Oddaptations - The Story of the Beauty and the Beast → Porco Rosso

Okay, so like I get why they put the dapper pig on the Beauty and the Beast cover, but why is the Porco Rosso cover so brooding? And why don't they show the fucking plane? It's like Disney didn't even want people to buy this movie.

Some people like to complain about the inevitable changes that occur when a story is adapted from one medium to another. But let's be honest, sometimes, the less faithful an adaptation is, the more memorable it is. So, in this series I'll be taking a look at adaptations where creators took one look at the source material and said, "FUCK THAT NOISE!" to see how that turned out. Today's Oddaptation:

The Story of the Beauty and the Beast (1740) by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve, translated by James Robinson Planché, adapted (?) by Rachel Louise Lawrence into Porco Rosso (1992) (紅の豚 Kurenai no Buta (Crimson Pig)) dir. Hayao Miyazaki

Or, why everything is better with airplanes.

The Original: So, there's this merchant (henceforth: the Good Man) who has twelve children. The youngest of whom is an impossibly sweet, loving girl whom everyone calls Beauty (it's that type of story). Anyway, the Good Man is bankrupted and forced to move his family to the countryside, much to the displeasure of Beauty's five older sisters. But there is some good news, the Good Man is called back to the city because one of his vessels is returning to port laden with cargo. Unfortunately, it's a bust and all he can do for his children is give Beauty the gift of a rose. Even more unfortunately, he picked it from the garden of a hideous Beast. Who agrees to spare the Good Man's life if one of his children will take his place and live with the Beast in his wondrous palace. Beauty immediately agrees, even though she thinks the Beast is going to eat her. Actually, he doesn't seem that interested in interacting with her at all. Every night he comes to her chamber and asks after her health and what she did that day, but otherwise, he leaves her to her own devices as she searches the palace grounds, befriending his talking birds and being waited on hand and foot by his trained monkeys. Oh, and did I mention that he's rigged up an elaborate system of mirrors that allows her to watch theatrical performances all over Europe? Because he has. Anyway, every night when she sleeps, Beauty encounters a youth (henceforth: the Unknown) as handsome and charming as the Beast is hideous and dull, and every night she and the Unknown pitch woo at each other, as the Unknown begs her to free him. Funny thing, though, no matter how much she searches the palace she can't find the room where her Unknown is held prisoner. And when she asks the Beast if anyone else is in the palace, he says it's just them (and the talking birds, and the monkey servants, and the windows to all the theaters, &c). Eventually, Beauty misses her family so much that she begs the Beast to be allowed to visit them. The Beast agrees, on the condition that she return within two months because otherwise he will surely die, because he really wants to marry her. She goes home, and even though she's super nice and sweet, her sisters are still crazy jealous because all their suitors are in love with Beauty. Anyway, on the last night, she returns to the palace to find that the Beast has collapsed and is dying, so she does what anyone would do in that situation: she agrees to marry him. Funny thing, when she awakes the next morning, the Beast has been replaced by the Unknown. Then a Fairy and a Queen show up at the palace and the Fairy explains that the Unknown and the Beast were one and the same, and all Beauty had to do to return the Beast to his true form was to show him the proper gratitude for holding her prisoner so that he wouldn't murder her father. I mean, for letting her live in his magnificent palace and want for nothing (except the freedom to visit her beloved family). Also, the Queen is the Beast's/Unknown's (henceforth: Prince's) mother, and she has some strong opinions about her son marrying a merchant's daughter. "But don't worry," says the Fairy, "she's actually the daughter of my (the Fairy's) sister and your (the Queen's) brother, so Beauty is a Fairy Princess and the Prince's cousin, so it's totally okay for them to get married now!" The Queen accepts this and from this point there's only forty more pages of exposition about how the Prince was cursed by a wicked Fairy, and how part of the curse was that he couldn't explain the curse to anyone or display any charm or personality to ingratiate himself to anyone, and how Beauty's father (the Queen's brother) fell in love with her mother (the Fairy's sister) and how marrying a human meant that Beauty's mother had to be punished, and how the Good Fairy secretly sneaked Beauty into the Good Man's home after his actual youngest daughter died as an infant, and, oh my GOD! how much more of this is there? Oh, only one more chapter where Beauty has a happy reunion with her parents who she doesn't remember before she marries the literal man of her dreams. Okay.

