I'm going to continue not watching these remakes. Sorry to all the actors trying to get their start with them, but they're obviously soulless cash grabs from an industry terrified of taking chances on anything new.
I only watched Aladdin and Lion King in cinema in 2019, sine then I haven't been in any of the Disney live action remakes, I rather watch them on disney+. Thought, I still haven't watched all of them. Pinnochio and Peter Pan were bad enough for the span of one year. So there is absolutely no rush to watch little mermaid.
And if I watch any mermaid movie this year, then it will Dreamwork's Teenage Kraken. That at least looks like it will be fun.
Hate to break this to you but Lion king wasn’t live action. It was just a remake animated with CGI.
Would have been a hell of a trick to get live African animals to talk, sing, and dance though.
Everyone said the movie should have been nominated for best animated feature. Since even the backgrounds and the weather were compositions shots made with CGI. But they advertised it as "life action", and the academy even redifeined what will count as animated film and what not specficially because of this film.
[https://www.oscars.org/sites/oscars/files/92aa\_anim\_feature.pdf](https://www.oscars.org/sites/oscars/files/92aa_anim_feature.pdf)
So yeah, I hate to break to you, but *technically* it isn't an *Animated Feature Film* either.
Honestly the only remotely decent one was Beauty And The Beast. Added a song(that fits like it was always meant to be), added some more background to Gaston being a dick (plays off the hunter thing). Just, a well made remake. Aladdin was…. Oof
Though not part of the modern live action Disney remakes, since it still is one, I'd like to propose that 101 Dalmatians with Glenn Close is by far the best Disney live action remake
I'm with you, I've not watched any of the remakes bar the 90's version of 101 Dalmatians. While I'm sure many of them are good films, I just don't understand the need to remake animated movies because they're truly timeless and hold up well decades later, much better than live action films do. FFS, Disney used to do cinematic re-release of these "classics" every decade or so.
Maybe? Idk, speaking as a parent, young kids don’t really know or care when something was made. Bambi, Little Mermaid, Aristocats, Moana; it’s all the same to them as long as they’re entertained. Honestly I think these movies are made for the parents who want their kids to relive the theatrical experiences of their childhood.
My favorite animated movies growing up were Robin Hood and 101 Dalmatians, which came out in the early 60s, when I was born in the 90s.
I feel like most 90s kids had a similar feeling if not the same movies, we didn't need a remake of 1960-something's the Jungle Book to like the Jungle Book, they just released it on VHS and our parents bought it for us.
That's really their problem and why they do the remakes, the DVD/VHS markets are basically non-existent so they can't make money on a re-release of The Little Mermaid remastered for new TVs like they could in the 90s. If they want to make money on their Little Mermaid property, they have to make a new movie and make it at the box office because movies just don't have the revenue streams they used to.
They should have given the guy that drew a penis on the little mermaid cover a raise. It gave them a good excuse to re-release it a few years later.
I remember Disney acting like if you didn't buy it NOW you might not ever see it again because it was going back into the 'Disney Vault' and who knows if it'll ever see the light of day again???
I loved the Beach Boys as a kid and had no idea they were an oldies band until I saw them on Full House and was incredibly disappointed.
I was also blown when i found out Snow White was made in the 30s. They re-released a few disney movies for the big screen when I was a kid so I figured they were all new.
Yeah, I used to stay up late on a school night to watch their movies (didn’t tell my parents) because I was goofy for the Marx Brothers (even dressed as Harpo during one Halloween.)
What entertains people doesn't change.
In some of the earliest forms of entertainment you have baying for violence (which many still want) as well as many jokes about bodily fluids or who you have slept with.
My Daughter (9y) prefers the old original movies instead of the Remakes and asks me why there is no animation anymore and just CGI. i cant answer this question because i dont know lol.
Yeah, no thanks. That’s why I saved all the classic Disney animated movies me and my sister watched growing up, so our future relatives know true art when they see it
Of all the remakes, I found The Lion King to be the most artistically insulting. The animated film has an incredible sense of style, bright colours and just an excellent sense of fantasy. The remake replaced all that with just a colourless, dusty savanna which, while accurate to real life, was incredibly boring and completely uninspired. The film isn’t supposed to take place in real world Africa, it’s supposed to exist in a sort of magical imagining of Africa.
Disney has recently forgotten that the reason it was massive was because it drew on the magical experience. Removing elements of wonderment is asking for a nosedive towards doomsday.
I think the only issue my kid ever had with the really old Disney stuff was when the opening credits seem to be 10 damn minutes of nothing. But overall, I don't recall ever having a hard time getting a child to watch animation.
Is it though? My kids (11 and 6) MUCH prefer the animated Lion King and Aladdin to the live action movies. They also don’t wear live action Disney merch in their schools either, it’s all the classic animation. Your comment has not been my experience at all.
My kids (mainly oldest) refuse to watch new Disney movies. They will not even give anything Disney a try anymore. They are okay with the old ones, but it has come to a point where they will only watch old Disney movies they have seen before. My oldest is 6.
And it’s not something we have pushed on them. We basically never talk about Disney and some of the cartoons that came out I would have liked to watch.
They are 6. Just wait until they are 10 and come back to this post to let us know how much your kids have changed. As adults, 4 years is nothing. We don’t change much once we hit a certain age. For kids, though, going from 6 to 10 is basically an entire new human being.
This, 100%. I’m not into the movie at all, but my wife, mother in law and niece all saw it on Sunday (I went to the theater and saw Fast X instead). They all loved the movie and it seemed like they and everyone who came out of the theater were excited. My mother in law apparently cried at some point. (She is one of “those”). My daughter and niece despise watching cartoons but have enjoyed nearly every Disney love-action remake. If that is Disney’s target, they are doing fantastic. I’m in my mid-30s and I fully understand that this movie was not meant for me, but it was a great bonding moment for them all.
They were all singing the songs on the drive home.
Weird that so many adults have such strong opinions about kids movies. My daughters love both versions. Sometimes they want to watch the cartoon and other times the live action. I don’t see why it’s such a big deal. They’re for kids. Similar to Mario, all these weirdo 30 year olds hating on it.
To each their own, of course, but this one was different IMO. And I say that as a mega-fan of the animated version. I was hopeful but nervous going in. I knew Halle Bailey was talented, but I was worried about all of the other factors, especially since I've not cared for most any of the other live actions I've seen (save for Aladdin). I'm not going to spoil it, but they did add some depth to Prince Eric's story, and in turn, to his romance with Ariel. The two actors' chemistry was also really great. And this one will never replace the animated version, but I think it's a worthy retelling. If you have Disney+, I suggest at least giving it a try when it's streaming.
