Why Beauty And The Beast Will Be Better Than You Thought

Fans of the original 1991 film should breathe easy: director Bill Condon knows a thing or two about working on projects with beloved source material. The Academy Award winner has worked on several movie musicals over the last 15 years, directing Dreamgirls and writing the screenplay for best picture winner Chicago in 2002.

Condon, a New Yorker and longtime Broadway theatergoer, also understands how his experiences on those films helped prep audiences for a full-blown return to form such as in La La Land. "Moulin Rouge!, Chicago, Dreamgirls — each movie takes a different approach to make people comfortable with people singing," he told the Hollywood Reporter. " In Chicago, they're all onstage, and Moulin Rouge! is a huge stylization of design and the camera that gets you to giggle and relax." Condon also has experience navigating a rabid fan base thanks to his work on the final two films of the Twilight franchise, and he knows expectations for the live-action Beauty and the Beast are particularly high. "The great thing is that there are so many people who are so eager to see the movie, and that's what you crave as a filmmaker, that there's an audience waiting and committed," Condon said. "But in terms of expectations, you can only make your personal version of what this is. Because I feel like I'm such a true fan of that original film, I could only use myself ultimately as a gauge." And Condon says he stuck pretty close to the source. That's a good sign.

Since her first appearance onscreen in 1991, Belle has long been seen as unique among Disney princesses, far more focused on her independence and smarts than her interactions with princes. Original screenwriter Linda Woolverton was herself something of a phenomenon for Disney, too. As the first female screenwriter for an animated Disney film, Woolverton wanted Belle to be a different kind of Disney princess, "one that isn't based on being kind and taking the hits but smiling all the way through it," as she told Time. But it wasn't easy. Her script was often subject to regressive rewrites. She told Entertainment Weekly, "Every single line of Belle's dialogue was a battle [with the studio]."

Though Woolverton is not involved in the new film, the feminist ideas she championed 26 years ago are still very much intact. Emma Watson, a noted feminist in her own right, pushed for the film to take Belle's feminist ideals even further. Belle is now an inventor and is more active in the new film, too, thanks to Watson's insistence on not wearing a corset.

Director Bill Condon agreed: "We wanted to make sure that she remained a feminist figure and someone who looks to the future."

For a story where he's one half of the title couple, the Beast barely sings at all in the 1991 animated film. The Broadway musical sought to remedy this problem with a huge solo number for the Beast at the end of Act I called "If I Can't Love Her." Director Bill Condon wanted to include the song in the new film but couldn't make it work with the plot. The result is a brand new song for Dan Stevens' Beast called "For Evermore." Composer Alan Menken revealed to Entertainment Weekly that the song is a tender moment for the Beast, as he's let Belle go back to her father whom she misses. You can feel your heartstrings tug already. Josh Groban also recorded a version of the song, which will be featured on both the film's soundtrack and during its closing credits.

The spectacular 1991 version was the first full-length animated film to be nominated for best picture at the Academy Awards and helped inspire the creation of the best animated film category, which was introduced 10 years later in 2001. While critics and audiences were moved by the story and songs, Beauty and the Beast also wowed with groundbreaking visuals, specifically during the iconic ballroom dance sequence. It was the first film to integrate hand-drawn cels with computer-generated 3-D backgrounds. Using an animation program co-developed with Pixar, Disney animators created and composited every frame of film, adding shadows and colors to make the 3-D look more lifelike. The results thrilled critics.

Condon and his visual FX team have been working hard to seamlessly blend CGI with live-action while still keeping the awe-inspiring romantic visuals of the 1991 film. Condon admitted to the Hollywood Reporter that it took a few tries to get it right. However, the team realized that with so many CG characters, grounding the film in real, practical elements was key. "The thing that was fun, given that we knew there were these CG characters, was making sure that as many elements as possible could be real," said Condon. "The sets were massive, like an MGM movie circa 1950. You could go from the entry to the dining room in the castle, all the way to the ballroom, across two sound stages. They were all connected. We built the entire village."

And given the number of positive reviews, it sounds like the hard work paid off. A.O. Scott's review in the New York Times notes, "There are a few moments—a climactic high-elevation fight scene that looks like every other climactic high-elevation fight scene; a chase through the forest involving wolves—where the digital seams show, and you're aware of the cold presence of lines of code behind the images. Most of the time, though, you are happily fooled. More than that: enchanted."