After a lot of whisperings on the street that the new ‘Live Action Little Mermaid’ was the best of Disney’s Live Action films I knew, whilst I was back in England and had access to a non-dubbed version of the film, that I had to go and see it (after I’d been to see Across the Spiderverse, of course—I have my priorities straight). It’s been a couple weeks now since I’ve seen it so I wanted to take some time to finally write down my thoughts on whether or not I agreed with the whisperings that persuaded me to go in the first place.
So first off, do I think this is the best of the Disney Live Action films? Of all the ones I’ve seen, probably yes (I am however yet to watch Cinderella, The Jungle Book or the-not-really-live-action-Lion-King—and I’ve only seen bits of the Beauty and the Beast though I know from those clips I’m not tempted to watch anymore as the vocal effects on the singing really jar on me).
The Little Mermaid is definitely the prettiest. The blues that they used for the ocean and sky, the colours of all the plants and fish, the clean soft-colours of the costumes—all of this added to a really visually exciting and pretty film. It threw you into a magical, almost other-worldly setting and elicited happiness and smiles I imagine from most people watching. Compared to Peter Pan and Wendy, which among a few complaints was the bland, grey look of the magical Neverland, The Little Mermaid was visually stunning and the people in charge of that side of the film should be highly commended. I still feel happy just thinking about the scenes underwater.
The songs were a surprising treat. Daveed Diggs was a perfect Sebastian, instilling him with a strong personality and an amazing singing/rapping voice. Halle Bailey does, indeed, have a strong singing voice and definitely matches Jodi Benson in singing ability. I don’t think she’s any better than Jodi Benson as I think both of them are excellent and sing in different styles. Jodi Benson’s Little Mermaid had a clean-singing voice with every note crisp and clear. Halle Bailey’s Little Mermaid was more ‘musical theatre’ in that she put a lot of personality into her singing. ‘A Part of Your World’ is a clear example of this. Halle Bailey sings some lines and ‘talks’ some others so that you can feel what Ariel is feeling in those moments—she cries a line, she does beautiful riffs on others. Jodi Benson is the Animated Disney Ariel to Halle Bailey’s Musical Theatre Ariel and I enjoyed and loved them both equally.
The new songs that were added were big growers. I liked them when watching the film and on subsequent re-listens I love them even more. My favourites, and strongest additions I believe are ‘The Scuttlebutt’ sung by Daveed Diggs and Awkwafina and my absolute favourite ‘For the First Time’ sung by Halle Bailey, which was so musical theatre it was perfect (and bonus, it was the only sung not sung out loud and was entirely written to match a sequence of action, showing Ariel’s thoughts whilst she couldn’t talk). The weakest song by far was Eric’s song ‘Wild Uncharted Waters’ as it was very plain compared to the others (however, bonus points for having him talk about ‘Melody’—and yes, I am counting that as a reference to my childhood favourite Little Mermaid character, even if it was unintentional).
The acting was all to a great standard. Melissa McCarthy made an intimidating and funny Ursula, King Triton showed a range of emotions when dealing with being a single Dad to many daughters, the extras/additional characters both on the Island and Underwater all had great moments to shine and I enjoyed all of them.
Now that that’s out of the way, obviously I am a blog dedicated to food and writing so my special skills aren’t in any of the above, so it’s time to move onto what I do know and can actually review properly: food. Okay, no, that was a bad joke. As much as I’d love to review the popcorn I was eating (which was great), it wouldn’t really make for a good Little Mermaid review. Let’s stop lingering on that bad joke and talk about the writing.
The writing is definitely were I felt that I was let down—but not because I thought that the writers were terrible writers or because there was nothing redeemable about the film. Quite the opposite really. I thought the writers had the potential to be amazing and that there was a lot of interesting plot points that had been changed or added that made the film so much more fascinating from a writing perspective. A lot of thought had clearly gone into how to update a very outdated story and make it make sense in the modern world. Why I was let down is that points that I thought were being brought up in the beginning to help make this a new, modern story were quickly chucked out at the end in order for them to ‘tell the story again as it was in the 90’s’—and not only was that disappointing but it was a disservice to how great this story could’ve been if the writers (or their overseers) had been brave enough to go through with their new ideas. Some of the final plot points don’t even make any sense with the context of what was happening throughout.