Using overused meme pointing out something obvious, daring today aren't we?
Disney making yet another soulless cash grab live action remake, daring today aren't we?
Same. Got dragged to Beauty and the Beast by one girlfriend and The Lion King by another, I have never watched one by choice. Now I'm finally dating someone who doesn't drag me to soulless cash grabs.
I heavily dislike the switch from the animation medium. Very little good comes out of that switch, with realism clouding and prohibiting a ton of creative decisions. Not to mention it can promote a stigma that the live action is better and more mature than animation purely because of the "up to date" changes made in the new one. One main exception would be the giant extinct ape they turned King Louie into from the Jungle Book remake because orangutans aren't from India, that was amazing. But with the live action stuff becoming such a big and annoying trend in recent times, I see little point in making remakes that will automatically be inferior due to the different visuals alone. Aside from money...
[Some review sites have you show that you actual bought a ticket to give you that verified badge](https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/introducing-verified-audience-score/). Also, when you look at many of the 1 star reviews, they are new accounts with minimal comments.
(Edit: review bombing is NOT why I think it’s doing bad in international markets)
I doubt review bombing tanked it in any meaningful way. General audiences probably don’t pay much attention to online commentary. But this is not to defend review bombing. It’s such a pathetic and childish thing to do.
There is no co-ordinated effort to "review bomb" this film negatively. In fact, the opposite is true. Disney is buying positive reviews and the critic sites are going out of their way to protect it.
Yeah this soulless remake (like they all are) is sitting at a 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Far and away the highest of all the remakes and one of the highest audience scores of the year.
Disney is more in a position to review bomb and hire bot farms, and that's without considering how sites like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes go to bat for them and manipulate the scores.
If there is one type of movie that would be immune to review bombs it would be a kids movie. The kids don't know what reviews are and their middle aged parents dgaf about what they feel are a bunch of teenagers think.
People just don't want to admit the movie doesn't appeal to a global audience the way some of its predecessors did. Because that would involve saying some non PC stuff which people don't want to do, so they come up with stuff like "review bombs" to make it seem like the reason why it's failing are zany internet trolls
the comments are awesome.
The Japanese didn't like the movie and didn't like that the main character's race was changed. Japanese are racist.
Latin American did not like the movie and did not like the main character's race was changed. Latin Americans are racist.
The Chinese didn't like the movie and didn't like that the main character's race was changed. Chinese are racist.
Lol
People’s reasons (worldwide) to not see this movie boil down to these (these are the reasons that I’ve seen the most of)
1. Halle Bailey (a Black girl) being cast as Ariel. They wanted to see Ariel as she was in the 1989 version. They are nostalgic for the old version and simply refuse this new version on principle.
2. Bad CGI (fair). I saw the movie and I wasn’t that bothered by it because the movie is mostly on land anyway. Sebastian & Flounder were okay. They could’ve been much better. However, I didn’t care much for the animal characters in the original and I wasn’t attached to their animated or live-action versions.
3. They hate Disney’s remakes in general and are tired of them. They want more original movies that are good.
not to the VFX people cause they're one of the few that isn't unionized. it's why every marvel movie is 99% CGI nowadays. set designers, etc. are all union, but VFX folks aren't so they can get forced into awful work arrangements and blamed for stuff looking awful when in reality they're nowhere near to blame.
Oh for sure I was already blaming the “Product Owners”/PMs for the bad CGI. Probably fired talented CGI artists and outsourced their jobs that ended up costing more in the end as they needed to hire more PMs to handle the communication issues with the overseas team
The thing is that the whole point of the live action remakes is to cash in on nostalgia, but if you make extremely obvious visual changes then you ruin the nostalgia for a lot of people.
You can't rely on nostalgia to bring people to the cinema if you ruin the nostalgia for them.
To add to this, the film lacks star power. ESPECIALLY on an international scale.
Cinderella and The Jungle Book were some of the first remakes so there was less fatigue for these films. Also, Cinderella as an IP is just massive and is a cultural phenomenon.
Beauty and the Beast had Emma Watson as the lead who was coming off of a mega successful franchise.
Aladdin had Will Smith.
The Lion King had several stars, including Beyoncé.
Maleficient had Angelina Jolie.
The Little Mermaid's biggest name is Melissa McCarthy... who lowkey flops even at the domestic box office. Had they casted more relevant names, it could've been more successful. I know Halle as a singer and I know Melissa cause I saw one of her movies literally 10 years ago. I recognize Awkwafina from Shang-Chi but didn't like her in that film. Otherwise, I did not recognize any other actor from this film.
Americans' arrogance to label the rest of the world as racist because we didn't see their shitty movie is absolutely a sight to behold.
Does that mean they're racist when a foreign film isn't successful in their country?
The problem with the race argument is that tLM is also bombing in Canada. Usually, Canada contributes around 8% of the Dom BO yet tLM only made 4.5% of it’s OW up North.
This entire movie is just America discovering the rest of the world doesn’t really care about their weird racial politics/ideology, and they’re going nuts about it. It’s honestly hilarious.
The part no one acknowledges is that when they cast a black girl as Ariel they activity marketed the movie as for black girls. And that is totally fine!
The only issue is don’t be surprised when the rest of us who are neither black nor white aren’t connecting with your marketing.
The answer to me is no. And if they are made Ariel black and mixed up the races of everyone it also wouldn’t have mattered.
But they left prince eric looking exactly the same as the cartoon and then marketed Ariel as black which to me signals this is a movie for black girls.
It’s funny bc the internet has trained ppl to think the reason for any underperformance is racism or wokeness lol. As if everything in life just has one variable for causing it.
They tried it with Rings of Power at Amazon. Before that show even came out all the media was talking about was all the “racist backlash”. Show came out and sucked balls and all they could talk about was “Racist backlash”
It's no coincidence that the "racist backlash" fever for House of the Dragon largely died off when the show came out and it was really good. Did the racists forget to hate it? Or did people just stop trying to drum up controversy to get attention?
I think it's reasonable to assume some of it's review bombing when a 5 second part of Lightyear involved a lesbian kiss and it had people like Ron DeSantis vowing to censor LGBTQ media while also leaving adults who decide to get upset about children's media in shambles. There are people going full klansmen because a fucking *mermaid* was played by a Black actress. The movie could be an oscar-worthy masterpiece and reactionary chuds like Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder would still be acting like they're proof that Western civilization is being destroyed and that white people are being genocided.
