Disney making live-action remake of 'The Little Mermaid'

[Zulithe]

There is a desktop browser extension that will return the dislikes. It's called (wait for it) Return Youtube Dislike.

The newest trailer has 167k up and 844k down. Of course, the dislikes don't mean much if it doesn't translate into people voting (or not voting) with their dollars, and we will just have to see.

In short, YT dislikes are still there but they hide them from the end user. Why they don't just strip it out completely, I have no idea.

Of all the blackwashing they have done in their casting in recent years, this is far and away the most egregious example. The Little Mermaid is a Danish myth so don't come at me with any arguments that it's not cultural appropriation. If people support it with their money you will see a lot more to come.

[CyberCubed]

Even if a white actress was cast as Ariel the rest of the movie still looks pretty bad. These just don't work in live action and the fish look awful.

The black actress is just there for controversy, as they knew what they were doing. The Little Mermaid was the first big Disney animated film that started the Renaissance and is important to 30+ year olds.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Even if a white actress was cast as Ariel the rest of the movie still looks pretty bad. These just don't work in live action and the fish look awful.

The black actress is just there for controversy, as they knew what they were doing. The Little Mermaid was the first big Disney animated film that started the Renaissance and is important to 30+ year olds.

And that actually is a huge part of the problem with these adaptations - do you make the "live-action" fish look like absolutely real fish or are they fish with cartoony characteristics in the real world? And if the latter, then why make them "live action" in the first place? Why aren't all the fish of the sea equally cartoony?

In some ways those criticisms were the same as the "live action" Lion King. It was all CGi with talking animals. There's nothing "live action" about it - it's still a cartoon no matter what you do.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

The black actress is just there for controversy, as they knew what they were doing. The Little Mermaid was the first big Disney animated film that started the Renaissance and is important to 30+ year olds.

They have armor now. Movie fails or underperforms? "It's the bigots that didn't see it!" and so on. They'll scour Twitter and find like 2 legitimately racist tweets (and probably from leftist fake accounts) and make a big stink about them. It's the SOP now for these things.

[IMJ]

Movies only make money when more movie-goers buy tickets than movie-goers who do not buy tickets. There are absolutely zero bigots out there reducing movie grosses by buying "negative tickets".

That's how stupid the average peasant thinker is.

PT: "It failed because of bigotry!"
Normal, well-adjusted person: "You are saying that bigots took away money from this movie?!"
PT: "Well.... ummm... noooooo. They didn't buy tickets though."
Normal, well-adjusted person: "SOOOoooo..... this movie sold just under 5 million tickets and only grossed 51 million dollars!"
PT: "Yeaaahhhhh..... it would've sold 40 million except for the racismmmmmm"
Normal, well-adjusted person: "So basically America has 5 million people that pass the 'racist-ticket-purity-test' leaving 326.9 million racists in the country. OOOOkay".

[CyberCubed]

Honestly none of the live-action Disney films have been good. They did Cinderella in live-action and worked because Cinderella has been in live-action before, then thought they could do all the 90's movies in live-action and failed every time. Beauty and the Beast is the only one I'd consider "ok" and not bad.

[TurtleManiac]

Some of the live action remakes were ok. I thought the live action Aladdin was pretty good, although it should have been Terry Crews as Genie instead of Will Smith. I get the take they were going for in the live action Genie, and Will Smith just wasn’t it. Terry Crews is way more charismatic, majestic, and funny as hell, just like Genie was. Other than that I thought it was ok. But in general remakes are just never as good as the originals.

[Andrew NDB]

I saw the Jungle Book live action remake. It was OK. But I wasn't really excited about seeing any of the ones since so I haven't. Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King, I haven't seen any of them.

[Coola Yagami]

People on Twitter have been having fun pointing out that all these 'racists' sure aren't having any trouble going to see the latest Creed movie.

[Barkworm]

These "live-action"-remakes (Lion King was advertised as such but it was just a CG movie !?) are very representative of the creative laziness that's been going on in Hollywood for a good while now. Pass.

[ranger_scout]

I'm pretty sure that all of the actors watched this trailer before doing this video before they shared their reactions.



The trailer has also reached 108 million global views, which is the highest number of views for a live-action remake.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/mo...ng-1235355616/

Originally Posted by IMJ

And that actually is a huge part of the problem with these adaptations - do you make the "live-action" fish look like absolutely real fish or are they fish with cartoony characteristics in the real world? And if the latter, then why make them "live action" in the first place? Why aren't all the fish of the sea equally cartoony?

In some ways those criticisms were the same as the "live action" Lion King. It was all CGi with talking animals. There's nothing "live action" about it - it's still a cartoon no matter what you do.

I'm actually kind of surprised that the film's director Rob Marshall, who also directed Mary Poppins Returns, didn't use 2D animation for the animal characters in this film as he did during those animated moments in Mary Poppins Returns where the actors were still live-action.

Originally Posted by Cowabung-Gal

No. Movie still sucked though. Most live-action remakes do.

But pointless raceswapping like this is done because white filmmakers want to prove to minorities that they “care” about representation, when all they’re doing is giving minorities sloppy seconds. And most of the time their films end up being garbage.

Taken from Hans Christian Andersen’s original book in regards to the mermaid’s description:

“They were six beautiful children; but the youngest was the prettiest of them all; her skin was as clear and delicate as a rose-leaf, and her eyes as blue as the deepest sea;”

“When something like a black cloud passed between her and them, she knew that it was either a whale swimming over her head, or a ship full of human beings, who never imagined that a pretty little mermaid was standing beneath them, holding out her white hands towards the keel of their ship.”

