So there’s a kerfuffle going on with some people calling the new Little Mermaid “woke” and others accusing of racism as the only reason they’re saying that is that the lead is a black actress. I have no interest in seeing it, (haven’t seen any live action remakes and don’t intend to start with this one) but could anyone explain if there are any actual plot differences or is it just the colour of Berry’s skin?
paywalled
Should be a gift link
Thanks. Just on the face of it, there doesn’t appear to be much of anything to complain about in those differences.
In the new film they have completely reasonable and in-story explanation for her being Black: Triton’s daughters each come from one of the Seven Seas and are each a different race from that part of the world. Since this story is set in the Caribbean, it makes perfect sense and is really a non-issue.
As seen here:
Imagine the uproar if the featured mermaid was the one in the upper right.
Bailey’s of course.
I misremembered the name as Hailey Berry as I remembered it as like Halle Berry but a bit different.
This is a statue of the actual Little Mermaid. She has the same skin color as the actress in the live action movie. It is the pale skinned representations that should be questioned.
The biggest difference is that they’ve managed to compress the original’s one hour and twenty five minute story into a crisp two hours and fifteen minutes.
Just came back from seeing it. It’s pretty close to the same plot. I liked the extra time. It actually allowed for some development of the romance. In the animated version, it’s just like “OK, Prince Eric likes her now!”.
I’ve heard some complaints about the couple of extra songs as well, but I liked them.
All this kerfuffle about skin color, Halle Bailey has about the closest facial features you are going to get to an actual Disney princess in a human being and all people are concerned about is her Pantone color code.
Haven’t seen it. No plans to do so soon. So I am in no position to judge.
But some reviewers think that a lot of the fun and whimsy of the original was removed at the expense of graphical verisimilitude, especially with the songs. Are they right? I don’t know.
From what little I’ve seen, the movie is badly lit and the animal “buddies” look stiff and unappealing.
Even though, IIRC, they all have the same biological mother and father (at least, I’m pretty sure I heard at least one of the other sisters referring to “our mother” as though they only had one among them. And also I doubt that today’s Disney would be comfortable with a children’s film suggesting that King Triton maintains some kind of polygynous harem*).
So I guess merpeople get their “racial” phenotype from the geography of their spawning grounds rather than from their parents’ genes. That’s gonna be an interesting discussion for Ariel and Eric to have when she wonders why their first kid looks like them despite being born in an entirely different ocean!
* It may have been okay for Mufasa in The Lion King to have multiple lionesses in the background, but merpeople are too close to human to pull that off successfully, ISTM. Even modern Disney isn’t about to extend its so-called “wokeness” to include ethical non-monogamy lifestyles.
We are comparing the new movie to the relatively recent cartoon, right? Not the nearly 200 year old source material.
Well, the OP seemed to think that the article comparing the animated and new “live action” Disney movies of that name answered his question, so yes, AFAICT we are not checking Disney’s version(s) against the original Hans Christian Andersen story. (Or, for that matter, against any earlier legends of mermaids/nereids/etc. that might have inspired aspects of Andersen’s tale.)
That’s been pretty much the knock on all of the live action adaptations.
I don’t know; I thought that the live-action Beauty and the Beast was at least as good as the animated one. Which was in large part due to Emma Watson, who is apparently really good at playing bookish nerds.
Another plot difference: Eric wants to propose to “Vanessa” (name not given) on the third day, not marry her right away.
Another difference: a $250 million budget.