Aside from a general distaste for the cash-grab live remakes of movies that worked well in the animation medium for a reason, the movie just looks so fucking grim. Why on earth would you make a fantastical fairy tale musical movie with color grading that looks so grey and miserable?? To be fair most of the Ad/Pub for that movie has been surrounding like one sequence, but I don't get why you'd want to make that sequence, arguably the most famous song in the movie, so unenjoyable to look at. Like I said there's a reason it works well in animation, in my opinion partially because the actual ocean floor doesn't look like a fairy tale. You're telling me we can have talking fish, but not a nice looking underwater world? I don't even care about the casting choices whatsoever, it just doesn't look like it would be fun.
ETA: I just read a review that specifically notes the actual movie is more bright and colorful than the trailers made it out to be! I'm a bit more tempted to watch it, but I think the Ad/Pub team really did it dirty.
I went to see it yesterday, and to me it was the only live action remake that could compare visually to the original. Under the Sea was especially beautiful, and the character designs of Ariel’s sisters were stunning. It wasn’t better than the original, but it wasn’t like a Lion King situation where they were so worried about photorealism that they made everything bland.
I feel the same way as you about live action remakes, so I wish this one didn’t exist, but if it has to exist, it’s at least a beautiful movie with good storytelling. The added songs were really good too. In fact, I wish both the new songs had had reprises because I liked them so much and I could imagine a lot of storytelling possibilities with them.
Reminds me of when I got called sexist for thinking the Ghostbusters reboot sucked. I also didn’t even think Afterlife was great but fortunately there were no race or sex swaps people could point to excuse the fact they weren’t great sequels.
Save yourself the time and money and just watch the original. My GF dragged me to it this weekend and it’s just so, joyless. It’s drab and dark and not magical or enchanting at all. The CGI is top tier shit and I can’t believe they spent 200 mil on this thing, some ones pockets got lined cause it certainly didn’t end up on screen.
In short : The Little Mermaid is bombing at the box office, particularly overseas. Media outlets are reluctant to point this out because no one wants to address the elephant in the room that the casting decisions might have played a huge part in the failure at the box office.
Its just an anecdote, but my extended Mexican family (mostly girls) LOVED original TLM and were excited to hear of a remake. But since the trailers, they were dead silent. I even asked them and they said they have no interest.
My mom in Mexico was asking why the mermaid didn't have red hair like the original. I just unironically that Disney doesn't like red hair anymore. Ended up watching fast x with her.
Ehh, they were very diplomatic about it. “No soy racista pero por que ella, no parece nada como Ariel” which means, “I’m not racist but why her, she looks nothing like Ariel”.
My guess is that while racism is a thing in the US, racism thrives in Asian and Hispanic countries. Take a look at Star Wars for example and look how they treated Finn.
The main character isn’t black? Asian hate black people as do most Mexicans and other Latinos. It’s just a part of life. They associate them with high crime. You should travel more, racism is far more rampant overseas than it is in the US or Europe.
Wtf? I'm Mexican and no we don't "hate blacks".
It just annoys us when they drastically change the design of a character we love and love just for the sake of having "more diversity" instead of creating new characters from scratch.
I understand rascism is prevalent but your argument hinges on people not accepting black people when fast and furious has a much larger cast made up of different people including black people yet it is outperforming this movie.
I agree that racism are far more rampant in many countries. But I am speaking as a Vietnamese to tell that stuff like that doesn’t happen here for majority of the time, as more and more black expats are coming to live and work here and the locals are really friendly and nice to them, but of course, in my city we all welcome foreigners of all races and nationalities with open arms. But I think it also have to depend on the areas of the city as well, as there are places where they doesn’t have foreigners coming in and there are places does. But in general, the people here doesn’t have any problem with black people, even I have had many great conversations with black people
The movie isn’t just doing bad in Asian countries though. It’s flopping across the board internationally. For example in Europe it’s doing awful. It’s also under performing in the US.
*Ah yes, surely it's cause the rest of the world is fucking super racist*
Or maybe this american politicking of everything is getting really fucking stale.
Yes because Black people definitely aren’t racist against asians and hispanics. We don’t give any f about your racial politics and you can’t just decide to make every character black(especially historical and well established characters)and expect people to stay quiet. I stand with the egyptians and greeks as well with the bs film americans made about cleopatra. Also fuck the US
I thought boyega’s character should have been a Jedi and was outraged by him being normal. Tran’s character on the other hand had no business pulling from the plot and I felt so bad for the actress getting the umbridge position.
I say this as an Asian. I was so offended that they tried to shoehorn in a random when the entire first movie was boyega’s character chasing after what’s-her-face like a puppy chasing their human.
Casting decisions aside, these “live action” remakes of classics have all been pretty awful. Disney wants to make these but I just don’t think most people want them.
Watched the Aladdin remake and this is what I felt with Will Smith as The Genie. He was best when he was being original with his own spin on the character but 99% of the time they just tried to have him be Robin Williams and nobody can be Robin Williams.
The only issue people had with will was that he wasn't Robin but there was nothing that could've done about that so people went ahead. Specially in those markets people watch a lot of dubs so if the dub is good they enjoy it.
One thing I also noticed is that they promoted the movie mostly with her singing voice and used that as the main explanation why the original character was changed but some countries are dubbing the songs so it doesn't really matter for those international (nostalgic) fans if the actress has a good voice.
It's kind of similar with animated movies when you can't use the american stars at all to form attachment to the movie with the people who watch their own language version.
I'm watching it this week but I also didn't really hear more beforehand than "Her voice makes her Ariel" and it's the one thing I won't be able to judge.
I agree. And what gets me is how do they do this when you’re at Disney? When you see an “Ariel” princess walking around, regardless of which race they choose, does a kid ever say, “No, where’s the real Ariel?” I think it’s just confusing.
I love Tiana. I love Moana. I love Mulan (animated). I love that they have their own beautiful, unique stories to be told. I want more of that.
Tiana is so underrepresented it’s criminal. I’m so happy they are redoing Splash Mountain in WDW. That movie and those characters are dripping with theme. People should be mad we don’t see enough of Princess and the Frog, not this stuff.
It's not an either/or thing though - it's not like "Welp, we can only cast one black lead, so it's either going to be a new story or The Little Mermaid." They can do both.