“He fixed his coal-black eyes upon her so earnestly that she cast down her own, and then became aware that her fish’s tail was gone, and that she had as pretty a pair of white legs and tiny feet as any little maiden could have; but she had no clothes, so she wrapped herself in her long, thick hair.”

And what is Hollywood’s beef with redheads anyway?

https://boundingintocomics.com/2020/...-race-swapped/

I believe that it's possible that Disney thought since the majority of America didn't have any problem with Samuel L. Jackson playing Nick Fury, who was originally a white man in the comics, then maybe this wouldn't have been a major issue. Jackson has since become a staple of the MCU.



Also as I pointed out before, it was a huge surprise back in the 1960s when the producers of Batman decided to cast Eartha Kitt as Catwoman after two white females played her and the character didn't have dark skin in the comic books. Viewers soon went crazy over Kitt's portrayal because of her line delivery and how catlike she was.





Clearly, Halle Bailey isn't getting the same reception as Jackson or Kitt.

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by ranger_scout

I believe that it's possible that Disney thought since the majority of America didn't have any problem with Samuel L. Jackson playing Nick Fury, who was originally a white man in the comics, then maybe this wouldn't have been a major issue. Jackson has since become a staple of the MCU.

He's still a white man in the comics. It's just, there's now another Nick Fury who is black who has more or less sidelined him.

[Coola Yagami]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

He's still a white man in the comics. It's just, there's now another Nick Fury who is black who has more or less sidelined him.

Not to mention that Ultimate Nick Fury was purposely designed to look like Sam L Jackson.

[ranger_scout]

In the 1990s, the popular Disney Channel series Adventures in Wonderland, which is now streaming on Disney+, had three African-American actors play the Red Queen/Queen of Hearts and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum.





Obviously, Lewis Carroll's illustrations never showed these characters as people of color. However, when I was watching this series I never questioned why they weren't white like in the 1951 Disney animated film, Alice in Wonderland. When episodes of the series were uploaded to Youtube I never saw any comments bashing these actors. We obviously live in different times now with the reactions that this version of The Little Mermaid has received.

[Andrew NDB]

They really need to redirect all this energy into making new, original movies with vastly diverse casts.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

They really need to redirect all this energy into making new, original movies with vastly diverse casts.

Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there who find it's easier to complain about life, complain about white people, and then deploy their own racism to overwrite people in entertainment and then revel in the sloppy-seconds of someone else's creation.

[Cowabung-Gal]

Preach, girl!

[CyberCubed]

Are there any new rap songs in this movie? I think there should be one rap song added to the movie as it would fit given Ariel is black in this version. Do you think they rap under the sea?

[ProphetofGanja]

Originally Posted by CyberCubed

Are there any new rap songs in this movie? I think there should be one rap song added to the movie as it would fit given Ariel is black in this version. Do you think they rap under the sea?

Spoiler:

[ranger_scout]

Alan Menken, the film's composer, talked about the new songs that he's written with Lin-Manuel Miranda for this film. One of them was cut from the final version, but it might appear as a special feature when the film is released to home media. The lyrics to "Kiss the Girl" and "Poor Unfortunate Souls have also been changed in this film.

What was the first song that you did and why?

We discussed with Rob Marshall what he wanted. One was the Prince Eric song, called “Wild Unchartered Waters.” Then, there was the song for Ariel when she has her legs (doesn't have a voice), and she's singing her thoughts about all the firsts she is noticing for the first time. Then, there was a number called “Scuttlebutt” for Scuttle and Sebastian. It's this harebrained [song for them] trying to figure out what's going on because they hear rumors that the prince has decided to marry. They think it must be Ariel but of course it’s Ursula in the form of Vanessa. It's all this delicious imagination. Lin’s lyrics are to die for. We wrote a fourth song called “Impossible Child” for King Triton. It didn’t remain in the film only because dramaturgically we didn’t really need it. It was so great to work with Javier Bardem on that song and people will hear it as a DVD outtake, I guess.

What about anything from Broadway?

This is a very interesting thing because it started with Beauty, then Aladdin and now Mermaid. It's not like a wheel that goes from animation through Broadway to film. It goes from animation to Broadway, then from animation to film. It seems like the animateds are the Rosetta Stone and each iteration becomes a new adaptation from that starting point. There was a song, “Her Voice” for the Broadway show. But Rob really wanted a new song for this moment of waves and all the wildness of what's out there in the ocean. [Ariel] represented that to [Prince Eric]; she being the girl who saved his life. Live action films are really a director's medium. They want to go back to what they saw in the animation and take it fresh from there. That seems to be the pattern and I go along with it. Besides the fact that clearly, everybody wants a new song for the live action film for awards consideration.

Was there anything from the original that you redid, or something about it needed to change?

There are some lyric changes in “Kiss the Girl” because people have gotten very sensitive about the idea that [Prince Eric] would, in any way, force himself on [Ariel]. We have some revisions in “Poor Unfortunate Souls” regarding lines that might make young girls somehow feel that they shouldn't speak out of turn, even though Ursula is clearly manipulating Ariel to give up her voice.

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/202...of-songwriters

Originally Posted by Cowabung-Gal

Preach, girl!

I don't mind what Universal and Illumination are doing with Princess Peach in The Super Mario Bros. Movie by not making her a damsel-in-distress. She's been captured in around 99% of the adventure games involving Mario. It's refreshing that she will be working alongside Mario this time around to rescue Luigi.