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The Little Mermaid (2023)
Jun. 11th, 2023 07:13 pmI saw the live action adaptation of The Little Mermaid with my sister and I have a lot of thoughts!!
First of all, The Little Mermaid was my favorite Disney movie as a kid. I think that Beauty and the Beast is the overall best Disney movie, but The Little Mermaid just had all the right things to capture the heart and imagination of mini-me. I love mermaids and I would love to be a mermaid myself. (I never understood why Ariel wanted to be human??). Plus all the background drama between Triton and Ursula intrigued me and I loved the set design for Eric's castle and Ursula's creepy lair. I think the live-action remake was fine, but was held back by the original movie. It seems to me that Disney struggled between doing a shot-for-shot remake of the original and writing a new mermaid/human star-crossed lovers political romance drama and I think the live-action movie suffered for it:
First, there are just some scenes that are harder to execute with real-world physics and actors than in animation (Ursula lolling around in her lair, Ariel on her rock with the surf crashing behind her, etc.) and there were some underwater scenes with obvious glitches that made me lol in the theatre.
Second, all the minor changes made to the original story belied some much more interesting fantasy/drama concepts that they were unable to expand upon or fully execute because we had to go through all the animated version dialogue and scenes. For example, Triton and Ursula are bitter, unreconciled siblings?? There seemed to be some sort of early power struggle over rulership that Triton won and is the reason for Ursula's exile?? They never explained more about their previous sibling relationship and current estrangement to make this change exciting or interesting and it left me wondering why they bothered to make this change in the first place when it was doomed to fall flat without context. I would assume that Ursula's behaviour (tricking merfolk into unfair magical contracts to enslave their souls and destroy their bodies) is reason enough to fight, but this was already their reason for fighting in the original...
The live action movie was set in the Caribbean which I LOVED since it fits the story well - and I think this concept would have been even stronger if they were bold and didn't make Eric a prince. The dialogue referenced Spain (and I think also Europe?) so it felt like it was a proto-historical setting, but the island was obviously not a real Caribbean island and I feel this decision made it lack worldbuilding commitment. Eric could still have been an important figure on the island, maybe their metaphorical "prince", but it just seemed weird and stilted to have a small Caribbean island with a formal monarchy (and royal court??). I think it would have been refreshing for a guy to be a prince for his qualities instead of hierarchy. Eric was adopted in this movie (and had some weird daddy-issue thing with his deceased adopted father??) so once again I feel like they had a vision for a new movie they sidelined in favor of trying to keep too many original movie ideas.
A lot of hate directed towards this movie was because it was #diverse, but setting it in the Caribbean, which is an incredibly ethnically diverse place, really fit!! Good change!! (Also makes Sebastian's accent seem less like the "joke" it was originally written to be imo.) Ariel being played by a black actress in no way impacted the story which just goes to show that the people screaming and crying about it were just being ridiculous. I thought the actress was very cute and had some good charisma. Her voice actually sounded a lot like the animated Ariel, which I did not expect, and I wonder if this was an intentional choice when casting for the role. Another no-impact change was that Ariel destroyed Ursula's necklace (instead of Scuttle) to get her voice back and also was one who killed Ursula (instead of Eric). I almost forgot about these changes which demonstrates that the original animated version could have done this, but just chose not to, probably for sexism reasons. However, these changes only seem significant in the context of the original animated movie. If Disney committed to a new mermaid princess movie they could have done all these things anyway AND MORE without having to pedantically "empower" Ariel with minor action changes and deal with annoying racist Disney fans complaining the "real Ariel isn't black" or whatever.
I didn't really like the live action version of Eric though. I thought he talked way too much and they randomly gave him his own musical number which a) was a complete fail both in lyrics and melody, b) the actor did not have to vocal talent to perform (even when obviously auto-tuned), c) was weirdly shot so he was just stumbling around on a misty road until he was magically transported onto a ship that I think was supposed to be symbolic?? because his mom (new character!!) banned him from sailing and also he was immediately back in the castle in the next scene. Maybe his character would be more interesting to a non-lesbian but I really didn't see the point in all the extra Eric stuff. I don't think he was all bad, I just didn't have the patience for all the extra Eric content that was thrown in there. The daddy AND mommy issues, uncomfortable with his social privilege issue, the unfulfilled dreamer issue, like GOD what is NOT wrong with this guy and why won't he stop dropping angst bombs in the middle of daily conversation. His constant navel-gazing and word-vomiting was really irritating and immature. I think the aim was to make his character come across as "sensitive" but to me it came across as "blabby" and I was just sitting there thinking "this is 'nice guy' propaganda... what's wrong with a manly and stoic Eric"?