But, I’m getting ahead of myself. First let’s talk about some of the good changes within the script:
- Changing Scuttle as a species—this was something I think everyone was unsure about. Scuttle’s a seagull. He always has been. But in this he/she’s a gannet? Ah, but a gannet actually makes logical sense—more so than a Seagull, especially with one of the other changes they made. Gannets spend a lot of time under water and can breathe for a certain amount of time, whereas seagulls can’t, so it’s more likely that an Ariel (who, in this version, has never been above the surface of the water) would run into a Gannet than a Seagull. It allowed for a real and true connection between the land and sea—a bird that would’ve experienced both worlds, just as Ariel will go on to do. Clever decision.
- Changing Settings—Eric’s Palace in the original seemed more set in a European/Mediterranean landscape but in this version we move to a Caribbean-style landscape. This allows for those bright colours, more sunny landscape, catchy music, Sebastian’s Caribbean accent, seafaring history and adds to the fun atmosphere of the film. Personally I think this change was inspired for the reasons listed above and because it explains why the Island may be so small and why Eric would want to be at sea to discover more.
- Eric and Ariel don’t just have crushes because of looks—One of the greatest additions is the scene were Ariel sees Eric on the boat. In the original Ariel falls instantly for Eric because of his kindness towards his crew and dog and because of his looks. These are fine things to develop a crush but not enough to tell kids you should leave your home and family for. However, in the Live Action, Ariel sees Eric expressing that he wishes to go adventure and find out who he is, without being restricted by rules put in place to ‘protect him’—and this is what she, not necessarily likes, but allows her to connect to a human. She realises in this moment that a human, Eric, has the same wants as her and she wants to talk to him because she feels like he would understand her.
- Ariel is Isolated—In the original animation Ariel can come across as the bad person/mermaid. She has a loving family surrounding her, good friends and a ‘Utopian’ style life as long as she stays underwater. She gives all of that up, upsetting everyone in her life, for a guy she doesn’t know. But in the re-writing for the Live Action it’s made plain that Ariel is often alone. Her sisters all live in their respective other seas and oceans across the world; her Dad is always busy working as ruler of the seas, Sebastian etc. work with him—and the only friend she really has consistently with her is Flounder who’s just a guppy. He can’t have been around very long as fish live less time, he doesn’t like to do everything she does—leaving Ariel to be very alone and isolated. It makes sense in this context why she would collect human things, why she would want to visit a place her occasional visitor/friend Scuttle went to. She’s bored, lonely and, when she hears a human saying the same, it bonds her to him because they both feel the same way. Isolating Ariel, even to the extent as having not many there who understood when singing ‘Part of Your World’ (Sebastian was there in the original) and having her spend a portion of the song in her imagination, was a great choice.
- Eric having a Mother—It never made much sense in the original why a Prince, who was clearly of age to be King, wouldn’t be. But in this, it is. He has a Mother who’s still in charge and hasn’t passed the throne down to him yet (I assume they live in a place that allows women to rule alone?). It allows Eric to have somebody to talk to, somebody he actually feels like he has to listen to (out of respect and love), and someone to bond with over his father and their life etc. He has a reason to stay on the Island and to feel stifled. In a way, he has his own Triton, again expanding what he has in common with Ariel. Not only that but they also made him adopted—so he doesn’t know where he’s really from or who is biological parents were. He feels like he owes his adopted mother everything. And his shipwreck storyline, as well as explaining his adventurous spirit, helps connect him to Atlantica. The mermaids complain about the human shipwrecks as they cause damage to the oceans but Eric is a product of a shipwreck—he shows what surviving a shipwreck is. How deadly they are to humanity—and bonds him to Ariel when he believes she’s a survivor of a shipwreck also. It also develops him as a character which, whilst minor, helps you to see him as a person and not just a plot-point.
- Ariel’s Sisters—The few scenes we got with Ariel’s older sisters were very well done. Their first scene, introducing themselves for the festival to their father, showed that they were older, more serious and regal princesses than their younger sister. Their next scene showed them at work on the shipwrecks and showing their anger towards the humans and their relationship with each other. And finally their final few scenes showed them as sisters, joking and worrying about Ariel. Each time they showed up you got a new aspect of their characters or relationship—whilst allowing Ariel to be completely isolated from them, even though you can still tell their love for her.
