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The original was posted on /r/movies by /u/1983MionStan on 2023-08-03 14:17:57+00:00.
The Little Mermaid (2023) is...a movie. I didn't hate it, but I definitely felt like I'd wasted my time. What makes this movie so disappointing for me is the new additions - which actually sounds great conceptually!...but awful in execution.
The first addition I want to talk about is Ursula being King Triton's sister. I've heard that they ripped this from the Broadway musical, so I'm not sure how the idea is implemented there, but this feels so unnecessary in the movie. This plot point is mentioned like once in the movie during Ursula's first scene. Hell, she didn't seem to even bat an eye to "killing" her supposed brother. You can remove this detail and the movie will still be the same. If they really want to go full on with this idea, make Ariel secretly go meet her aunt Ursula regularly despite her father's wishes. Ursula could easily take advantage of these meetings to familiarize herself with Ariel and manipulate her into thinking that she's not so bad. "After all, she is her aunt Ursula, why would she hurt her own niece?"
Another addition to this adaptation is Eric's mother. She is added here to deepen the parallels between Ariel and Eric's character. I was actually intrigued by her when she first appeared, and couldn't wait to see how the movie would handle her character...which is why it's disappointing to say that she wasn't really dealt with, at all. She just appeared a few times, and then had a character arc by the end out of nowhere. I was genuinely shocked that we don't even get a scene of her meeting Ariel at least once up until Vanessa's ~~marriage~~ engagement party. A scene like that would have contributed a lot to her character arc, as knowing Ariel would have made her realize that maybe the unknowns of the sea are not as scary as she thought. It's astounding the writing team never thought of that, she is such an extremely wasted potential of a character.
The last thing I want to mention isn't exactly a new addition, but it's something that has been really bothering me, and that is regarding the change of Ariel being the one who killed Ursula by the climax. I honestly wouldn't mind this change if the writing team managed to fit this nicely into the movie, but just like many things in the movie it feels out-of-place. In the original movie, Ariel caused Ursula to mistakenly kill her pet eels, which is why she directed all her attention towards Ariel, giving Eric the chance to kill Ursula instead. So in order to make the change of Ariel being the one who defeated her feel organic, there obviously needs to be some changes made towards the scene where Ariel made Ursula kill her eels, right? Well, the live action movie did not do that. Instead, we still have Ariel making Ursula kill her eels by mistake, but after that Ursula directed all her rage towards Eric? But, why? Eric didn't kill those eels, it was still Ariel, yet the scene is directed to make it seem like she was taking all her rage towards Eric? The scene where Ariel drove the ship towards Ursula also kinda makes no sense. The scene itself is a direct callback to the shipwreck scene, where Eric turned the wheel of the ship to try preventing it from getting wrecked. So narratively, wouldn't it make more sense for Eric to be the one who drove the ship towards Ursula by the climax? If they are insistent on making Ariel to be the one who killed Ursula, they could:
a) make Ursula thought she'd dealt with Ariel, and then only directed her attention towards Eric, which gave Ariel the chance to drive the ship
OR
make Ursula attack Eric with the intention of letting Ariel see her loved one die before her (just like how she made her the scene before), which gave Ariel the chance to drive the ship
b) make Ariel not understand how to control the ship (because why would she), which leads to Eric yelling at her to "turn the wheel" in order to guide her, giving the parallel to the shipwreck scene some significance
Part of what makes me like fairy tale retellings is how the original stories are twisted in different and interesting ways, which is why I despise Disney's live action remakes ever since Beauty and the Beast (2017). They just retell the stories of the original Disney adaptations but much worse, and when they did try to make changes, they're usually weren't explored enough, felt misplaced, or heavily contradicted the original movie's message (looking at you, Mulan).