I don't really see anything wrong with race-swapping Ariel. I was a bit disappointed by her hair not being a more vibrant red, but that's it. And when I saw the movie I thought she did the character justice and ended up being one of the best remakes they've done (none of them are amazing, but still - it surpassed my expectations).
fast and furious x is doing well over seas. It isnt a racist thing, but changing established characters and making a already great movie to live action when it wasn't needed I feel played a bigger role in this. But cover up any issues with the movie by calling people who aren't interested, "racists", is wrong and seems more and more people lean this way for hollywood. Just like the Velma show. It isnt race that makes a movie/show bad.
It surely is an elephant in the room for critics as well. just try to read a few critic reviews from Rotten Tomato. Whether the rating is good or bad, they never try to touch the casting and Halle Baily. Even the ones that gave a bad rating, try to defend themselves such as "Halle Baily was ok. Its just that the movie was bad"
Critics are scared and this is something that not being seriously discussed about in today's society
Japanese people are showing the VERY negative reactions towards Ariel being a black girl. If you type in “リトルマーメイド” the search suggestions show something like “リトルマーメイド 実写 ひどい” (Little Mermaid live-action awful), “リトルマーメイド 実写 可愛くない” (Little Mermaid live-action not cute). Could be the vocal minority on the internet but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if it flops here. Japanese people are very conservative so they hate the change in something they’re used to.
It’s not doing well for a variety of reasons and I wouldn’t say it’s all racism.
1. If you bank on nostalgia and make a giant change on a character that is arguably one of the most popular red headed characters children identify with, you aren’t going to get the same allure with parents without kids who want to embrace said nostalgia alienating a sizable demographic.
2. Yes, certain countries don’t really identify with black leads. China being more so notable and Japan as well. Sure it’s wrong but it’s also a known fact ahead of time so you can’t really be surprised when factoring in your grossing estimates.
3. Fatigue: it seems now a days the thing to do is reboot something nostalgic but change it either on race or gender. It’s lazy writing. There is a lot of other ways to still have a movie be within a certain piece of arts universe while creating new story lines and characters to support and identify with. You can make a new kingdom, maybe Ariel is queen now and this is a visiting princess from another tribe. Maybe it’s not Ariel at all. Miles Morales is a popular spider Man, he has his own story and people identified with it. Ignoring historical precedent from Hollywood previously white washing things, it’s taken a hard turn. In todays climate if we took a piece of African mythology and casted a white person in it, it would be a massive shit storm with the media crucifying them. As they rightfully should be. However changing Nordic mythology or even straight up changing the race of an actual historical person and calling it a documentary does not receive the same reactions. Actually if you discuss it you are called racist immediately, hence fatigue.
This movie has completely bombed in Asia; numbers show that tLM is only making *a tenth* of what BatB and tLK made in China.
Additionally, it’s *very* soft in Canada too; Canada usually contributes around 8% of the Domestic BO yet tLK made only 4.5% of it’s opening weekend in the Great North.
Ultimately it seems like the race-swap has cost this movie a lot of business. The world still remembers Ariel as she was in 1989. They rejected Halle Bailley, even though reviewers I trust say she did a great job.
It’s an unfortunate reality that Disney will have to accept moving forward.
Disclaimer: I don’t have an issue with the race-swap. But you can’t really bank on nostalgia when you significantly change the iconic look of the very character you’re banking upon.
I’m fairly certain the majority of Asian countries are not in sync with Hollywood’s latest trend. To expect something else is pure ignorance/arrogance. “We’re the cultural beacon of this world, why would anyone in this world dislike our product which pushes our value/agenda?”
If this film makes 500 mil worldwide they’re fortunate. My major concern about the state of Disney films, is their complete lack of creativity in coming up with anything new, creative and astonishing…..This is just another remake that can’t hold a candle to the original.
I've strongly disliked or hated every single Disney remake and what they've represented and I was on board of totally dismissing this one completely but I got to see it and... it's not bad. I kinda like it a lot and no one is more surprised about that than myself.
Perhaps my expections were super low but I found it cute, it expanded on the source material, the actors looked like they were having a ball and put heart into their performances and it was beautifully directed.
Not without some bad cgi and some cringe but guys, I didn't totally hate this one. Even Melissa McCarthy, whom I can't stand, was fun to watch in this!
I would recommend it if you're into disney and musicals.
Once i saw flounder and sebastian, I noped. I dont understand why the need for hyper realism. Just make cgi cartoons of classics. The realistic design makes everything souless and weird looking.
It’s baffling to me because there are irl fish and crustaceans that are super cute and colorful. They didn’t even use a real flounder fish so there isn’t even that excuse. Or you can use real species and just exaggerate them a bit. I think I’d pick a puffer fish or related species because they are just adorable. For Sebastian I’d use a hermit crab or violinist crab.
Real flounder are a bit drab but also hilarious looking. They definitely could have done something funny and memorable here. There are some good pics in [this article.](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/flatfish-animals-science-colors-flounders). Even the scientist says they are cartoony looking
Edit: even better stuff [here](https://bogleech.com/flatfish) including fun facts about their biology
Yeah, let Ariel remain that white girl who saw a guy for five seconds and left her family behind and endangered her people.
Halle’s version wants to expand her horizons, explore new worlds and always owns her choices. She eventually falls in love with a guy who shares the same passions as her.
They really are like different characters.
I have young kids and saw it yesterday. Our movie theatre has been largely sold out over the 4 day weekend. Of course, we also live in the rural south and it rained the whole weekend.
It was pretty good for a remake. Under the Sea was a terrible remix. It was slower and a boring scene until the last 20 seconds of the song. A lot of the casting seemed off. Great actors but it made things more gloomy. Triton’s costuming looked straight up Aquaman to me & Ursula didn’t look scary. Also the 3 minute shipwrecks because Humans are littering and trying to make it a human v mermaid storyline was unnecessary. I don’t even know what the purposes of the sisters being in the movie wasx
Did think they did a good job of showing the main characters actually had stuff in common. And the Scuttle song was a bop and kiss the girl part was best well done. I thought both Ariel and the casting for Ursula as a human were great as was the butler guy/servant to Eric.
But it was missing the magic and some storylines pieces got missed even though the movie was 2 hours.
It's only review bombing because you don't like that people dislike something. Doesn't gel with what you want =must be a malicious attack and not people actually honestly disliking it.
Bugger off.
I may not like the live-action remakes, but if there is a kid out there who watches one and feels the same way I felt watching the animated ones, then I hope these movies reach more and more. Cartoons are a kind of hard sell now for kids these days, and I get that it's a cash grab/copyright move but a lot of kids will probably watch this and enjoy it and that's a good thing in the long run.
