking up his phone.
