I mean, normally these "adult hot take" things on children stories are forced to present a cynical joke, but... yeah no, that's the entire point of the story. Like, that's the plot. It's what the movie is literally about.
If you really want to get down to brass tacks about it, the movie was saying love can transcend appearance, not necessarily sex. Loving relationships don't have to include gargling beast balls, so I'd say the adult hot take is still valid.
I don't know, that's very clearly romantic love they're talking about throughout the whole thing. The entire point of the curse is making the Beast ugly so he'd have to be nice to get some, and she certainly didn't get into that dress to friendzone him.
You made me go check, the curse demands that he "learn to love another, and earn HER love in return". I don't think beloved drinking buddies would have cut it. This is not subtext, it's the text.
Brass tacks. 🤔 Always would have assumed brass tax, but now I know. Funny how I’ve probably never seen those two words written together in over 40 years.
Belle discovering that she had a monster-fucker kink, mid-Stockholm Syndrome/Lima Syndrome tango, only to have that taken away from her at the last minute?
You saw her face at the end of the movie, it wasn't just surprise, it was disappointment! 😂
Still, she and Beast working through their problems and having a healthy relationship after... well, the involuntary confinement thing was over.
This scene was actually drawn hastily as the shot itself was done during the crunch period of production, at the very end of the deadline. Be Our Guest was so immensely, terribly complex that it took a small army of extremely talented artists to pull off!
The pencil roughs of Beast's human face were much more aesthetically pleasing, but it just didn't translate to the finished cel.
Even as a straight, young boy I was disappointed for her. I vividly remember announcing "but he's MORE ugly now!" Somehow, none of the conservative, Christian adults in the room liked me saying that.
Yeah, he does give off unemployed actor/barrista who's only going to need to sleep on your couch for a couple more nights because he's got stuff lined up vibes.
Lindsay Ellise, before the internet's most worthless people drove her off youtube, made a very good video talking about the trope of women and their monster partners in media.
The less succinct version is that she was considered one of the OG progressive youtubers who gained a huge following and as a result has garnered a LOT of harassment over the years she was running. (Keep in mind she was at peak of her youtube career around the time of "Gamergate") When she directed mild criticism towards the Disney movie "Raya and the Last Dragon" and how it was derivative of Avatar, I can't remember the details but something about the way she made the comparison set her up to be attacked by online chuds pretending to be concerned progressives attacking her for being "anti-asian."
Lindsay Ellis was a champion of equality and diversity and the details were infuriatingly minor and stupid (which is why I can't even remember it) but it was just the final straw and her mental health couldn't handle any more threats, attacks and condemnations and she left Youtube other than doing some guest bits with other old-time Breadtubers and she still does work on Nebula.
I fully get how even if you make a widely praised and well-received work, you will tend to fixate on the negative reviews the most, but this was the end of a long-term campaign to bully her off the internet and we can't expect every content creator to have inhuman thick skin. That said, I wish she would have just got off Twitter and kept making content, we could use her more than ever.
I think people got mad at something she said about Avatar on twitter (the cartoon not the movie), and her anti-fandom reached a critical mass spreading around every single thing she'd ever said that could be interpreted uncharitably, and with her book out and her presence on Nebula secured she decided that being on YouTube was more trouble than its worth.