The movie also introduced the concept of "Coral Moons" (months? weeks?) when the seas are more treacherous for sailors because King Triton is gathering his daughters (who each rule one of the seven seas as his proxy) for an Ocean Ruler Annual Summit. I don't know why a mermaid leadership conference would make the seas more dangerous but it's definitely cool and ominous for that to be the case... I think I also remember there being some implication that the Coral Moon is extra magical? Unclear, but I liked the concept change from the animated movie, where Triton was gathering all the merpeople to make them watch his daughters' music recital. This change is not narratively significant, since Ariel's sisters still don't have any purpose in the story and the Coral Moon gathering was only briefly mentioned and never actually takes place on screen, but it's a little more modern and cool for them to all meet under a magical mermaid moon to rule the oceans than "mandatory music recital". Sadly it's never mentioned again, which I found really disappointing... I was wishing for more cool mermaid magic!! Once again, an original, fun concept that was briefly mentioned then tossed aside because we had to move on to reenacting the animated movie!!
They also decided to give Eric a mom who was convinced their island was cursed by the Gods of the Sea(TM) and that's why there are so many shipwrecks off their coastline. Honestly, this could have been a really fun addition. They never made a connection between Triton's beloved wife being killed by humans (the humans of Eric's island?) and Triton destroying their ships in VENGEANCE (perhaps it was meant to be a vague implication) but that could have been a nice motivation/subplot for Eric (who loves sailing and exploring) to solve... Eric's mom was under-developed but I don't hate the idea of inverse mirror Triton/Eric's mom both being against their child's relationship with a member of the species they blame for their problems. My sister and I both liked the change to the end scene where Eric and Ariel are sailing away on their honeymoon and they have both humans and mermaids waving goodbye to them on the shoreline. It was a much better visual expression of "part of your world => part of our world" synthesis, and I came away with the impression that Ariel choosing to become human didn't mean she had to give up the mermaid world and that she could always go back and forth between the two and that this choice and connection was important to her.
Melissa McCarthy was genuinely bad as Ursula. It's such a fun, iconic role, but she did not lean into it and have fun. SHE WAS NOT EATING IT UP. I WAS NOT LIVING. It's not all her (bad acting and singing) fault though, the costume design foolishly decided to recreate Ursula's animated make-up look IRL and it looked clownish and bad and her underwhelming performance and terrible line delivery could not sell it even in a campy way. F- for Melissa. I did love the actress (Jessica Alexander) who played her human alter-ego, Vanessa. She was decadently evil AND really delivered on the vocals. Javier Bardem was great as Triton though. I was disappointed the annoying costume department chose to squeeze him into a cheap looking plastic faux abalone armour top for the ENTIRE DURATION of the movie when clearly he should have been NAKEY, AS ALL MERMAIDS SHOULD BE but I could overlook this in favor of boggling at his weird cloak made of live fish...why...
The writers also had some trite "losing your voice to be heard blah blah blah" dialogue between Triton and Ariel when he accepted her choice to live her life as human. I was pleasantly surprised that they didn't harp on this too much, since I was bracing myself for way more of this nonsense, but I still don't think this dialogue was movie time well spent. I genuinely hate the interpretation that Ariel giving up her voice is bad and that wOmEn SiLeNcE tHeMsElVeS fOr MeN. The real conflict of the story is that Triton is a controlling father who has to learn that he won't lose his daughter by letting her live her own life, but that he will lose her by trying to control her which will drive her away....WHICH IS THE MESSAGE OF THE MOVIE SINCE THAT IS WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MOVIE??? IT WAS NOT THAT WOMEN HAVING THE ABILITY TO SPEAK VERBALLY = AGENCY??? Ariel had agency with or without her voice. Sacrificing her voice for legs was an act of agency because she did what she wanted to get what she wanted. And her quality of life/enjoyment of being human was not restricted or limited in any way by being mute. It didn't even stop Eric from falling in love with who she was as a person when he was previously only in love with her voice.
