so i was watching the the phantom of the opera movie yesterday and as much as “this could have been avoided if the villain wasn’t evil” is a cold ass take i just saw the scene where teenage!madame giry rescues kid!phantom and thought to myself “why didn’t he fall in love with her?”
think about it. who does it make more sense for an abused person to fall in love with? the person who saved him, the first person to have pity on him despite having seen his face, the person who probably cared for him during those first few years when he was still figuring out that he was inexplicably good at everything? or a random ass child who thinks he’s the ghost of her dead father? leaving aside that madame giry is probably only a few years older than him whereas christine was eleven when he was in his twenties or thirties, that whole scene where he has a change of heart because christine was ~the first person to show him kindness~ completely forgets about all that madame giry did for him. she saw him at the circus! she felt sympathy for him even after she saw his face! she saved his fucking life ok don’t tell me that’s not kindness!
and think about how differently the story could have gone if he’d fallen in love with her! he carves out a place for himself in the opera house while she’s rising to prominence in the ballet. he figures out he’s damn good at music and teaches her to sing. madame giry (or whatever her original name was) becomes the star of the opera house. the phantom still does his spooky stuff, but as a publicity stunt pre-arranged with the manager. no one is in danger, and nobody dies. then, when madame giry gets too old or gets pregnant with meg or whatever, she becomes the ballet teacher. the phantom dotes on meg (because she’s his daughter whether he sired her or not) and eventually christine when they become friends. he gives music lessons to all the little ballerinas in training through the walls. he and madame giry become the Mom and Dad of the opera house.
the only time the phantom does anything spooky unplanned is when he realizes one of the male stage hands has been harassing the girls, and that shit does not fly in the phantom’s opera house. the opera populaire gets a reputation: the phantom’s girls are Protected. meg and maybe christine are the only ones who know that the phantom is a real dude, the rest of them just think the opera house is haunted by a benevolent ghost. all the while madame giry is spending her nights down in the basement hanging out with her boyfriend, the two of them making music and writing operas and planning the future of the opera house. all their little pupils go on to become stars of other, lesser opera houses, and christine and meg stay at the opera populaire and switch off being the star so they can have breaks between shows. then raoul shows up and the phantom is soooo not on board with him getting with christine when he ships his two adorable daughters, until madame giry bonks him on the head and says the raoul is the patron and obvious the solution is for the three of them to all be in a relationship together. they all live happily ever after, the end.
it could have been great.
(via geekhyena)