They're doing all these live action versions of the cartoon movies, but in one of them they
Gaston isn't as bad as you might think. His best friend would probably be the bullied nerd in town, but instead he's Gaston's best friend. He's even nice to Belle, despite her anti-social behaviors and off-putting habits. Contemporary fashion makes Belle the sympathetic one, and they play her off like the intellectual, who suffers as the misunderstood outcast, whose neighbors and fellow townsfolk look down on her because they don't appreciate her literary interests. But they are all actually pretty nice to her. They simply don't indulge her long-winded digressions about her favorite books, because they have jobs! And Belle is actually the one who looks down on them, because they get up every morning and do their jobs, day in and day out, while she wanders around in an oblivious daze, apparently borrowing books for free from a bookstore. What are her complaints about the town? It's full of little people, who wake up to say bon jour! Those assholes are FRIENDLY! Can you believe the audacity of them offering friendly greetings to all the neighbors first thing in the morning?! I don't know how Belle puts up with it! Sure they note in their song how different she is from them, but they are still polite and friendly, even if they are a little too busy to listen to her recite the plot of Jack and the beanstalk. Really, their attitudes, while noting as she walks past, not paying attention to anything, and reading while she walks down the middle of a busy street, that she's weird. They aren't bothering her or making her life miserable because of it, but she's marching around wanting "more than this provincial life." She wants adolescent fantasies to manifest! She doesn't do much that is productive beyond housework, but sneers at the idea of becoming Gaston's housewife. And what does she do about the adventure she dreams of having? Settle for a rich guy, who is a member of landed aristocracy and a life-long shut in! She doesn't grow or develop, she simply finds a more prodigious enabler for her escapist habit.
Gaston is the hunter, with the negative connotations that brings to the first world middle-class target audience, but that probably makes him a significant provider of food and defense against creatures that prey on their livestock. And he doesn't mind Belle's oddities, he is able to look past her odd behavior and accept her, even going to great lengths to bump into her on the street. Unlike Belle, he's not exactly starved for choices on the matrimonial front either. Also, Belle has a lock of hair that keeps hanging in her face. For a Disney cartoon protagonist, that's the equivalent of bed-head, but that's how she goes out in public. And Gaston is not at all put off by her hygiene. We SEE Belle casually stick her hand in excrement and without batting an eye! During the opening song, a villager pours a bucket out of an upstairs window, the contents flow into the gutters and pour out just as Belle walks underneath, and she holds up a hand to divert the stream away from her face and the book she is holding up to it. A bucket being emptied out of an upstairs window, first thing in the morning, is almost certainly full of urine or feces (wash-water would have been in the kitchen, not the bedrooms). Belle doesn't even notice it's on her hand now. That's probably why the bookseller insisted she keep the book - he's noticed the accumulated stains each time she returns it. But Gaston doesn't care about what a slob she is, he is willing to marry her anyway. He claims she's the most beautiful woman in town, despite a trio of more traditionally attractive & scantily clad girls hanging on his every word. A really shallow guy wouldn't give Belle a second glance with them hanging around.
Now, the obvious rebuttal is that Gaston goes on and on about her looks, making him shallow and superficial, but he's also a semi-literate hunter, who doesn't exactly have the expansive frame of reference to express his admiration in other terms. You don't develop his level of marksmanship, with such primitive firearms, without spending a LOT of time working on it, that can't be devoted to romantic poetry. But even if he is fixated on beauty as an important personal quality, he lives in a universe that justifies that perception! The Beast's redemption is proven when he turns pretty again. Ugliness IS a punishment for negative personal qualities in that movie. Gaston, when whipping up the mob, points out the monstrous features of the Beast, which is a common behavior associated with bigots. However, that's in dealing with human beings. When dealing with something of a different species, specific features are important. People who live in a pre-technical setting would readily understand that something with fangs like the Beast eats meat, and a lot of it, to get the size he is. And then there is the fact that their "bigotry" is actually dead on balls accurate. Sure, judging an ugly guy who lives alone based on his appearance would be bad, but in this case, he has a hideous appearance because he IS bad! And he never gives any indication of changing, aside from on the "being nice to the hot chick" axis, which is pretty much basic reproductive instinct.
The point I'm getting at, is that even in the story we are given, Gaston isn't all that bad, at least compared to the solipsistic Miniver Cheevy chick suffering from arrested development. If you can make an evil sorceress into a heroine, it shouldn't be too hard to make Gaston into a cross between Van Helsing and Aragorn. The Beast protects Belle from the local wolfpack, but who protects all those sheep she reads to at the fountain (while the villagers are trying to do laundry)? Gaston does. The Beast isn't the only unnatural thing out there, either. When he first appears, Gaston's sidekick is carrying a carcass that has both antlers and a raccoon tail. Clearly, his hunting is not just about trophies, he's also holding the line against the various abominations that haunt the region. If kids are not going to be messed up or confused by seeing Maleficent saving Sleeping Beauty, they aren't going to suffer from seeing the tale of a small town hero leading a crusade to rescue the village weirdo who has succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome while being held captive by an aristocrat whose obnoxious behavior caused him to stick out even among his own notoriously ill-behaved and prone-to-excess social class, and draw down the wrath of a wizard.
And then we come to Jafar. He's intelligent, learned and powerful, and appears to be the only one exercising any authority in the Sultanate of Agrabah. Of the titular rulers, one is an elderly ditz, against whom a strong case could be made for senility, and the other is a petulant brat who refuses to marry to create a political alliance that might help protect her city and people, and sics a large carnivore on anyone who suggests as much. In his film, Jafar would be running around trying to handle most of the administrative burden, while also being forced to work around the obnoxious whims of the royal family. One minute he's working on a diplomatic strategy to head off the impending wars with neighboring countries whose princes came home from Agrabah with tiger bites, and then he's got to dispatch the guards to search the city, because the Princess is out fucking criminals in some alley somewhere for shits and giggles. His only hope for saving the nation is to call upon the might of the nigh-omnipotent genie, if only he can extract the lamp from its carnivorous cave. And his only hope in that regard is the juvenile delinquent with an infamous reputation among the city law enforcement, and probably a pair of the princess' underwear in his trophy collection. Overcoming all of these scenarios, with no one in whom he can confide except a parrot who sounds like Gilbert Gottfried would blow any hero's journey out of the water.
I want THESE movies. I don't want yet another live action fairy tale allegedly set in France, whose characters all have British accents. I shall not forgive Everafter, even if they are remaking it and replacing Angelica Huston with an emo Beast.
