4. Belle & The Beast (Beauty and The Beast)
Ah, the classic unlikely relationship. Disney's 1991 feature film Beauty and the Beast is an animated take on a story that originated as a French fairytale in the 1700's. Belle is a beautiful young woman who lives in a small French village. She feels out of place in such a village because she longs for adventure and excitement. She also does not want to be the "little wife" of the arrogant and self-absorbed hunter Gaston. When her Father goes missing, Belle goes looking for him and ends up at a mysterious castle. She finds her father locked away in a dungeon and begs the dungeon master - a hideous beast - to free him, offering her own freedom in exchange for her father's. The Beast accepts, but states she must stay with him forever. Belle agrees. At first, she refuses to interact with the creature she will be forced to live with forever, but when he saves her from a pack of wolves and starts to act more civilised towards her, a bond begins to develop between the two and they start to live more harmoniously alongside the Beast's servants - a troop of living ornaments. Belle continues to teach the Beast to act more like a gentleman and he falls deeply in love with her, but fears that she will never love him back. When Belle starts to severely miss her Father, the Beast allows her to leave on account of the fact that he is ill. Gaston asks Belle to marry him but she denies him and so begins his plot against the Beast. He convinces the villagers that the beast is a man-eating monster and they attack his castle. After a grueling tussle between Gaston and Beast, the Beast is stabbed and Gaston falls to his death when he loses his balance. The stab wound proved fatal, as the Beast dies in her arms on a balcony. Belle sobs over the Beast's dead body and confesses her love for him just as the last petal falls from an enchanted rose. Belle's love for the Beast revives him and releases him from the curse which caused him to exist in that form and he, along with his living ornament servants, return to being human beings. Belle and the Prince then dance in the ballroom, with her father and his servants watching on with glee, and they live together happily ever after.