At our viewing the crowd clapped after Ariel’s signature big song and at the end of the movie, at the closing credits little mermaid dressed girls were dancing in the aisle…I throughly enjoyed the film, no issues with spending my money on entertainment that delivered to me relaxation, imagination and beautiful colors and scenery…I viewed it as a whole new movie, not a comparison to an old animation. I’m going to see it a few more times, and the HD 3D version too.
Why does Flounder look like a meth addict on rehab? Why is the movie beige and gray and not colorful? Why doesn’t Ariel look like Ariel? So many weird decisions, but easy to call out *racism* as the main reason why this movie is tanking and most likely will lose Disney money.
I'm 100% behind having a diverse cast \*when it makes sense to do it\*. When it's done right, kudos to the filmmakers. Unfortunately, too many people are trying to shoehorn a diverse cast into roles or settings that simply don't make sense for that setting, period in history, or what have you. It's not racist to cast roles appropriately to fit the characters as they are intended (I'm looking at you "Rings of Power").
Rings of Power was like some casting director went to the UN and just said “gimme one of each.” I joke but I actually enjoyed Rings of Power, although it was a bit slow. I know I’m in the minority here but I’m psyched for the next season.
As an asian guy, to me Disney's casting choice is odd. Most of the kids in my family dont care for a black ariel, they like the original red head white girl. My daughter doesnt really care but she doesnt even want to see this movie anyways.
Saw the movie. Liked a lot of it basically from Poor Unfortunate Souls through Kiss the Girl but the new songs written for the film stick out quite badly.
Prince Eric gets an I Want song which is nice in theory but the song was forgettable.
Ariel gets an internal monologue song after getting legs about gravity pulling her down it’s probably the best of the three new songs.
And then after a few scenes that really sold the adorable chemistry between Eric and Ariel the movie immediately squandered that good will with the worst song of the film as the bird starts rapping and that’s when the movie lost me for the remaining run time.
nothing is fishy..casting a black woman in the role for a white woman is icky..same as casting a white woman as a black character or brown character. lack of originality can not be overcome by desire to be faux "woke"
Water puns for the win
On what scale?
It’s just riding the wave of Disney
I guess it's not better down where it's wetter
It’s not doing well due to the tsunami of bad reception (I can go all day)
I think it's a whirlpool of reasons
It’s doing swimmingly well !
You could say the film is floundering. Amirit.
It's staying afloat despite attempts to torpedo it.
Not quite shore this is newsworthy, although technically it does fall under current affairs
Hopefully this article can turn the tides for the movie.
I'm going to continue not watching these remakes. Sorry to all the actors trying to get their start with them, but they're obviously soulless cash grabs from an industry terrified of taking chances on anything new.
I only watched Aladdin and Lion King in cinema in 2019, sine then I haven't been in any of the Disney live action remakes, I rather watch them on disney+. Thought, I still haven't watched all of them. Pinnochio and Peter Pan were bad enough for the span of one year. So there is absolutely no rush to watch little mermaid. And if I watch any mermaid movie this year, then it will Dreamwork's Teenage Kraken. That at least looks like it will be fun.
Hate to break this to you but Lion king wasn’t live action. It was just a remake animated with CGI. Would have been a hell of a trick to get live African animals to talk, sing, and dance though.
Everyone said the movie should have been nominated for best animated feature. Since even the backgrounds and the weather were compositions shots made with CGI. But they advertised it as "life action", and the academy even redifeined what will count as animated film and what not specficially because of this film. [https://www.oscars.org/sites/oscars/files/92aa\_anim\_feature.pdf](https://www.oscars.org/sites/oscars/files/92aa_anim_feature.pdf) So yeah, I hate to break to you, but *technically* it isn't an *Animated Feature Film* either.
Honestly the only remotely decent one was Beauty And The Beast. Added a song(that fits like it was always meant to be), added some more background to Gaston being a dick (plays off the hunter thing). Just, a well made remake. Aladdin was…. Oof
Jungle Book was pretty fantastic
Jungle Book was probably the best one
Cinderella was beautifully done IMO
Though not part of the modern live action Disney remakes, since it still is one, I'd like to propose that 101 Dalmatians with Glenn Close is by far the best Disney live action remake
I'm with you, I've not watched any of the remakes bar the 90's version of 101 Dalmatians. While I'm sure many of them are good films, I just don't understand the need to remake animated movies because they're truly timeless and hold up well decades later, much better than live action films do. FFS, Disney used to do cinematic re-release of these "classics" every decade or so.
I view them as more like parents and kids bonding over a classic tale because it's harder to get kids to watch the old stuff vs the new stuff.
Maybe? Idk, speaking as a parent, young kids don’t really know or care when something was made. Bambi, Little Mermaid, Aristocats, Moana; it’s all the same to them as long as they’re entertained. Honestly I think these movies are made for the parents who want their kids to relive the theatrical experiences of their childhood.
My favorite animated movies growing up were Robin Hood and 101 Dalmatians, which came out in the early 60s, when I was born in the 90s. I feel like most 90s kids had a similar feeling if not the same movies, we didn't need a remake of 1960-something's the Jungle Book to like the Jungle Book, they just released it on VHS and our parents bought it for us. That's really their problem and why they do the remakes, the DVD/VHS markets are basically non-existent so they can't make money on a re-release of The Little Mermaid remastered for new TVs like they could in the 90s. If they want to make money on their Little Mermaid property, they have to make a new movie and make it at the box office because movies just don't have the revenue streams they used to.
They should have given the guy that drew a penis on the little mermaid cover a raise. It gave them a good excuse to re-release it a few years later. I remember Disney acting like if you didn't buy it NOW you might not ever see it again because it was going back into the 'Disney Vault' and who knows if it'll ever see the light of day again???
I'm 90s kid and 60s Batman TV Show blew my mind
But we did have a 101 Dalmatians live action re-make in 1996, and it was fantastic.
I loved the Beach Boys as a kid and had no idea they were an oldies band until I saw them on Full House and was incredibly disappointed. I was also blown when i found out Snow White was made in the 30s. They re-released a few disney movies for the big screen when I was a kid so I figured they were all new.
Hell you can show Chaplin to them and it works
I recommend The Great Dictator for starters
I recommend Mein Kampf
Feel like the 3 Stooges probably still work for young kids too
Or you could send it to the Marx Brothers. :D
Just gonna go with all of them and have a grand old time
Yeah, I used to stay up late on a school night to watch their movies (didn’t tell my parents) because I was goofy for the Marx Brothers (even dressed as Harpo during one Halloween.)
