Hey, let me ask you a question.
What would you call this?
If you said this is not a pipe.
You're impressively well versed on your French surrealist painters.
>> However if you said it was a banded bulbous snore flat.
You're wise to a different more recent historical visual movement.
The Disney renaissance that kicked off in 1989 with The Little Mermaid.
>> Disney's version had been in the work since the 1930s,
60-year development period that would make any Hollywood executive shutter.
But the source materials dates back 100 years prior to
Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale of the same name.
>> Quite a show, ay?
>> Scuttle, be quiet.
They'll hear you >> It's time to ask,
what's the difference?
(Music)
>> The year is 1985.
Both Walt and
Roy Disney had long ago ascended to that big Sleeping Beauty castle in the sky.
Superstar animator, Don Bluthe had left as well, not to go to heaven
like dogs of a film he released in 1989, but to launch his own animation studio.
Walking out the door with nine of Disney's best sketch and ink men.
>> What? >> Their combined departures
resulted in years of lackluster box office performance that put the studio that Walt
built in grave danger of being forced to shut down their animation normal together.
Luckily for children across the globe, Disney reverted back to Walt's tried and
true formula, make movies based on popular folklore intellectual properties
that stand the test of time.
>> Such as Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, The Princess and The Pea,
Thumbelina and of course, The Little Mermaid, just to name a few.
>> And those Disney's and Hans' telling the story revolves around a young mermaid
who falls in love with a handsome prince she rescued from a shipwreck.
Making a deal with the sea witch, she trades her voice for
a pair of human legs, so she can walk on land and woo her prince.
And if she fails in her romantic quest she'll suffer a grim fate.
>> And it is here that the fairy tales diverge as Disney exercised a bit of
creative license in it's retelling.
>> Ariel.
>> For instance, in Disney's Little Mermaid, Ariel was forbidden by her
father, King Triton from venturing up to the surface since Merpeople as a whole,
considered humans to be harpoon hurling barbarians, feasting on fishy meat.
Boo, bogeyman.
>> However in Hans' fairy tale, the little mermaid,
who wasn't named Ariel because there were no names in the original fairy tale,
waited patiently for her 15th birthday.
For that was when the daughters of the sea king were allowed to swim up to
the surface to gaze upon the world of men.
>> The merpeople in the fairy tale also find humans to be a little boring.
After a month the Little Mermaid's sisters tire of spying on humans and
declare it was much more beautiful down below and pleasanter to be at home.
>> Ariel receives no such dissuading from her sisters in Disney's version as they
are wholly de-emphasized as characters.
But she still receives the message loud and clear with an Oscar winning show
stopper from everybody's favorite Jamaican crustacean, Sebastian, the musical crab.
(Music)
Look at him dance, folks.
Hey.
>> In a faithful retelling, another fan favorite song and
swim number would have ended up on the chopping block as well.
In the Danish version, it's the sisters who are enamored by items left behind by
shipwrecks, not the Little Mermaid.
She only has eyes for a white marble statue of a prince in her garden.
>> If Disney had made Ariel solely a fan of sculpture and
not human trinkets, we would have lost out on dinglehoppers, and Part of your World.
But the greatest differences between the two fish-scaled classics
don't come down to characterization.
They're concentrated on the narrative itself,
both with alterations of the plot as a whole and how Disney mercifully pulled
back the reins when it came to the gruesomeness of some specific beats.
>> It all starts with the sea witch,
Ursula who was rumored to be modeled on a drag queen, Divine.
>> This is a direct attack on my divinity.
>> In Disney's adaptation, she's half-octopus, half-brassy sorceress,
who maliciously uses Ariel as a pawn to get revenge on King Triton, for
casting her out of the kingdom.
>> In the fairy tale,
the sea witch is more of a practitioner of magic than pure tentacled evil.
In fact, she actually warns the Little Mermaid that what her heart seeks,
being united with the human of her dreams, will bring her nothing but sorrow.
Nevertheless she agrees to help the Little Mermaid.
But the specifics of the payment for the spell are slightly different.
(Sound) Ooh, she cuts off the mermaid's tongue.
This was a bedtime story for children.
>> Stop it.
>> The point is in both tellings, the Little Mermaid must sacrifice her voice.
In the original, well, we told you what went down.
But in Disney's animated version, Ursula's dark arts merely
extract the glowing essence of Ariel's voice to be imprisoned in a seashell.
