From an exceedingly evil Ursula to horrifying references from the original tragic fairy tale,
there are a stack of gruesome changes and sinister secrets hidden in Disney's
live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. Spoilers ahead, of course, so take care.
Let's kick things off with Ursula – one of Disney's most iconic villains
– and the new movie really amps up what a despicable baddie she truly is.
So when we first meet her this time, she's complaining about wasting away
in exile while spearing some shrimp with her fingernail and chomping it down as a snack.
This addition is also a grisly little bit of foreshadowing for her own death
by the end when she gets stuck with the pointy end of a ship's mast.
And for the remake, Ursula's lair has acquired some even scarier
creatures compared to the animated version. Gone are the polyps which contained the souls
of merfolk that came back to life after Ursula died, and these have been replaced by nightmarish
single-eyed Lovecraftian monsters that remind me of the monster in the Doctor Strange sequel.
These new creatures grab Ariel by the neck at one point in a deep-cut
reference to the original fairy tale where one of the polyps outside the sea witch's
house strangled a little mermaid to death. As for why the filmmakers cut the original
movie's polyps, Director Rob Marshall thought that seeing them turn back into people was
something that could only work in animation, and that Triton turning into a polyp would
be too comical for a live-action movie. In the new movie, the floor in Ursula's
cave is littered with skulls and even the entire skeleton of a merperson, proving that the fate of
those who've crossed Ursula is now even worse than those poor unfortunate souls in the animation.
This new-look lair is also a nod to the original fairy tale where the sea witch's house was located
in the middle of a forest of serpent-like half-animal, half-plant polyps with long
arms that trapped the skeletons of dead humans and animals which had sunk to the bottom of the sea.
In fact, it's implied later on when Flotsam and Jetsam electrocute King Triton, draining him of
life that that's how Ursula kills her victims. By the way, the skeleton of the whale-like
creature that forms Ursula's new lair is based on unused concept art from the animated movie.
Live-action Ursula's transformation into a giant kaiju-like monster was very impressive,
although her death in the remake is a little less grisly than the animation,
with the camera cutting away when the ship's spike pierces the giant villain, and also her
not getting electrocuted by lightning this time. In the new movie though, Ursula does become even
more monstrous, with gruesome gills added to her cheeks and huge deadened eyes,
possibly a hat-tip to her evil red eyes in this scene in the animated movie.
When Disney first adapted Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale for their animated
classic, they softened many of the darker edges of the original story;
however, many of these are back in various forms in the new film.
So, during Ariel's transformation, listen very carefully and you'll hear tearing sounds as her
tail rips and splits into two, a shout-out to Andersen's original story where the sea
witch tells the little mermaid that when the potion transforms her fin into human legs,
she will feel great pain as if a sword were passing through her body.
And later on when Scuttle asks Sebastian whether Ariel has killed the prince yet,
it's a sneaky, sinister reference to how in the fairy tale when the little mermaid
failed to gain the prince's true love, her mermaid sisters struck a deal with the sea
witch that if she killed the prince with a dagger and put his blood on to her feet,
she would be able to turn back into a mermaid. In Andersen's story, if the prince ended up
marrying another woman, the little mermaid's fate would be to die the next morning and become the
foam that floats on the crest of the ocean waves. So when the movie's opening scene is of giant
foaming waves, it's no coincidence. At the start, there's also a quote
from Andersen's fairy tale: "but a mermaid has no tears,
and therefore she suffers so much more", a moment which pays off at the very end
when in her human form Ariel sheds a tear as she says goodbye to her father.
Likewise the fairy tale also ends with the little mermaid's tears as she refuses to
kill the prince and so gains an eternal soul. A small, but significant and bloody change in the
live-action is how Ariel agrees to her deal with Ursula by signing it in blood after plucking a
scale from her own tail, rather than signing her name as she did in the animated movie.
This sidesteps a commonly cited plot hole from the animation that Ariel
could have easily explained to Eric why she was mute by writing down how she'd lost her
voice and that she was the one who saved him. In tune with many of Disney's live-action remakes,
some of the wackier, more slapstick elements from the
animation have been removed from this version. An unfortunate casualty is French chef Louis,
notorious for his obsessive and ridiculously OTT efforts to catch and cook the little crab
Sebastian, who's been chopped out of the new film, meaning of course that the song "Les
Poissons" is also missing. How I love les poissons.
Love to chop and to serve little fish. There is, however, a nod to that sequence
in both the castle's fishy tiles and when Sebastian says he could
have been fricasseed trying to reach Ariel. In the animated movie, one of the thingamabobs
that Ariel found [in the sunken ship] was a tobacco pipe that was amusingly
named and described by Scuttle A banded, bulbous snarfblatt.
However, since 2007 Disney has banned the depiction of any smoking products in any
of it movies rated PG-13 or less, so all of the amusing animated scenes featuring the snarfblatt
have been completely banished from the remake. The live-action movie reveals that Ursula is
actually Triton's sister, making her dastardly scheme against Ariel – her own niece – feel even
worse and more malevolent. The film also explains that
Ariel's mother was killed by humans; however, what was left out but explained
in the movie's novelisation is that Ursula's actions were also responsible for that death.
Apparently, 15 years earlier, the sea witch shapeshifted into the form of Triton's wife,
the Sea Queen, and then attacked a human ship, but was caught.
And when Ariel's mother decided to help Ursula escape, she ended up dying.
This was the event that led Triton to banish his wicked sister.
And it also appears that Eric's birth family was killed during Ursula's attack and she's
therefore the reason why he was shipwrecked and orphaned, and ended up being adopted.
Similar to the Lion King, the live-action Little Mermaid strives for a photorealistic
world in its depiction of life under the sea. Although this is a technically impressive feat,
it does mean a good deal of the expressive emotions conveyed by the animated animals
isn't translated into live action. Of all the characters, Flounder suffered
the most from this and the internet completely freaked out when they saw him for the first time,
as visually he simply doesn't have the fun and vibrancy of his cartoon counterpart.
By the way, I thought it was a little shocking how Scuttle quite casually
swooped into the water in front of Ariel and Flounder to snack on some fish.
Obviously, gannets and other birds do eat fish in real life, but it was a little weird how Ariel
wasn't shocked at the horror of this, You OK Flounder?
Sure, you gotta show 'em who's in charge. Ahh!
[Ariel laughs] It's just Scuttle!
while being clearly perturbed later on at seeing pictures of fish on hooks in the human world.
Sebastian's new look is based on the Cuban Land Crab and he has a much larger front right claw
than his left claw, another change made to make the crab as realistic as possible.
Because he has larger eyes than his fish friends though, he still has a little more
ability to emote, though it can't quite compare to the animation in this regard.
And while the live-action version of "Under the Sea" is visually spectacular,
indeed it looks just gorgeous and colourful, and it's very impressive, and reminded me of
some of Busby Berkeley's choreography, it doesn't quite hit the comedic notes of the original song
as it strives to be more photoreal. There's definitely a lot of interesting
changes in the remake, and I'd love to hear what you thought of them.
I especially enjoyed Halle Bailey and Melissa McCarthy's performances.
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and hope you have a marvellous movie-loving week! Yippee-ki-yay, movie lovers!