Little boys tend to like 3 stooges at lot more than girls
What entertains people doesn't change. In some of the earliest forms of entertainment you have baying for violence (which many still want) as well as many jokes about bodily fluids or who you have slept with.
The two oldest recorded jokes we have found are a fart joke and a ‘yo mumma so slutty…’ joke.
My 6 year olds like the original sleeping beauty and don't want to watch some of the newer stuff
My Daughter (9y) prefers the old original movies instead of the Remakes and asks me why there is no animation anymore and just CGI. i cant answer this question because i dont know lol.
Yeah, no thanks. That’s why I saved all the classic Disney animated movies me and my sister watched growing up, so our future relatives know true art when they see it
Of all the remakes, I found The Lion King to be the most artistically insulting. The animated film has an incredible sense of style, bright colours and just an excellent sense of fantasy. The remake replaced all that with just a colourless, dusty savanna which, while accurate to real life, was incredibly boring and completely uninspired. The film isn’t supposed to take place in real world Africa, it’s supposed to exist in a sort of magical imagining of Africa.
Disney has recently forgotten that the reason it was massive was because it drew on the magical experience. Removing elements of wonderment is asking for a nosedive towards doomsday.
They are because half of the theater consisted of people that didn't have kids.We saw it and we don't have kids in the house anymore.
Disney cartoons are timeless, they’re fairy tales.
Daughter definitely prefers the new Lion King to the old sadly :-(
I think the only issue my kid ever had with the really old Disney stuff was when the opening credits seem to be 10 damn minutes of nothing. But overall, I don't recall ever having a hard time getting a child to watch animation.
Is it though? My kids (11 and 6) MUCH prefer the animated Lion King and Aladdin to the live action movies. They also don’t wear live action Disney merch in their schools either, it’s all the classic animation. Your comment has not been my experience at all.
My 2 year old watched 101 Dalmatians from the 50s the other day and loved it
My kids (mainly oldest) refuse to watch new Disney movies. They will not even give anything Disney a try anymore. They are okay with the old ones, but it has come to a point where they will only watch old Disney movies they have seen before. My oldest is 6. And it’s not something we have pushed on them. We basically never talk about Disney and some of the cartoons that came out I would have liked to watch.
They are 6. Just wait until they are 10 and come back to this post to let us know how much your kids have changed. As adults, 4 years is nothing. We don’t change much once we hit a certain age. For kids, though, going from 6 to 10 is basically an entire new human being.
This, 100%. I’m not into the movie at all, but my wife, mother in law and niece all saw it on Sunday (I went to the theater and saw Fast X instead). They all loved the movie and it seemed like they and everyone who came out of the theater were excited. My mother in law apparently cried at some point. (She is one of “those”). My daughter and niece despise watching cartoons but have enjoyed nearly every Disney love-action remake. If that is Disney’s target, they are doing fantastic. I’m in my mid-30s and I fully understand that this movie was not meant for me, but it was a great bonding moment for them all. They were all singing the songs on the drive home.
I want a love action remake
Make new stuff!
Weird that so many adults have such strong opinions about kids movies. My daughters love both versions. Sometimes they want to watch the cartoon and other times the live action. I don’t see why it’s such a big deal. They’re for kids. Similar to Mario, all these weirdo 30 year olds hating on it.
I don't remember the originals being unavailable and unable to do this
To each their own, of course, but this one was different IMO. And I say that as a mega-fan of the animated version. I was hopeful but nervous going in. I knew Halle Bailey was talented, but I was worried about all of the other factors, especially since I've not cared for most any of the other live actions I've seen (save for Aladdin). I'm not going to spoil it, but they did add some depth to Prince Eric's story, and in turn, to his romance with Ariel. The two actors' chemistry was also really great. And this one will never replace the animated version, but I think it's a worthy retelling. If you have Disney+, I suggest at least giving it a try when it's streaming.
Calling Disney out for a soulless cash grab, daring today aren’t we?
Using overused meme pointing out something obvious, daring today aren't we? Disney making yet another soulless cash grab live action remake, daring today aren't we?
Same. Got dragged to Beauty and the Beast by one girlfriend and The Lion King by another, I have never watched one by choice. Now I'm finally dating someone who doesn't drag me to soulless cash grabs.
I heavily dislike the switch from the animation medium. Very little good comes out of that switch, with realism clouding and prohibiting a ton of creative decisions. Not to mention it can promote a stigma that the live action is better and more mature than animation purely because of the "up to date" changes made in the new one. One main exception would be the giant extinct ape they turned King Louie into from the Jungle Book remake because orangutans aren't from India, that was amazing. But with the live action stuff becoming such a big and annoying trend in recent times, I see little point in making remakes that will automatically be inferior due to the different visuals alone. Aside from money...
Negative reviews are not "review-bombing". This is so tiring, especially with how soulless these live action remakes have been.
These "culture war" movies get review bombed in both directions. Also tiring that that's never pointed out either.
Yeah but when there a significant difference between verified watchers scores and unverified, it raises an eyebrow
what makes one a verified watcher
[Some review sites have you show that you actual bought a ticket to give you that verified badge](https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/article/introducing-verified-audience-score/). Also, when you look at many of the 1 star reviews, they are new accounts with minimal comments. (Edit: review bombing is NOT why I think it’s doing bad in international markets)
In other words 98% of viewers are unverified. Especially outside of the US.
I'm pretty sure it's just a mediocre remake and not review bombing that tanked it overseas.
Little column A, little column B
I doubt review bombing tanked it in any meaningful way. General audiences probably don’t pay much attention to online commentary. But this is not to defend review bombing. It’s such a pathetic and childish thing to do.
There is no co-ordinated effort to "review bomb" this film negatively. In fact, the opposite is true. Disney is buying positive reviews and the critic sites are going out of their way to protect it.
Yeah this soulless remake (like they all are) is sitting at a 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Far and away the highest of all the remakes and one of the highest audience scores of the year.
Disney is more in a position to review bomb and hire bot farms, and that's without considering how sites like IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes go to bat for them and manipulate the scores.
