Beauty and the Beast (Live Action) - Theory

Have you ever heard about the Temporal Loop Theory concerning the live action "Beauty and the Beast"? Let's discuss about it and see whether it makes any sense:


- What is the Temporal Loop Theory?


At the end of the movie, it is revealed that some members of the village are relatives of some employees of the castle and, according to the theory, the spell was cast in the castle many years ago, but the Beast and the employees didn't grow any older. We can suppose that because Chip continues to be a child when he returns to human life.

It seems to be a flaw in the script because the villagers continue to be practically in the same age of the cursed members of the castle, but the former should be much older than the latter. So, according to the theory, the inhabitants of the village are stuck in a temporal loop, cursed to live the same day uninterruptedly and without being aware of it. 

The enchantress that cursed the Beast cursed the whole village in a temporal loop so that the inhabitants couldn't remember of the empoyees of the castle that were their relatives, friends or acquaintances. On the "bonjour" song, we see that Belle knows perfectly the daily routine of each member of the village. She is bored because she knows exactly what is going to happen.........after all, the same things happen every day.

Belle even sings, on the mentioned song, that "every morning is just the same, since the moment that we came". According to the theory, Belle and her father weren't enchanted in the temporal loop because they arrived in the village after the spell had been cast. That is why the members of the village find them two weird. And the enchantress remained disguised as Agathe only to maintain her spell on them.

- Does the theory make sense?


Now, let's analize this theory: first, it hasn't passed so many years as the theory says. The only thing that the movie says is that "as the years passed, the Beast felt into despair". It might have passed only two, three, four years......

Some people might say that it has passed lots of years in the animation, but let's not forget that it is different from the live action. Besides, even in the animation, things aren't very clear about how many years the spell lasted. Everything that is said is that the rose "would bloom until his 21st year", which is completely vague. We can't be sure if it is until the prince completes 21 years, or if it is until he completes 21 years of being a Beast.

There is a clue in the animation, though. In the song "Be our guest", Lumière (the candlestick) sings that "ten years we've been rusting" (click HERE to check out the lyric). So, it seems that it has passed about ten years in the animation.

However, according to the book The Beast Within, an official Disney canon, it is revealed that the spell would last until the prince achieved the age of 21. You might say that it fits the animation, according to which the spell lasted about 10 years. However, the prince would be 11 years old when he was transformed........

"Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas" kind of support the idea. According to it, the prince was transformed in a Beast when he was a teenager. So, it seems that everything fits perfectly.......However, the book "The Beast Within" says that he was cursed because he treated his fiancée badly (yes, the enchantress was his fiancée, not a beggar, which the animation makes us believe)........and, let's agree, it is very odd to think that a 11 year old boy was already engaged. I know that people used to get married young at the time, but 11 years old is too much, isn't it? Especially because the men didn't use to get married so young, only the women.

Another thing that we must pay attention to is the fact that there is a huge flaw in the "Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas": if the Beast was cursed when he was a teenager, and returns to human life as an adult, it means that he and the members of the castle should have grown lots of years older. However, Chip continued to be a child, even though it has passed lots of years.

Another thing that doesn't fit is that he is already an adult in the painting portrait of the classic animation movie, which was painted before he was transformed into a Beast (we know that because the portrait has been ripped by the Beast, probably because he couldn't bare to look at it and face the fact that he is a monster now). So, either there is a time traveler that painted him in the future and went to the past to deliver the painting, or he is the most mature 11 year old child that has already been portrayed.

As we can see, the animations and the book don't fit each other well and, unless Disney gives us better explanations, we have to consider that there are more than one (or even more than two) official versions of the story..........

- And what about the live action?


Well, the live action is something apart from the books and from the animations. And, if we pay attention, the movie cares about differing the time length of its story from the one of the classic animation movie: in the song "Be our guest", the part which Lumière (the candlestick) sings "ten years we've been rusting" (click HERE to check out) in the animation is replaced for "Too long we've been rusting" (clicke HERE to listen to that part of the music in the minute 2:35) in the live action.

So, it is clear that the live action worried about not showing the time length, probably because they intented to show us that it hasn't passed so many years. It has probably passed about four or five years, that's why the members of the village didn't grow so much older than their cursed relatives of the castle. I know you might be thinking that it isn't enough to break the Temporal Loop Theory, but calm down that we aren't done yet...........


- The mystery of the fallen tree


And what about that tree that has been hit by lightning but is up again when Maurice returns there with Gaston? Well, it was probably a work of the enchantress, disgased as Agathe. And why she did that? Because she wanted to confuse Maurice so that he and Gaston couldn't get to the castle. After all, she didn't want the Beast to be haunted and killed, she was a good person (or a good entity, to be more accurate) and only wanted to give the prince a lesson.

So, she didn't want anyone getting in the way, that's why she was still in the village in the first place. She wanted to make sure that things wouldn't get out of control: she erased the memories of the prince, his lands, and servants from the villagers' minds and every time someone started to remember them, she would fix it (like a refresh on the curse or something). For example, Belle asks Mr. Potts at the beginning of the movie if he has lost something again, so it is possible that whenever he starts to remember of his wife and child, the enchantress reinforces the spell, making the memories disappear again.

- The villagers are aware that days go by

There are many moments in the the movie that shows that they weren't living the same day: they did lots of different things in differents days. Gaston even says that he looked for Belle's father for 5 days. So, this already breaks the theory, since the villagers are aware of what happened in the days before. You might say that Gaston wasn't living in the village when the spell was cast, but that doesn't make sense, because people wouldn't be able to idolize him like we see in the movie. They would always treat him as a newcomer in the village, due to the temporal loop that makes people forget everything new that happens after the day of the spell.

You might say that Gaston was already living in the village at the time of the curse, but he wasn't affected by it because he was traveling in the day the spell was cast. Well, even so, it doesn't fit the theory, since people don't find him strange.......I mean, people should find strange that Gaston was growing older and so on, but that doesn't happen (on the contrary, people idolize him, as already said), they only find Belle and her father strange. Besides, if Gaston was indeed traveling in the day of the spell, he would have noticed that there was something odd about the village soon after he returned to it. He would have quickly found out about the temporal loop and he would definitely be too scared to continue living there. 

- The villagers recognize Belle and her father


The theory says that Belle and her father weren't cursed because they arrived in the village after the spell was cast, but it doesn't make sense at all. Using the same logic explained in the last topic, considering that the day is always the same since the day of the spell, every new day after would be erased of the villagers' mind. So, if Bella and her father arrived in the village after the spell, people would meet them and forget about them in the following day over and over again. I mean, people would always consider them two as newcomers, but we clearly don't see that in the movie, because people there recognize her, including Mr. Potts, who greets her and talks to her about his memory problems........so, it is quite obvious that he is familiar with her.

Why then people in the village find Belle and her father strange? It's because they aren't just simple villagers doing simple things like everyone else there. First we have Maurice, an eccentric, yet humble inventor that hopes to someday create an invention capable of reforming the life of his family for the better, and is regularly hard at work in his basement/workshop on various contraptions. Though they're usually met with failure, his dream and Belle's support motivates him to push forward each time.

And then we have Belle, who is, like his father, someone that likes to study and find out new things. That's why she seems to be bored with the daily routine in the village, it isn't because of the time loop. People at that time, especially the ones that lived in the countryside, didn't want to explore and learn about new things. So, they ended up in a daily routine, doing practically the same things every day. And that is why Bella is such an amazing character: she is a woman beyond her time, she aimed to explore new things and wanted more than just a life in the countryside.

That is it guys, I do hope you liked it. Don't forget to let your comment below =)

Beauty Kisses,

Tati.