It's here, it's happening, it's all coming true, and this is not a drill — the first Beauty and the Beast trailer has arrived, and it's even better than I could have predicted. It's just a minute and a half long and shows literally nothing of the movie other than establishing shots of the castle falling into ruin, but somehow I'm already in head-to-toe goosebumps. And you know who I blame for that? Emma Watson. We see just the briefest of glimpses of Watson as Belle at the end of the trailer, reaching for a rose that's such a lush, velvety red that it calls to mind the original animated feature, but it's enough. We don't even see her entire face, but there's a youthful longing in her eyes that gets me so psyched for the movie's release on Mar. 17, 2017.
They really have done a great job with this trailer, though. It simultaneously gives you no information, which makes sense, given that Beauty and the Beast is such a classic story, and plants little seeds of information that give us an idea of the tone. As we swoop through the cobwebbed rooms of the castle, haunting chords of the song "Beauty and the Beast" play in the background, and we hear two characters — presumably Lumiere and Cogsworth — discussing whether this might finally be the girl they've been waiting for, the one who can break the spell.
But the shot that gives us the most information about the tone of the movie is a zoom-in on an ornate, gilded portrait of a family. We zero in on the face of the young boy in it, and then that image is slashed away, suggesting this is the Beast before his transformation. It also gives us a lot of information about the movie's time period with the costumes and style of the portrait.
My college Costume History professor (yes, this is real) would kill me for this, but I don't specifically recognize the style, but I wanna say Baroque? Regardless, I'm excited to see how a more specific placement in history will inform this familiar story.
Images: Disney Movie Trailers/YouTube (2)