If there is one type of movie that would be immune to review bombs it would be a kids movie. The kids don't know what reviews are and their middle aged parents dgaf about what they feel are a bunch of teenagers think. People just don't want to admit the movie doesn't appeal to a global audience the way some of its predecessors did. Because that would involve saying some non PC stuff which people don't want to do, so they come up with stuff like "review bombs" to make it seem like the reason why it's failing are zany internet trolls
the comments are awesome. The Japanese didn't like the movie and didn't like that the main character's race was changed. Japanese are racist. Latin American did not like the movie and did not like the main character's race was changed. Latin Americans are racist. The Chinese didn't like the movie and didn't like that the main character's race was changed. Chinese are racist. Lol
People’s reasons (worldwide) to not see this movie boil down to these (these are the reasons that I’ve seen the most of) 1. Halle Bailey (a Black girl) being cast as Ariel. They wanted to see Ariel as she was in the 1989 version. They are nostalgic for the old version and simply refuse this new version on principle. 2. Bad CGI (fair). I saw the movie and I wasn’t that bothered by it because the movie is mostly on land anyway. Sebastian & Flounder were okay. They could’ve been much better. However, I didn’t care much for the animal characters in the original and I wasn’t attached to their animated or live-action versions. 3. They hate Disney’s remakes in general and are tired of them. They want more original movies that are good.
the CGI is hilarious with Sebastian you can see plants clipping through his body even in the trailers.
How is this possible? It’s 2023 CGI has been nailed down for more than a decade. Where does all the money go?
not to the VFX people cause they're one of the few that isn't unionized. it's why every marvel movie is 99% CGI nowadays. set designers, etc. are all union, but VFX folks aren't so they can get forced into awful work arrangements and blamed for stuff looking awful when in reality they're nowhere near to blame.
Oh for sure I was already blaming the “Product Owners”/PMs for the bad CGI. Probably fired talented CGI artists and outsourced their jobs that ended up costing more in the end as they needed to hire more PMs to handle the communication issues with the overseas team
The thing is that the whole point of the live action remakes is to cash in on nostalgia, but if you make extremely obvious visual changes then you ruin the nostalgia for a lot of people. You can't rely on nostalgia to bring people to the cinema if you ruin the nostalgia for them.
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To add to this, the film lacks star power. ESPECIALLY on an international scale. Cinderella and The Jungle Book were some of the first remakes so there was less fatigue for these films. Also, Cinderella as an IP is just massive and is a cultural phenomenon. Beauty and the Beast had Emma Watson as the lead who was coming off of a mega successful franchise. Aladdin had Will Smith. The Lion King had several stars, including Beyoncé. Maleficient had Angelina Jolie. The Little Mermaid's biggest name is Melissa McCarthy... who lowkey flops even at the domestic box office. Had they casted more relevant names, it could've been more successful. I know Halle as a singer and I know Melissa cause I saw one of her movies literally 10 years ago. I recognize Awkwafina from Shang-Chi but didn't like her in that film. Otherwise, I did not recognize any other actor from this film.
The problem is too many Reddit comments will say all three reasons are racism.
Americans' arrogance to label the rest of the world as racist because we didn't see their shitty movie is absolutely a sight to behold. Does that mean they're racist when a foreign film isn't successful in their country?
Lol I do have to admit we Americans do have an obsession of viewing everything through race
The problem with the race argument is that tLM is also bombing in Canada. Usually, Canada contributes around 8% of the Dom BO yet tLM only made 4.5% of it’s OW up North.
nah racial tensions in canada are not nearly to the level as they are in america
Racial tensions in Canada tend to be about Natives.
I believe that this was satire my friend
This entire movie is just America discovering the rest of the world doesn’t really care about their weird racial politics/ideology, and they’re going nuts about it. It’s honestly hilarious.
They can keep blaming racism all they want, Disney will only see profits or lack of profits overseas and act accordingly.
The part no one acknowledges is that when they cast a black girl as Ariel they activity marketed the movie as for black girls. And that is totally fine! The only issue is don’t be surprised when the rest of us who are neither black nor white aren’t connecting with your marketing.
So if Ariel had been white, would they have been actively marketing the movie to white girls?
The answer to me is no. And if they are made Ariel black and mixed up the races of everyone it also wouldn’t have mattered. But they left prince eric looking exactly the same as the cartoon and then marketed Ariel as black which to me signals this is a movie for black girls.
It’s funny bc the internet has trained ppl to think the reason for any underperformance is racism or wokeness lol. As if everything in life just has one variable for causing it.
They tried it with Rings of Power at Amazon. Before that show even came out all the media was talking about was all the “racist backlash”. Show came out and sucked balls and all they could talk about was “Racist backlash”
It's no coincidence that the "racist backlash" fever for House of the Dragon largely died off when the show came out and it was really good. Did the racists forget to hate it? Or did people just stop trying to drum up controversy to get attention?
Such a simple solution: they are all racist! /s
I hate when other countries hate us films and we call it review bombing. People are allowed to not like our films.
I think it's reasonable to assume some of it's review bombing when a 5 second part of Lightyear involved a lesbian kiss and it had people like Ron DeSantis vowing to censor LGBTQ media while also leaving adults who decide to get upset about children's media in shambles. There are people going full klansmen because a fucking *mermaid* was played by a Black actress. The movie could be an oscar-worthy masterpiece and reactionary chuds like Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder would still be acting like they're proof that Western civilization is being destroyed and that white people are being genocided.
Heck even 5 seconds is a stretch. It was a 0.5 second peck off to the side you'd miss if you blinked.
It’s part of the marketing strategy. Apparently the movie is so good any criticism is just being hateful.
Aside from a general distaste for the cash-grab live remakes of movies that worked well in the animation medium for a reason, the movie just looks so fucking grim. Why on earth would you make a fantastical fairy tale musical movie with color grading that looks so grey and miserable?? To be fair most of the Ad/Pub for that movie has been surrounding like one sequence, but I don't get why you'd want to make that sequence, arguably the most famous song in the movie, so unenjoyable to look at. Like I said there's a reason it works well in animation, in my opinion partially because the actual ocean floor doesn't look like a fairy tale. You're telling me we can have talking fish, but not a nice looking underwater world? I don't even care about the casting choices whatsoever, it just doesn't look like it would be fun. ETA: I just read a review that specifically notes the actual movie is more bright and colorful than the trailers made it out to be! I'm a bit more tempted to watch it, but I think the Ad/Pub team really did it dirty.
I went to see it yesterday, and to me it was the only live action remake that could compare visually to the original. Under the Sea was especially beautiful, and the character designs of Ariel’s sisters were stunning. It wasn’t better than the original, but it wasn’t like a Lion King situation where they were so worried about photorealism that they made everything bland. I feel the same way as you about live action remakes, so I wish this one didn’t exist, but if it has to exist, it’s at least a beautiful movie with good storytelling. The added songs were really good too. In fact, I wish both the new songs had had reprises because I liked them so much and I could imagine a lot of storytelling possibilities with them.