Speaking of voices, Awkwafina voiced Scuttle (changed from a male seagull in the original to a female gannet in the live action remake). I liked this change because a diving bird is sort of a good fit for a non-fish mermaid friend. But also she also ate a live fish right in front of Flounder and Ariel???? (🎵 We what the land folks love to cook 🎵 Under the sea we off the hook 🎵). They also included a brief new song where she raps about the "scuttlebutt" (gossip). I liked this more than Eric's new song, but I am unsure if I would have liked it if I didn't have the bad Eric song to compare it to. Sebastian's character design was extremely cute and I loved him so much BUT FOR SOME REASON THEY CUT HIS KITCHEN SCENE!?!? The live-action version of Under the Sea was good, dare I say, it could have been perfect if not for the fatal flaw that permeated every underwater scene... the complete lack of background visuals. When your scene is set in a vast ocean I guess it's really hard to stack the background (which by nature will be mostly empty). I noticed this in more than one underwater scene but it really hit hardest during Under the Sea when they were trying to fill the whole shot with action and color and the big blue ocean was just THERE, looming and empty. I guess they could have added some happy whales..? Flounder also wasn't weird like I expected. The promo pictures made him look really weird, but I guess it was just a matter of scale. He was a tiny fish so his weird CGI fish face was small and therefore not creepy in the actual movie.
I hope this all didn't sound too whiney and complain-y because I had a good time watching the 2023 version of The Little Mermaid!! I probably wouldn't watch the whole thing all over again if I had the choice to watch the original version instead, but I would probably re-watch my favorite scenes. Like I said before, I think they had some great original concepts that could have made a really fun new mermaid magical adventure/romance movie, but this potential was sidelined so they could pantomime the animated movie. Sad! I would really have loved to see the original mermaid fantasy drama/romance movie that was hiding inside this remake.
First of all, The Little Mermaid was my favorite Disney movie as a kid. I think that Beauty and the Beast is the overall best Disney movie, but The Little Mermaid just had all the right things to capture the heart and imagination of mini-me. I love mermaids and I would love to be a mermaid myself. (I never understood why Ariel wanted to be human??). Plus all the background drama between Triton and Ursula intrigued me and I loved the set design for Eric's castle and Ursula's creepy lair. I think the live-action remake was fine, but was held back by the original movie. It seems to me that Disney struggled between doing a shot-for-shot remake of the original and writing a new mermaid/human star-crossed lovers political romance drama and I think the live-action movie suffered for it:
First, there are just some scenes that are harder to execute with real-world physics and actors than in animation (Ursula lolling around in her lair, Ariel on her rock with the surf crashing behind her, etc.) and there were some underwater scenes with obvious glitches that made me lol in the theatre.
Second, all the minor changes made to the original story belied some much more interesting fantasy/drama concepts that they were unable to expand upon or fully execute because we had to go through all the animated version dialogue and scenes. For example, Triton and Ursula are bitter, unreconciled siblings?? There seemed to be some sort of early power struggle over rulership that Triton won and is the reason for Ursula's exile?? They never explained more about their previous sibling relationship and current estrangement to make this change exciting or interesting and it left me wondering why they bothered to make this change in the first place when it was doomed to fall flat without context. I would assume that Ursula's behaviour (tricking merfolk into unfair magical contracts to enslave their souls and destroy their bodies) is reason enough to fight, but this was already their reason for fighting in the original...
The live action movie was set in the Caribbean which I LOVED since it fits the story well - and I think this concept would have been even stronger if they were bold and didn't make Eric a prince. The dialogue referenced Spain (and I think also Europe?) so it felt like it was a proto-historical setting, but the island was obviously not a real Caribbean island and I feel this decision made it lack worldbuilding commitment. Eric could still have been an important figure on the island, maybe their metaphorical "prince", but it just seemed weird and stilted to have a small Caribbean island with a formal monarchy (and royal court??). I think it would have been refreshing for a guy to be a prince for his qualities instead of hierarchy. Eric was adopted in this movie (and had some weird daddy-issue thing with his deceased adopted father??) so once again I feel like they had a vision for a new movie they sidelined in favor of trying to keep too many original movie ideas.
