Disney remaking their entire back catalog has turned out to be less of a terrible idea than it seemed originally. Both Pete’s Dragon and The Jungle Book felt substantially different from the originals, earning their own spots in the kids’ movie canon. In contrast, the new Beauty and the Beast has continued to look too slavishly tied to the source material. And since the 1991 Beauty and the Beast is the best movie to ever float down from the heavens, imitation seems like a clear path to the knockoff scrap heap.
But the final trailer for Beauty and the Beast gives off some indications that this movie might just have a life of its own:
We get a great sense of Belle’s small-town life with a completely different feel from the original. This trailer also reveals the movie’s secret weapon: Luke Evans as Gaston.
As always, we should be guarded and default to skepticism when it comes to remakes, but at least this final trailer for Beauty and the Beast finally makes it look like a movie with its own identity.
