18 Questions I Have About Beauty and the Beast, As Someone Who Has Never Seen the Original

I know, I know. Making it this far in life without ever having seen Disney’s animated Beauty and the Beast is the worst thing I have ever done, including that time I put pineapple on my pizza on purpose just to see what all the fuss was about.

To be fair, I had a childhood that was woefully lacking in all things Disney. For whatever reason, I just didn’t catch a ton of Disney movies. I don’t know what I was doing instead. Probably playing too much Super Mario and not making friends. Just to give you an idea of how dire my situation is, I don’t know any of the characters in The Little Mermaid besides Ariel. I didn’t see Mulan until was 22. I still haven’t seen Peter Pan and at this point it’s looking like I probably never will.

I can almost hear you screaming, “Elodie, what movies HAVE you seen?” I don’t know! What movies has anyone seen? Shrek? Spy Kids? Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams? Just move past it, okay? Here are the questions I had when I saw the new Beauty and the Beast movie starring Emma Watson and that guy from Night at the Museum 3.

Disclaimer: I’m sure 97% of these questions are fairly easy to answer and that I am just a moron who doesn’t watch movies correctly. Anyway:

1. Why did Belle’s dad think he could just sit down at someone else’s table and eat their dinner? Who raised him?

2. If the Beast was so precious about his roses, why did he put a rose garden right there in his front yard where anybody’s well-meaning dad could just come in and steal from it?

3. Why did some of the furniture-servants have French accents while others did not? The whole thing’s set in France, I get that, but by that logic shouldn’t everyone have been speaking with French accents?

4. Does the Beast have a name? Did I miss it? This question will haunt me until I die.

5. There is a hot villager who had no lines and I don’t even know how to Google him, can someone help?

6. The Beast imprisoned Maurice “because of a rose,” since he himself received eternal damnation because of a rose. Why did the Beast think “stealing a flower” was equal to “turning away someone in need just because they were old and ugly”?

7. I have questions about the whole hostage exchange that I don’t even know how to ask.

8. Why was Maurice unable to find the castle again to rescue his daughter? Belle hopped on Maurice’s horse, Philippe, and they were there in about five seconds. Philippe obviously knew the way. Why didn’t Maurice just take Philippe?

9. If the events of the movie took place in June, why did everyone look so good all the time? I personally spend all of June through August in a state of perpetual sweaty sadness and I want to see this portrayed in film, please and thank you.

10. Related: how was Belle walking around outside the castle in nothing but a shawl when it was clearly midwinter? Whenever I myself am outside for more than ten minutes under similar circumstances, I wear five coats and twelve pairs of socks.

11. How did Belle even know to ask about the rose petals? If I saw a rose cordoned off in a glass case, my first question wouldn’t be “Tell me about the petals. Like what happens when they all fall off? Hopefully nothing bad.”

12. At one point, the Beast said sympathetically of Belle’s father, “You must miss him.” The Beast was the one holding her hostage. No one was forcing him to do this. Why was he acting like this was out of his hands?

13. Belle apparently had no problem with the wolves the second time she left the castle. Had the wolves chilled out by this point? Had they all reached an understanding?

14. How does Emma Watson’s hair DO it? Just all of it? Why is she allowed to be so gorgeous? Who even looks like that?

15. This isn’t a question, I’m just saying there HAD to be a better way to light everyone’s torches without nearly setting half the village on fire.

16. Gaston claimed he wasn’t well-read, yet he directly referenced Macbeth in “The Mob Song” with the line “Screw your courage to the sticking place!” Either he was a liar who didn’t want people to know he actually liked to read because this place was like Footloose for books, or he just happened to quote Lady Macbeth. What’s the truth?

17. During the Beast’s death scene, was Agathe a ghost that only we could see? Belle didn’t so much as glance at this woman who was suddenly standing right next to them as the Beast died of multiple gunshot wounds.

18. Did anyone in my theater hear me go “ugh” when the Beast turned back into a prince? I’m sorry about that. It’s not that I found him more attractive as the Beast, it’s just that I had by that point forgotten what the prince looked like and I was picturing Oscar Isaac. That was my bad.