A lot of hate directed towards this movie was because it was #diverse, but setting it in the Caribbean, which is an incredibly ethnically diverse place, really fit!! Good change!! (Also makes Sebastian's accent seem less like the "joke" it was originally written to be imo.) Ariel being played by a black actress in no way impacted the story which just goes to show that the people screaming and crying about it were just being ridiculous. I thought the actress was very cute and had some good charisma. Her voice actually sounded a lot like the animated Ariel, which I did not expect, and I wonder if this was an intentional choice when casting for the role. Another no-impact change was that Ariel destroyed Ursula's necklace (instead of Scuttle) to get her voice back and also was one who killed Ursula (instead of Eric). I almost forgot about these changes which demonstrates that the original animated version could have done this, but just chose not to, probably for sexism reasons. However, these changes only seem significant in the context of the original animated movie. If Disney committed to a new mermaid princess movie they could have done all these things anyway AND MORE without having to pedantically "empower" Ariel with minor action changes and deal with annoying racist Disney fans complaining the "real Ariel isn't black" or whatever.
I didn't really like the live action version of Eric though. I thought he talked way too much and they randomly gave him his own musical number which a) was a complete fail both in lyrics and melody, b) the actor did not have to vocal talent to perform (even when obviously auto-tuned), c) was weirdly shot so he was just stumbling around on a misty road until he was magically transported onto a ship that I think was supposed to be symbolic?? because his mom (new character!!) banned him from sailing and also he was immediately back in the castle in the next scene. Maybe his character would be more interesting to a non-lesbian but I really didn't see the point in all the extra Eric stuff. I don't think he was all bad, I just didn't have the patience for all the extra Eric content that was thrown in there. The daddy AND mommy issues, uncomfortable with his social privilege issue, the unfulfilled dreamer issue, like GOD what is NOT wrong with this guy and why won't he stop dropping angst bombs in the middle of daily conversation. His constant navel-gazing and word-vomiting was really irritating and immature. I think the aim was to make his character come across as "sensitive" but to me it came across as "blabby" and I was just sitting there thinking "this is 'nice guy' propaganda... what's wrong with a manly and stoic Eric"?
The movie also introduced the concept of "Coral Moons" (months? weeks?) when the seas are more treacherous for sailors because King Triton is gathering his daughters (who each rule one of the seven seas as his proxy) for an Ocean Ruler Annual Summit. I don't know why a mermaid leadership conference would make the seas more dangerous but it's definitely cool and ominous for that to be the case... I think I also remember there being some implication that the Coral Moon is extra magical? Unclear, but I liked the concept change from the animated movie, where Triton was gathering all the merpeople to make them watch his daughters' music recital. This change is not narratively significant, since Ariel's sisters still don't have any purpose in the story and the Coral Moon gathering was only briefly mentioned and never actually takes place on screen, but it's a little more modern and cool for them to all meet under a magical mermaid moon to rule the oceans than "mandatory music recital". Sadly it's never mentioned again, which I found really disappointing... I was wishing for more cool mermaid magic!! Once again, an original, fun concept that was briefly mentioned then tossed aside because we had to move on to reenacting the animated movie!!
They also decided to give Eric a mom who was convinced their island was cursed by the Gods of the Sea(TM) and that's why there are so many shipwrecks off their coastline. Honestly, this could have been a really fun addition. They never made a connection between Triton's beloved wife being killed by humans (the humans of Eric's island?) and Triton destroying their ships in VENGEANCE (perhaps it was meant to be a vague implication) but that could have been a nice motivation/subplot for Eric (who loves sailing and exploring) to solve... Eric's mom was under-developed but I don't hate the idea of inverse mirror Triton/Eric's mom both being against their child's relationship with a member of the species they blame for their problems. My sister and I both liked the change to the end scene where Eric and Ariel are sailing away on their honeymoon and they have both humans and mermaids waving goodbye to them on the shoreline. It was a much better visual expression of "part of your world => part of our world" synthesis, and I came away with the impression that Ariel choosing to become human didn't mean she had to give up the mermaid world and that she could always go back and forth between the two and that this choice and connection was important to her.