There you go, kids.
You can watch that.
>> The terms of the magical deal significantly differ as well.
In Disney's version,
Ariel has only three days to receive the kiss of true love from her Prince Eric.
If she fails in her quest by sunset on the third day she will turn
back into a mermaid and her soul will belong to Ursula.
>> Instead in the original,
the mute Little Mermaid must win the prince's hand in marriage.
If she fails and he marries somebody else instead, she'll die and
turn into sea foam.
Robbing her of the rest of her natural 300 merperson lifespan.
The little mermaids longevity gamble gets further
complicated by the fact that humans have short lifespans but
they're immortal souls ascend above the clouds when they pass on.
And if the prince marries her, he would give a soul to you and
retain his own as well.
So when she steps on to dry land, the Little Mermaid isn't just pursuing
princely human love, but a shot at immortality.
>> Once again, this discrepancy between the stories,
marriage versus kiss of true love results in a song.
(Music)
>> Did you hear something?
>> And thankfully in her legged life in the Disney version, Ariel doesn't suffer
the constant torment that the little mermaid did in the famous fairy tale.
As a side effect of the sea witch's spell.
>> Every step she takes feels like knives jabbing into her feet,
slicing into the once fishy flesh but now a human flesh.
>> Okay, I'm going to begin wrapping this up because you're starting to scare me.
The single biggest contrast between the two versions was an entirely different
climax/third act.
In Disney's Little Mermaid, the prince takes a shine to Ariel,
despite her voicelessness, and it seems their kiss is all but an inevitability.
So Ursula intervenes by assuming the form of a beautiful brunette, and
sings with Ariel's voice to enchant the prince.
Convincing him that she was the one who saved him from the shipwreck.
He falls in love and demands a hasty wedding, but
Ariel's animal friends come to the rescue to stall the nuptials,
break Ursula's shell, and Ariel regains her voice.
>> Hooray.
The Prince realizes that she's the one that he loves, but
Ariel doesn't get that smooch in time, and Ursula takes control of her soul.
King Triton swaps his for his daughter's, Ursula snatches his crown and trident,
then full on Godzilla's from the depths as the dark queen of the sea.
But Prince Eric saves the day by goring her in
the guts with the bow spread of a resurfaced shipwreck.
>> Ariel doesn't make a single proactive decision in the last third of
The Little Mermaid.
150 years earlier, Hans was far more empowering.
In his version, the prince also takes a shine to the little mermaid after she
dances for him since she can't communicate with her voice.
>> She's dancing the calypso but she just feels those knives stabbing and
slashing at her feet.
>> Unfortunately, he only considers her as, and
these are his words, his dumb child.
He lets her sleep on a velvet cushion outside his bedroom while
he continues to pine for the woman who rescued him from the sea.
Who he conveniently decides is the gorgeous princess his parents
make him visit in a foreign kingdom.
>> The night of the wedding, the Little Mermaid's sisters surface above the waves.
They traded their hair to the sea witch for an enchanted knife.
All the Little Mermaid has to do is plunge it into the prince's heart while he
sleeps beside his new queen.
And then she'll turn back into a mermaid and
live the rest of her 300 years with her family.
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
>> The Little Mermaid takes the knife,
creeps in to the bridal bed chambers and tosses it overboard.
And herself after it.
At which point, by the rules of the story, she's supposed to turn into sea foam.
But Hans tosses us the all Danish dance and a curve ball.
>> Hundreds of transparent luminous daughters of the air come to her rescue.
(Music)
You see, they spend their existence seeking good deeds from children to
shorten their 300-year waiting period to make it into heaven.
Since the Little Mermaid epitomizes such good behavior, they make her one of them,
with one little moralizing wrinkle to cup up the whole story.
>> Since the Little Mermaid was a fairy tale for children, Hans Christian wraps up
his story with a quota to keep the kiddos on their best behavior.
>> The acts of which children subtract a year from the daughters of the airs
300-year waiting period to get into heaven.
But a naughty child makes them cry, and a day is added to their wait for each tear.
>> So, be good my little Cinefixers, or
you're keeping the original Little Mermaid out of heaven.
>> That's all for this episode, be sure to like this video and
subscribe to Cinefix for more What's the Difference?
>> She cut off the mermaids tongue.
>> No, I'm done, that's it.
The end.
(Music)