Would anyone ever prefer this over the original?

The movie isn't terrible, but it's basically the original but sucked dry of creativity. If the original didn't exist and this was the only movie we had, I'd just be saying "wow, I wished a better version of this exact movie existed" and thankfully we live in a world where a FAR better version exists.

This movie was pretty awful IMO. Not completely unredeemable or unwatchable, but quite bad. Everything that this film did was done far better in the original, and everything that was added or extended upon wasn't necessary at all. The chemistry between Belle and The Beast was far more believable in the original, where here most of The Beast's dialog is given to Lumiere and Cogsworth until the 3rd act. And then suddenly they walk in the snow after nothing but hostility and Belle is like "oh wow, I think I might be falling for him" and it isn't believable at all. The emotion is rushed or simply isn't there at all. That scene at the end with the antiques dying was fucking horrifying, and not in a good way, and it goes on and on and on and on. But to make it even more infuriating and pointless, they all become people 15 seconds later. And what was the point at all with the teleporting book? It shows up once and then never again. That might've been the most pointless thing I've ever seen in a movie.

The direction on the musical numbers was slow and lacked that "pop" a musical needs to be interesting, the camera set up was bland and shot with no creativity (watch Gaston's death in both versions back to back and tell me which one was shot more interesting), the cinematography was cold and bleak. The CGI was pretty bad, especially on the Beast's face (I heard it was originally shot with practical makeup effects and the producers decided to cover it up with CGI; whoever made that decision should be fired ASAP). Hiring an allstar cast do the voices was pointless because the voices could've been done by anyone else, and even Emma Watson was badly miscast in this, which was a huge shocker because I thought she'd be perfect on paper. The only people I thought worked well were Gaston and Le Fou.