Okay, I’m now sort-of going onto the negatives but, you know what? I don’t feel like putting them as negatives as they were more ‘disappointments’ than anything. Instead I’m going to frame them as ‘Things I Would Re-Write in the Live Action Little Mermaid’ so they could match up to the potential the writers had. And yes, I did come up with the blog title before I wrote this and yes, it did take me this long to get to this part.
- The Ship-Wreck Plotline—This was actually a plotline set up by the writers that I think should be expanded on to make a modern, retelling of the story (and was where I thought it was going to go before it seemed like they just chickened out and went back to the original plot). The Queen mentions that there’s been an extraordinary amount of shipwrecks around their shores; the mermaids complain about the amounts of shipwrecks causing damage to the ocean; Ariel’s mother was killed in a shipwreck and caused the rule about not going above the water; Eric was, as a baby or child, a survivor of a shipwreck that was then adopted by the King and the Queen. I felt like there was too many mentions of the shipwrecks to not tie them together into the plot. Personally I thought that Eric’s backstory was going to be shown in a flashback whilst he talked to Ariel which would then connect to her Mother’s death. I also thought that the mermaids and humans were going to go to sort-of-war over the shipwrecks, or seem like they were, only to discover that Ursula had been causing them specifically for that reason (which, honestly on her part, would be a far more devious way to end her brother). This would then tie all those plotlines together and they wouldn’t be left open, and me unsatisfied and disappointed.
- Use the ‘Not Remembering the Kiss’ Plot Line as Actual Plot and Not An Excuse—This was an addition to Ursula’s contract that she didn’t tell Ariel about in the Live Action and I thought was a really good idea. It gave a reason why Ariel didn’t actively try to make Eric fall in love with her to complete the spell and a reason for Sebastian and friends to sing ‘Kiss the Girl’ to Eric. However, that’s all it felt like. It felt like an excuse. If it was rewritten I would build that into the plot a bit more, have them try repeatedly to tell Ariel in a short space of time and have her not listen or immediately forget. Even though I knew it was a spell in the film, because it was rarely brought up and was such a small and barely used plot point, when it was used it looked more like Ariel was being rude than under a spell.
- Allow More Time—The amount of time Ariel knew Eric was still just too short. She saw him on the boat, pulled him to shore, went to land for 3 days and then moved there to be with him and got married (I’ll bring up another problem I have with this soon). They just don’t have time to get to know each other or fall in love—and it’s mainly because of this time that you don’t feel a real connection between the two characters, as good as the actors are. Even a montage over a couple weeks would be a little better.
- Don’t Make Them ‘Fall In Love’—I’d felt like it was really excellent that through most of the film Ariel never said or even really showed she was in love with Eric. It felt like she liked his ideals, understood what he wanted in life and that she finally had someone who may understand her—but more as a lonely girl finally finding a friend or a ‘like’. It was poignant to see to me that when ‘love’ was mentioned, it was always somebody telling Ariel she was in love with him without her ever saying it herself. And as this story is the story of a girl who wasn’t allowed to have a voice (with her father and family long before Ursula ever took it physically) I really felt it would be a good ending if Eric and her were simply dating or ‘hanging out’ and it could lead to love by the end. And Ariel being able to say to everyone that kept saying that she was in love that she didn’t know what it was and just wanted to be given time to find out for herself. I wanted the same for Eric as well. In the ‘Scuttlebutt’ it was said that nobody expected Eric to marry or propose even—and why would he? The only want we’d seen Eric actually want (outside of the ‘Siren Song’ magic) was exploring the seas. Eric, or the Eric we’d been shown, also wouldn’t marry somebody despite others telling him what he should do. Both Ariel and Eric are shown to be very similar characters, not because of what they have in common, but how people/mermaids etc. treat them. They would never get married to each other just like that. They would take time to get to know each other. They’d date. As you would in reality. Both were looking for adventure, not each other. The way it ended in the actual film, I couldn’t see any future except divorce as they realised how little they actually had in common outside of their parents (Ariel wanted to be on land, Eric wanted to be at sea—so why did Ariel agree to go on ship with him out of nowhere?). Not only would the ‘just dating’ ending have tied everything together—it would have shown the start of an actual healthy relationship, a realistic relationship and would’ve really modernised and empowered a female character from the 90’s. Ariel deserves her voice. Give her that voice, instead of taking it away again to go back to status quo.
