#Don Bluth BatB

[princess-ibri]

I'd like to know; how do you think Don Bluth's Beauty and the Beast would have turned out? I wish everyone would have been able to watch it. Just what would have been though I am not really into this Beast's design maybe the Baboon design that Disney turned down?

Hey! Thank you for your patience I wanted to have time to give this ask a proper reply, with some pictures. Overall I think it would have done well in the way of becoming a cult classic, full of beautiful images and plenty of nightmare fuel but rather cluttered in the way that most Don Bluth films tend to be, something that definitely adds to their charm but keeps them from becoming as popular as the more streamlined Disney Renaissance movies they were competing with at the time.

In terms of plot I feel like it would have taken a lot of influence from the 1946 Jean Cocteau BatB movie, as well as some influences from the original Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve version, along with some of The Grimm Brothers and Abhorsen and Moe’s “The Singing Springing Lark/Lily and the Lion/East of the Sun West of the Moon” bits, as I will explain below.

I think the Cocteau influences would have been seen most in the primary look/atmosphere of the film, we can see a lot of his dark dreamlike Romantic influences in the clothing and set design of this poster in particular. The Beast and Belle’s clothes could have come straight out of the 1946 film.

This dark dreamlike atmosphere of that film would have worked quite well with Bluth’s style of filmography which tended towards that sort of Fever Dream Unreality in many ways. But of course we also have the abundance of side characters with their own small arcs (and animal sidekicks inexplicably wearing clothes) in the mix as well. We get most of our information about them and the themes of the film from this page:

From this we gain the main theme of the film ‘a thing must be loved before it is loveable’, and several names of our animal/fairy sidekicks. Below we can see Beauty with Nan the clairvoyant dog, with Otto the escape artist lizard on top of Nan. The bird on her finger could be Max the bird detective in a more realistic design then the one with him in the large hat, or possibly just a random bird to go with the random squirrels. Wether these characters would have been true animals with quirky traits or people transformed like the Beast I don’t know, though with Bluth’s other films to go off of I tend to believe they were likely just funky animals who would have used their skills to try and help Beauty unravel the mystery of the Beast and his cursed castle.

Try as I might I couldn’t find any depictions of the King Bats that were mentioned (fairly sure I have Queen Livia and the Wee Beasties though, we’ll get to that in a moment) so I wonder if they were later replaced with these wolves? They sound like they would have e been aligned with the villain in any case.

Here’s where we get to the ‘Singing Springing Lark/Lily and the Lion/East of the Sun West of the Moon’ influences I think would have been in the film. As we can see in the picture below we have Beauty and a very much human prince fleeing from the wolves on Pegusus back— in these versions of the BatB story the heroine is forced to go on a journey to rescue the prince from an evil princess, after his Beast initial curse is broken. She is usually aided by the Wind, riding its back to go and find him, and in the Grimm version the pair escape via Gryphon. It’s not to hard to imagine Don Bluth deciding to swap out a Gryphon for a more majestic and recognizable looking Pegasus for his lovers to escape on once they’ve been reunited.

And of course we have the villain of our story, who I’m pretty sure is meant to be this Queen Livia. I mean look at this lady, all deathly pale and decked out in villainous green, pretty sure that a crown on her head as well. In the original Villeneuve version the Prince is cursed into a Beast by a wicked fairy after he refuses to marry her, I could totally see this woman cursing people left and right. Add that to how the Prince in the sketch version below seems to be facing off against this sinister looking woman’s head and I think it’s a good guess to say that Bluth’s BatB would have had a similar premise.

I’ve also pulled out charters I’m very sure are meant to be Beauty’s father and sisters (the smaller head by the Father possibly being a sketch of their mother?) once more pointing to following the old traditional tale where Beauty is faced with opposition from her sisters as well.

We’ve also got a lot of sketches of what I’m assuming are the Wee Beasties, who are 1000% precursors to the Jitterbugs we later see in Thumbelina, along with some more butterfly like fairies, who could possibly be grouped in as a prettier type of Wee Beastie or just be fairies.

So yeah, I think it overall would have followed the tone of the Cocteau film, with some added animal and fairy sidekick shenanigans as Beauty tries to discover the secret of the Beast, eventually culminating in her discovering he’s been cursed by the evil Queen Livia who seeks to marry him. The climax would be that after Beauty has broken the Beat spell by professing her love he’s whisked away by Livia to her wolf guarded home base, and Beauty and her friends have to rescue him and defeat the evil Queen once and for all, with her and the Prince escaping via Pegasus to ride off into their happily ever after (oh and with his mask I’m thinking maybe Livia gives a masked ball or something to celebrate her wedding with the Prince and Beauty crashes it).

Per the Beasts design I dont really. Ind it so much. It is a bit close to the Disney one but honestly I still preorder a composite Beast over one based solely in one animal sorry 😅 But I did find some alternatives designs for him for you!

