re: The DISNEY Tourney: Quarterfinal Results

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Snow White would not bomb today. of course it would have to be updated. And without Snow White you likely never get Beauty and the Beast.

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That's my point. You can't do a love story or a fairy tale these days with a woman blindly falling in love with someone they don't know. The Prince/love interest in Snow White has to be radically updated, as the remakes after 1991 show. Now the Prince puts off a rapist vibe.

It just doesn't work in today's environment, and it's largely thanks to that film. Yes, Snow White is a highly important film, but Beauty and the Beast is a perfect critique on why that film is overrated. It is done so much better to a ridiculous degree.

Snow White is an idiot who is merely waiting for a man to rescue her; Belle is intelligent who is able to take care of herself and goes well out of her way to help others. The Beast is a character that improves himself over the film; the Prince stops in at the beginning, and then comes right the frick out of nowhere at the end to save Snow White, and he could be as deplorable as Gaston for all we and the characters know. The Queen is just after Snow White because she's hot; Gaston is the town hero/buffoon who turns into a jealous monster as the film progresses. Snow White, all the side characters are literal carcatures; the ones in BatB are a bit more complex than that.

Let's compare it to it's revolutionary successor: Toy Story. Both completely revolutionized animation and film as a whole, but why do we continue to watch Toy Story? It's because of the smart script, great characters, and a fantastic universe it set up. I'm convinced people only watch Snow White because of it's historical context and maybe 2 tunes that it made. People don't watch the original Toy Story for this reason, and it completely holds up regardless of when it was released.

If Snow White were released today without altercations, it would be around 30% on the T-Meter, and that would be simply for "Hi Ho" and "Whistle While You Work". Beauty and the Beast would still be hailed as a masterpiece if it were released for the first time today. I don't think the writers at Disney look at Snow White as inspiration, aside from to mock it and to show them how not to make a princess movie. BatB is the gold standard that Disney has created, and I'm not sure if it will ever be topped. Ask any guy if he'd rather his daughter turn out to be Belle or Snow White. 100 times out of 100 you'd get Belle as your answer.