Beauty and the Beast (1991 film)
The video game series "Kingdom Hearts" features a world based on the film, named "Beast's Castle", along with several of the film's characters. In the first game, the world has been destroyed and Belle kidnapped by the Heartless, led by Maleficent, but the Beast travels to Maleficent's stronghold and works with Sora to defeat Maleficent and rescue Belle and the other captured princesses. In "Kingdom Hearts II", the world has since been restored following Ansem's defeat, but Beast and Belle are having difficulties due to the enigmatic Xaldin of Organization XIII attempting to bring out the Beast's darker side in order to turn him into a Heartless and a Nobody, but the Beast eventually comes to his senses and works with Sora once again to defeat Xaldin once and for all. In the game's ending credits, the Beast turns back into the Prince. In "", the world is featured as a playable level but the story is not essential to the main plot. In "Kingdom Hearts χ", the world is featured again, this time as a hallucination that follows the plot of the movie more closely. The characters featured in the series are Beast, Belle, Lumiere, Gaston, Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts, Chip, Maurice, and the Wardrobe. After Gaston is defeated, the Beast transforms back into the Prince. Gaston does not appear in "Kingdom Hearts II", the world's primary antagonist being Xaldin, an original character created for the series, but who shares several traits with Forte, the main antagonist of "Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas".
Belle (Beauty and the Beast)
Belle helped establish Woolverton as a "legendary screenwriter"; the writer continues to be commended for her dedication to creating strong female characters; ever since Belle, the majority of Woolverton's female characters have been headstrong, independent women, namely Nala in "The Lion King "(1994), Mulan in "Mulan "(1998), Alice in "Alice in Wonderland "(2010) and Maleficent in "Maleficent "(2014). Susan Wloszczyna of Indiewire wrote that "Woolverton set a new standard for fully fleshed-out fairy-tale heroines ... with Belle", in turn paving the way for "The Hunger Games"' Katniss Everdeen, and "Frozen"'s Anna and Elsa (2013). Woolverton remains protective of Belle, explaining, "[she] was my first-born child, so there’s a little bit of possessiveness, which really I had to let it go". "Beauty and the Beast", Belle performs the film's opening number, "Belle", which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song at the 64th Academy Awards in 1992. In 1998, O'Hara was nominated for an Annie Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement for Voice Acting by a Female Performer in an Animated Feature Production for reprising her role as Belle in the second of "Beauty and the Beast"'s three direct-to-video sequels, "Belle's Magical World". To commemorate her work on "Beauty and the Beast" and various contributions to Disney, O'Hara was honored with a Disney Legends award on August 19, 2011. Disney hired Spanish actress Penélope Cruz to pose as Belle in photographer Annie Leibovitz's Disney Dream Portrait Series, while actor Jeff Bridges posed as the Beast. The "Daily Mail" described the image as Cruz "wearing Belle's gorgeous yellow gown and being lifted high into the air by her prince," accompanied by the phrase "Where a moment of beauty lasts forever."