The trailer is pretty lame, but you should check out the clips they have on Apple.com. It's goddamn unwatchable. You want to talk about a movie with no subtext? My god. Although Mary-Kate Olsen, of all people, looks turning in a pretty solid performance considering the material.

I do find it pretty funny that the movie is cynically expecting the audience to be the type of shallow, superficial people it's pretending to condemn. "And then she makes him ugly! But not, you know, too ugly." Just ugly enough that girls can get T-shirts with his scarred face on it and delude themselves into thinking this shows a depth of character and a focus on "inner beauty." That they, too, would be pure and good enough to make the sacrifice of loving a guy with tattoos and a perfect physique.

It's totally going to work, BTW.

Of course it is.  It's got a release date already, I think.

It's fucked up that you all think that us guys with tattoos and a perfect physique have it easy.  Maybe the movie is talking about YOU!

- Branco

You're talking about the live action Airbender movie, right?

Sure did.  It's glorious!

- Branco

Fire.

Lot's of fire.

And several large blows to the head.

Going only off the trailer:

-More subtlety in the writing. Any half-competent writer can find a way to demonstrate that our "beast" is good-looking and arrogant without him literally saying aloud "I am so good-looking and arrogant." Having him be so self-aware also undermines his character arc, since a large part of it ought to involve him actually coming to understand what he's been doing wrong. If he knows what he's doing and revels in it from the beginning, where do you have to go from there?

-Wrong protagonist for the presumptive theme of finding inner beauty. Beauty and the Beast is traditionally told from Beauty's perspective. There's a reason for that. As I've said before on the show, if you're going to tell a love story you have to make the audience fall in love or they won't care if the characters do. But if we're following the Beast, the story is crippled because we've already learned all we need to know about him.

There is a modernized story to be had from the Beast's perspective. As cast, he's blond, blue eyed, athletic, lives in a giant New York apartment -- he's the personification of American privilege. He was born into a perfect life and he thinks that means he deserves it. So you take it all away. Take away his looks, his wealth, everything. Make him have to get by on his own merits...and he'll find that he has none. When he can't get whatever he wants with a sexy smile, how does he get it? Make him confront the fact that just because he wants something doesn't mean he'll get it -- he has to earn it. And he comes across this girl, living near the poverty line, who deserves the life he had way more than he ever did, and his arc becomes trying to find a way to lift her up, when he's spent his whole life doing what he could to keep other people down and himself on top.

-Corollary to that, as it is now, the entire plot centers around his own self-interest. He has to convince someone to love him in order to break the spell. Everything that happens is necessarily tainted by the fact that he's doing it to help himself. The girl just becomes a pawn to be manipulated. The real breaking of the spell should require him to love her, or better yet both of them to love each other (so you get your magical restorative fairy tale kiss), because there's nothing he could do to fake that in his own heart.

I couldn't comment more specifically without seeing it, which I rather doubt I'm gonna do.

I love you, Michael Scott.