Beauty and the Beast: A Deep Dive Into the Film's Enchanting Final Trailer

The final trailer for Disney's live-action version of Beauty and the Beast (out March 17) hits all the right notes while proving that the remake of the 1991 animated classic is not frozen in time. Be our guest as we dive deep into this latest fairytale-teaser…

Where the previous trailer began with images of the chilly-looking castle belonging to Dan Stevens' Beast, this promo opens in much sunnier fashion with scenes of Emma Watson's Belle in her village and with her father, Kevin Kline's Maurice. "My dear Belle, you’re so ahead of your time," Kline says as we see his onscreen daughter reading a book while walking past a horse and cart. This scene-setting mirrors that of the original animated film. The one major departure? Some shots of what we assume is a younger Belle being taught to read by her mother, a character who does not appear in the 1991 film.

Kline's words also hint at the fact that, in this version, it is Belle and not Maurice who is the inventor in the family. "I was like, 'What is she doing with her time?'" says Watson. "So, we made Belle an inventor."

"You are the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen!" Luke Evans' Gaston declares. Is he talking about Belle? No! Evans' egomaniacal character is, we discover, looking in a mirror. The shot of Gaston checking himself out in this manner is one of several images in the trailer directly taken from the 1991 movie. "I'd say there's a lot of the original in him," says Evans of his take on the character. "But there's a little more humanity. He's not as brash. There's a bit more to him in this story. But, you know, he's Gaston! Definitely the main assets of him are there."

After the introductory village scenes, the action switches to the castle, where Maurice is captured by the Beast, and to where Belle travels, ultimately switching places with him, while promising "I will escape." We also get a close-up of Dan Stevens' Beast, a character the Downton Abbey actor physically portrayed, but which is also a CG creation. "We're attempting things on this film which have never been attempted before in terms of the technology which is being used," says Stevens. "It's really exciting."

In quick succession we are introduced to the transformed household staff, including Lumière (voiced by Ewan McGregor, Cogsworth (Ian McKellen), Mrs Potts (Emma Thompson), Garderobe (Audra McDonald) and Chip (Nathan Mack) who shows off his bubble-blowing skills in another bit of business directly lifted from the original film.

The next section of the trailer packs in a lot of plot as Lumière and Cogsworth explains what will happen when the last petal falls from a certain rose, Belle inspires the wrath of the Beast and flees the castle, and then nurses him back to health after the Beast is injured saving Belle from a pack of wolves. Phew!

Beasts are famously bad with cutlery, as we discovered in the original film. This shot of our couple drinking straight from the bowl is another strong nod to the 1991 movie.

With the Beast back on his feet — well, hooves, anyway — he shows Belle the castle's impressively large library. "Have you really read every one of these books?" asks Belle. "No," snorts the Beast," some of them are in Greek." Greek apparently being "all Greek" to Stevens' character. Meanwhile, we hear Ariana Grande and John Legend performing their new version of the film's title track.

While we don't hear the song "Be Our Guest" in the trailer, this shot of Lumière is almost certainly from that sequence. "It was an incredibly incredibly complicated task," says Sean Bailey, President, Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Production, of creating the "Be Our Guest" scene. "You've got this massive, full-blown musical spectacle where most of your players are CG creations, but there they are interacting and performing for a very real-life Emma Watson."

As Grande and Legend continue to sing "Beast and the Beast" on the soundtrack we see Evans and Josh Gad's Le Fou dancing on tables in a moment presumably taken from their "Gaston" number. In the new film, that song will feature some previously unused lyrics by the late Howard Ashman, who wrote all of the songs in the original with composer Alan Menken. "We had a treasure trove of 'Gaston' lyrics that Howard had written that we did not put in the movie," says Menken. "When Bill Condon found out, he said, 'It would be a wonderful way to add some freshness to the movie.' So, yes, you’re going to hear some unheard Howard Ashman lyrics."

We move on to some shots which are much more appropriate to the soundtrack and which show Belle and the Beast dancing in the castle's spectacular ballroom. "Emma is just transcendent in that scene," says Condon. "She learned to dance so beautifully and so confidently. You just get swept up in her, more than anything."

We get another look at the Audra McDonald-voiced Garderobe as the wardrobe covers a twirling Belle in material. "Audra is incredibly funny as this Italian diva," says Condon of the six-time Tony-winner. "She just found this inner, wacky, crazy Italian woman and went for it."

"Kill the beast!" Gaston's cry features in a selection of shots from the film's final act, during which the villagers invade the Beast's castle and — ah, but that would be telling.

The trailer's last image is, appropriately, of the Beast and Belle. "I think the message is so absolutely true and always relevant," says Condon. "That we all get distracted by external beauty, and that true beauty lies within."