Melissa McCarthy was genuinely bad as Ursula. It's such a fun, iconic role, but she did not lean into it and have fun. SHE WAS NOT EATING IT UP. I WAS NOT LIVING. It's not all her (bad acting and singing) fault though, the costume design foolishly decided to recreate Ursula's animated make-up look IRL and it looked clownish and bad and her underwhelming performance and terrible line delivery could not sell it even in a campy way. F- for Melissa. I did love the actress (Jessica Alexander) who played her human alter-ego, Vanessa. She was decadently evil AND really delivered on the vocals. Javier Bardem was great as Triton though. I was disappointed the annoying costume department chose to squeeze him into a cheap looking plastic faux abalone armour top for the ENTIRE DURATION of the movie when clearly he should have been NAKEY, AS ALL MERMAIDS SHOULD BE but I could overlook this in favor of boggling at his weird cloak made of live fish...why...
The writers also had some trite "losing your voice to be heard blah blah blah" dialogue between Triton and Ariel when he accepted her choice to live her life as human. I was pleasantly surprised that they didn't harp on this too much, since I was bracing myself for way more of this nonsense, but I still don't think this dialogue was movie time well spent. I genuinely hate the interpretation that Ariel giving up her voice is bad and that wOmEn SiLeNcE tHeMsElVeS fOr MeN. The real conflict of the story is that Triton is a controlling father who has to learn that he won't lose his daughter by letting her live her own life, but that he will lose her by trying to control her which will drive her away....WHICH IS THE MESSAGE OF THE MOVIE SINCE THAT IS WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MOVIE??? IT WAS NOT THAT WOMEN HAVING THE ABILITY TO SPEAK VERBALLY = AGENCY??? Ariel had agency with or without her voice. Sacrificing her voice for legs was an act of agency because she did what she wanted to get what she wanted. And her quality of life/enjoyment of being human was not restricted or limited in any way by being mute. It didn't even stop Eric from falling in love with who she was as a person when he was previously only in love with her voice.
Speaking of voices, Awkwafina voiced Scuttle (changed from a male seagull in the original to a female gannet in the live action remake). I liked this change because a diving bird is sort of a good fit for a non-fish mermaid friend. But also she also ate a live fish right in front of Flounder and Ariel???? (🎵 We what the land folks love to cook 🎵 Under the sea we off the hook 🎵). They also included a brief new song where she raps about the "scuttlebutt" (gossip). I liked this more than Eric's new song, but I am unsure if I would have liked it if I didn't have the bad Eric song to compare it to. Sebastian's character design was extremely cute and I loved him so much BUT FOR SOME REASON THEY CUT HIS KITCHEN SCENE!?!? The live-action version of Under the Sea was good, dare I say, it could have been perfect if not for the fatal flaw that permeated every underwater scene... the complete lack of background visuals. When your scene is set in a vast ocean I guess it's really hard to stack the background (which by nature will be mostly empty). I noticed this in more than one underwater scene but it really hit hardest during Under the Sea when they were trying to fill the whole shot with action and color and the big blue ocean was just THERE, looming and empty. I guess they could have added some happy whales..? Flounder also wasn't weird like I expected. The promo pictures made him look really weird, but I guess it was just a matter of scale. He was a tiny fish so his weird CGI fish face was small and therefore not creepy in the actual movie.
I hope this all didn't sound too whiney and complain-y because I had a good time watching the 2023 version of The Little Mermaid!! I probably wouldn't watch the whole thing all over again if I had the choice to watch the original version instead, but I would probably re-watch my favorite scenes. Like I said before, I think they had some great original concepts that could have made a really fun new mermaid magical adventure/romance movie, but this potential was sidelined so they could pantomime the animated movie. Sad! I would really have loved to see the original mermaid fantasy drama/romance movie that was hiding inside this remake.