Some of these are straight up goblin-y I love it 😆

[theboarsbride]

WIP - The start of something Don Bluth inspired 🦋🥀

[demigoddessqueens]

Be at peace Ms Lansbury 😢

[ibrithir-was-here]

Canon Descendants Beauty and the Beast: Part One

Ok! Let’s do this thing! This is gonna be a two parter cuz the story I’ve crafted needs some more art then usual but I’m excited to get this one going. BatB is one of my fav Disney movies and I’m excited to give it an actual (hypothetical) sequel after all those Midquels x)

This first picture is actually really old but still fair enough quality, so here’s Canon Descendants Ben and Gil, renamed to Benedict and Gilbert (“Jeel-bear” French pronunciation) and Gaston’s other two sons mentioned in the Descendants novels, Gaston Jr and Gaston III, who’s names I didn’t change because my goodness of course Gaston would name his sons that.

The Gaston twins and Gilbert are the sons of Gaston and Laurette, the orange triplet, who Gaston only married because she looked the most like Belle. Gaston survived his fall thanks to that good old animated death staple because if you look there’s a river under him when he falls so of course he can survive if the narrative demands it, and for him to have three kids at least around Ben’s age it does. (The Disney rule seems to be that unless we see their electrocuted skeleton or the shadow of their hanged corpse of course the villain can come back somehow)

Anyway Gaston survives, gets himself hitched as fast as he can before taking himself out of the province fast as he can before the law can come after him for stabbing the recently remembered Prince. The Gaston twins take after their dad and are basically his new lackeys, but Gil is more soft hearted and tries to look after his mother who isn’t living the dream life she thought she would when she eloped with Gaston, who spends most of his time stewing in drink and dark thoughts now.

Ben has a wonderful childhood, Belle and Adam (it’s my sequel and I can finally give him a name if I like and darn it it’s gonna throw the fans a bone they actually want) are wonderful and attentive parents. Belle takes his education under her own hands instead of turning him over to tutors, ( she also oversees an educational program for the province Adam rules over) and I like to think that both Ben and Adam are fascinated by Maurice’s inventions and frequently help him with them.

Eventually, Gaston’s drinking habits become too much of a strain on the family finances, and Laurette decides to send Gil back off to the old Small Provincial Town to get work at her family tavern (I head canon the tavern is in the triplets family since they seem to work there, and they let Gaston put up his trophies because he was the town hero). She’s also anxious to try and put some distance between her more sensitive son and her volatile husband who doesn’t hold with ‘sensitivity’.

So Gil begins working there, and one day, he wanders into the old bookstore, and he’s hooked. He can’t read, but he likes looking at the pictures, though he doesn’t want anyone apart from the kind old bookseller to catch him looking at them. But that’s just what happens one day when Ben steps in to visit his mother’s old friend. Gil is startled when this young nobleman starts talking to him, and embarrassed to admit he can’t actually read the book he’s looking at. But Ben is kind and friendly and soon starts to visit regularly and teach his new friend to read.

So Gil has a new friend and books to read and money to send home to help his mother and his father is at least two counties away, and things seems to overall be going well for him and Ben and the royal family enjoying their happily ever after.

But all is not well for long. For one dark night, at a tavern two counties away, a stewing Gaston finds himself suddenly approached by an intriguing stranger, with an intriguing proposal. She’s been looking for him for sometime, she says, someone who’d once lived in the village near the castle in the woods, someone who has long since left it’s sheltering borders. All he needs to do is provide some information about the new Princess who married Prince Adam, she’s been—unable to approach anyone else who used to know her—and maybe she can do something to improve the circumstances he’s found himself in.

A stream of gold spills onto the table from seemingly no where, the sparkle of it lighting up Gaston’s eyes with a predatory gleam.

And, of course, if he were to make an official agreement to aid her, be willing to make some…sacrifices, she’d likely be able to do more to change the hand of fate he’d been dealt.

And at the Misummer Ball, said Prince Adam finds himself face to face with an old friend from a lifetime ago, the Lady Melusine and her chaperone, come with a gift for Belle, one the lady apologies for taking so long to give to her, as she surely deserved to have it years ago. An uneasy feeling creeps up Belle’s spine as she accepts the book, there’s something off, she can feel it. But she smiles politely as she opens it—

There is a flash of searing red light, the smell of roses petals, ones that have long been dead and shriveled, a pealing laugh of triumph—

The ballroom, only seconds ago filled with laughter and talk, stands silent, and empty…apart from a book that lays upon the ground, that seems to glow slightly as the pages turn in a wind that stirs nothing else

End of part one….

——

Tada! Hope you like it! Trying a bit of a cliff hanger this time but yeah keep an eye out for part two in the next bit ;)

[swanlikebeautyarchive]

IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO SURVIVE HELL AND STILL COME OUT SHINING BRIGHTER THAN THE SUN, JUST LOOK INTO THE EYES OF A WOMAN WHO HAS SURVIVED INTENSE DAMAGE AND REFUSED TO ALLOW IT TO DESTROY HER SOFTNESS.

ind. sel. priv. canon divergent Swan Princess Odette written by Nile, est since february 2017 mix of animated movie the Swan Princess + Tchaikovsky’s the Swan Lake