- Consistency in Beliefs—Eric’s Mother often brings up her fear of ‘the Sea Gods’, understandably after all the shipwrecks near and on the Island—you know, until she doesn’t. Because of how quickly it seemed like they felt they had to end the film, they had her get over her fear remarkably quickly. Personally, if I rewrote it, I would develop this lore of the Sea Gods. I would talk about them more with Eric or have Eric know about them himself. I would have a conversation at dinner about the Sea Gods were Eric’s mother tells Ariel she was lucky the Sea Gods spared her, or apologised for whoever the Sea Gods took away—which then, after a confused look from Ariel, Eric could explain about the Sea Gods—and Ariel could then later, with her voice or in the scenes later without her voice, try to teach Eric the truth about the Sea Gods. Eric could then stop his mother if she tried to send her men after mermaid Ariel. Then we’d have a consistent plotline that ran together.
- Show Us The Island—As nice as the scene were Ariel and Eric goes to town is, a quick pan out to show the actual size of the Island would be very beneficial to show how much pressure Eric is under to be a Prince for his kingdom. The way it was shown in the film it looked like it consisted of a giant palace and a village. Even a map on the walls that you do a slow pan over as you walk past would show how large it was.
- Another scene with Ariel and her sisters were they come to help her would develop that lonely storyline further. Ariel feels lonely because her sisters only come by once a year, so she feels she needs the human world, but her sisters coming to help with Ariel or try and get her from the humans would cement that Ariel needn’t feel alone—that all of her family, not just Triton, were there for her even in spirit.
- Siren Song Explanation—The ‘Siren Song’ was mentioned as being deadly by the crew on Eric’s ship. We were then told, by Eric, that it wasn’t real—and I figured, okay, they’re saying it’s a myth (which it is) and mermaids aren’t deadly. Except… it is real, so they are? I honestly don’t know. It’s only really lightly implied that the Siren Song caused Eric’s obsession to find the girl who rescued him and Ursula/Vanessa used that voice to control him again. I think the Siren Song is a clever addition, if used correctly, but I would definitely show what it was or have someone talking about it in more detail than what we saw. Is a Siren Song just a song or a speaking voice too? I think Ursula implies all of Ariel’s voice, speaking and singing, is the Siren Song? Do all mermaids have this or is this specific to Ariel (which again it seemed implied to be)? Did her mother have this too? I would develop this idea a bit more than it was actually used because at the minute I think the film was a bit confused with what it wanted to do with it.
- Ursula’s Exposition—Honestly the most jarring parts of speech I could find was Ursula’s lines which were far too expository at first. I get it. She’s been alone for a long time but she was really heavily monologuing. I would have toned this down a bit or have her telling Flotsam and Jetsam bits of her plan so that they could do it. I do however appreciate that they added in the detail (cut from the original) about her being Triton’s sister and Ariel’s Aunt. It was the key to making Ariel trust her as she was a family member who also had problems with Triton, who Triton apparently also didn’t understand. I would’ve leaned into this even more by having Triton or Ursula mention their childhoods together—to see a scene where Triton worries about Ariel taking the wrong path, like his sister—or another throw away line would develop their relationship. (R.I.P. Flotsam and Jetsam, my best boys. I miss you—Did they die in the animated version, does anyone know?).
And that’s it. Or at least, that’s what I can remember. What do you think of the new Live Action Little Mermaid? Would you have added or changed anything? Have you had any of the songs stuck in your head since watching it? I have been singing the Scuttlebutt so often recently.
Signed,
The Literary Onion
P.S. For those people wondering whether having a black Ariel is confusing to children who know the original Ariel, I recently went to Disneyland Paris with my 6 year old niece and we took her to see a little show with Live Action Ariel. We left after a minute as she was getting upset she couldn’t see Ariel. She hadn’t seen the new live action yet and had expected red-head Ariel. My sister explained to her that the Ariel we’d just seen was from the new Little Mermaid film… Anyway, two days later when she had some birthday money to spend she decided to buy the new Little Mermaid doll (unprompted). We don’t know why she decided that, especially as she had so many other things on her list, but she really liked it and kept making it sing for the next few days (my first time hearing Halle Bailey sing). So, yes, kids (at least this kid) are confused by it—but that confusion very easily dies down and they love Ariel in all guises. If your kids are really having a problem with it (as in confused) try telling them they’re from different universes or the multiverse? Or am I still stuck in Across the Spiderverse?
Anyway, thank you for reading. I hope you’re having a great day.
The Literary Onion 