The Remake: You know that period between the World Wars when the Adriatic was plagued by seaplane pirates? Well, this movie takes place in that period. And who was the only bounty hunter that those seaplane pilots truly feared? Why Porco Rosso (né Marco Pagot), the anthropomorphic pig, of course. When he isn't rescuing kidnapped schoolgirls and shooting down seaplanes, Rosso, like all seaplane pilots, likes to hang out at the club at the Hotel Adriano, where Gina, his best friend's widow, is the proprietress/chanteuse and enforces a strict no-conflict rule. Which is good, because the pirates have hired a ringer, American pilot Donald Curtis, to take Porco Rosso down. Curtis is already an ace pilot, but his real dream is to be an actor, and one day the president. Oh, and like everyone, he's immediately smitten by Gina, who clearly is more into that dashing flying pig. Unfortunately for both Gina and Porco, they're each too pigheaded to tell each other how they really feel. Gina wants Porco to intuit that she wants to see him in daylight somewhere other than her club, and Porco still feels guilty that he couldn't save her husband during the war. But hey, this movie is actually super lighthearted, so let's talk about something else. Porco's been having engine trouble so he's flying out to see his friend/mechanic Piccolo when he's bushwhacked by Curtis and his plane goes down. Don't worry, it just needs a new engine and new wings. Once he gets the fuselage to Piccolo's shop in Milan, he meets Fio, Piccolo's granddaughter and new chief design engineer. Turns out that with all the men in the family out looking for other work due to the depression, all of the Piccolo women will be repairing Porco's plane. While he's in Milan, an old war buddy stops by to warn him that there's a warrant out for his arrest. Seems the Fascists want Italy's best pilot back in the air force, but he'd rather be a pig than a Fascist (you could put that on a t-shirt). Porco knows that he better get while the gettin's good, and Piccolo helps him escape, so long as he takes Fio with him to make final adjustments on the plane and to ensure that Porco ponies up the rest of his bill (also, to provide the police with a cover story that Porco took her hostage and forced the Piccolo family to repair his plane). Fortunately, they're able to escape Italy with the plane in one piece. Unfortunately, they're ambushed by seaplane pirates when they get back to Porco's island hideout. They're about to finish him off before Fio dresses them down (turns out she expected more honor among seaplane pirates). Curtis is immediately smitten with Fio and proposes that he and Porco will settle their dispute like civilized people, though aerial combat: if Porco wins, the pirates will pay off his repair bills, if Curtis wins, Fio will marry him. Fio agrees. That night, while he tells the story of how Gina's husband died in the war, Porco briefly appears to return to his human form, but quickly turns back into a pig. Or maybe Fio was just imagining it. Anyway, the dogfight between Curtis and Porco turns into a complete fiasco when Porco refuses to shoot down his opponent, and eventually the whole thing degrades to a boxing match where Curtis reveals that Gina is in love with Porco. Meanwhile, Gina arrives in the TA-DA! nick of time to warn everyone that the Italian Air Force is on their way to apprehend Porco. So everyone disperses and Fio narrates the ending without revealing whether Gina and Porco ever admit their feelings to each other or whether Porco ever turned back into a human or what.

Fidelity to Source Material: Very low. This is definitely more of  an "inspired by" situation than a "based upon" situation.

Things That Survived Intact: So, basic outline of a handsome guy getting turned into some kinda beast due to a spell and being in love with a beautiful woman. Though Porco Rosso never really explains how or why its protagonist was transformed. Oh, and the whole "taking a hostage" thing (see below). And this one doesn't count, but in the English dub of Porco Rosso, Disney cast Susan Egan (the Voice of Belle in their Beauty and the Beast) as Gina.

Smart Changes: Where to start? Umm, let's go with the story's two analogues for the Beauty character, Gina and Fio. Beauty's character arc in Beauty and the Beast makes no Goddamn sense. She starts out perfect as a perfect (by the social mores of the time) obedient daughter who demonstrates her filial piety by going to live with the Beast to save her father's life, then she has to learn the lesson to be grateful to her captor for not eating her and letting her live in his palace? Am I missing something. She doesn't even learn to love the Beast for who he is on the inside, remember she doesn't agree to marry him out of anything other than gratitude to him. The fact that he's her Unknown dream lover isn't revealed until after she agrees to marry him. Gina and Porco (or Marco) already have a long history, and it seems like the real obstacle they face is Porco's refusal to believe that she could love him (and the fact that she wants him to come visit her in the garden but doesn't tell him that). And even that seems to be more related to the fact that he still feels like her husband's death is his fault. In fact, that's the other change that works great, the film isn't real specific about timelines, but it seems safe to assume that Gina and Marco are (at least) in their mid-thirties. You know, people with life experiences that inform their decisions. Fio, the other stand-in for Beauty, is only seventeen, but the movie never presents her as a possible love interest for Porco (he definitely treats her more like a kid sister). Like Belle in Disney's Beauty and the Beast, what Fio wants is adventure. She wants to see what it's like out there amongst the seaplane pilots of the Adriatic. And her ingenuous nature rubs off on everyone around her from the gruff pirates to the gruff Porco. Another big change is that there's almost no explanation as to what caused Porco's transformation in the first place. Gina makes an offhand reference to a spell and it's never brought up again. You might say that this is a weakness, but the story isn't about Porco being unhappy as a anthropomorphic pig. If anything, he makes a show of enjoying life. Women flirt with him, the public loves him, and even the seaplane pirates seem to have a grudging respect for him. As mentioned earlier, the thing that really agonizes him is the guilt he feels about being the only survivor of a disastrous battle during the war. (It's really a fun movie, I promise).

Why it Works: Because the second half of the movie isn't a continuous stream of exposition that resolves questions that the plot of the story never raised, and alleviates social concerns that the modern day audience wouldn't have about a commoner marrying into a royal family? Also, cuz it's a fun movie about seaplane pirates. This isn't so complicated. There are definitely elements of The Story of the Beauty and the Beast that are compelling, but they're almost all cosmetic (side note, the only specifics about the Beast's appearance are that he has A) an elephant-like trunk and 2) clanking scales). It's really not that complicated, Miyazaki used the story as a jumping off point to create an anti-war/anti-Fascism movie that also includes rad seaplanes, delightful comedy, and a love story about two thirty-somethings who can't talk about their feelings.

Links:

So, if you like people on the internet talking about remakes and Beauty and the Beast, then you may enjoy this video from Lindsay Ellis discussing Disney's live-action adaptation of their animated adaption of Beauty and the Beast.

Also, if you like Porco Rosso or other Studio Ghibli films, you may be excited about the opening of their theme park in Japan, scheduled for 2022. I know I'm actively fishing for excuses to go back to the Japan. And yes, I am the type of person to use a link at the bottom of his blog post to humble brag about having visited another country. Deal with it.

"I'd much rather be a pig than a fascist." That about sums it up.