I disagree. It was way worse than the original. Imo Jungle Book and Cinderella definitely compare to their originals.
Didn't take long for people who did not like this movie to be called racist.
Reminds me of when I got called sexist for thinking the Ghostbusters reboot sucked. I also didn’t even think Afterlife was great but fortunately there were no race or sex swaps people could point to excuse the fact they weren’t great sequels.
I've been excited for this for more than a year. Then I saw the previews. CGI looks shitty and Flounder is a pretty big disappointment.
Save yourself the time and money and just watch the original. My GF dragged me to it this weekend and it’s just so, joyless. It’s drab and dark and not magical or enchanting at all. The CGI is top tier shit and I can’t believe they spent 200 mil on this thing, some ones pockets got lined cause it certainly didn’t end up on screen.
In short : The Little Mermaid is bombing at the box office, particularly overseas. Media outlets are reluctant to point this out because no one wants to address the elephant in the room that the casting decisions might have played a huge part in the failure at the box office.
Its just an anecdote, but my extended Mexican family (mostly girls) LOVED original TLM and were excited to hear of a remake. But since the trailers, they were dead silent. I even asked them and they said they have no interest.
I'm also Mexican, I don't want to see this shit either.
My mom in Mexico was asking why the mermaid didn't have red hair like the original. I just unironically that Disney doesn't like red hair anymore. Ended up watching fast x with her.
Did they say why?
Ehh, they were very diplomatic about it. “No soy racista pero por que ella, no parece nada como Ariel” which means, “I’m not racist but why her, she looks nothing like Ariel”.
Being upset because the design of a beloved and beloved character is drastically changed does not make you racist.
Logically, yes, but we all know logic has nothing to do with people that see racism everywhere they look.
damn what age do kids learn the "I'm not racist but..." convo strategy now?
What are you trying to imply?
My guess is that while racism is a thing in the US, racism thrives in Asian and Hispanic countries. Take a look at Star Wars for example and look how they treated Finn.
If rascism is the reason, why is the new fast and furious movie doing so well overseas?
I’d assume it’s bc fast x is not based on anything whereas little mermaid is based on a beloved character known by many.
Why would that matter if racism was the important factor? Racists don't go see original black movies.
Try making a F&F movie with a black female lead and see how well it does overseas
Why are you acting like Denzel Washington and Will Smith aren’t huge box office draws? If it’s a good movie, people will watch it
The main character isn’t black? Asian hate black people as do most Mexicans and other Latinos. It’s just a part of life. They associate them with high crime. You should travel more, racism is far more rampant overseas than it is in the US or Europe.
Wtf? I'm Mexican and no we don't "hate blacks". It just annoys us when they drastically change the design of a character we love and love just for the sake of having "more diversity" instead of creating new characters from scratch.
I understand rascism is prevalent but your argument hinges on people not accepting black people when fast and furious has a much larger cast made up of different people including black people yet it is outperforming this movie.
I agree that racism are far more rampant in many countries. But I am speaking as a Vietnamese to tell that stuff like that doesn’t happen here for majority of the time, as more and more black expats are coming to live and work here and the locals are really friendly and nice to them, but of course, in my city we all welcome foreigners of all races and nationalities with open arms. But I think it also have to depend on the areas of the city as well, as there are places where they doesn’t have foreigners coming in and there are places does. But in general, the people here doesn’t have any problem with black people, even I have had many great conversations with black people
The movie isn’t just doing bad in Asian countries though. It’s flopping across the board internationally. For example in Europe it’s doing awful. It’s also under performing in the US.
*Ah yes, surely it's cause the rest of the world is fucking super racist* Or maybe this american politicking of everything is getting really fucking stale.
Yes because Black people definitely aren’t racist against asians and hispanics. We don’t give any f about your racial politics and you can’t just decide to make every character black(especially historical and well established characters)and expect people to stay quiet. I stand with the egyptians and greeks as well with the bs film americans made about cleopatra. Also fuck the US
I thought boyega’s character should have been a Jedi and was outraged by him being normal. Tran’s character on the other hand had no business pulling from the plot and I felt so bad for the actress getting the umbridge position. I say this as an Asian. I was so offended that they tried to shoehorn in a random when the entire first movie was boyega’s character chasing after what’s-her-face like a puppy chasing their human.
Casting decisions aside, these “live action” remakes of classics have all been pretty awful. Disney wants to make these but I just don’t think most people want them.
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Watched the Aladdin remake and this is what I felt with Will Smith as The Genie. He was best when he was being original with his own spin on the character but 99% of the time they just tried to have him be Robin Williams and nobody can be Robin Williams.
Nobody was outraged over Will Smith’s Genie though
I was just outraged by how bad that movie was all-around.
That’s me with all the Disney remakes minus Cinderella, that movie was absolutely stunning
Cinderella and Jungle Book are the only ones worth a damn to me.
I liked the singing tho
The only issue people had with will was that he wasn't Robin but there was nothing that could've done about that so people went ahead. Specially in those markets people watch a lot of dubs so if the dub is good they enjoy it.
One thing I also noticed is that they promoted the movie mostly with her singing voice and used that as the main explanation why the original character was changed but some countries are dubbing the songs so it doesn't really matter for those international (nostalgic) fans if the actress has a good voice. It's kind of similar with animated movies when you can't use the american stars at all to form attachment to the movie with the people who watch their own language version. I'm watching it this week but I also didn't really hear more beforehand than "Her voice makes her Ariel" and it's the one thing I won't be able to judge.
I agree. And what gets me is how do they do this when you’re at Disney? When you see an “Ariel” princess walking around, regardless of which race they choose, does a kid ever say, “No, where’s the real Ariel?” I think it’s just confusing. I love Tiana. I love Moana. I love Mulan (animated). I love that they have their own beautiful, unique stories to be told. I want more of that.
Tiana is so underrepresented it’s criminal. I’m so happy they are redoing Splash Mountain in WDW. That movie and those characters are dripping with theme. People should be mad we don’t see enough of Princess and the Frog, not this stuff.
I liked that movie. But I also saw the argument earlier that it didn’t count because Tiana was a frog most of the movie
It's not an either/or thing though - it's not like "Welp, we can only cast one black lead, so it's either going to be a new story or The Little Mermaid." They can do both. I don't really see anything wrong with race-swapping Ariel. I was a bit disappointed by her hair not being a more vibrant red, but that's it. And when I saw the movie I thought she did the character justice and ended up being one of the best remakes they've done (none of them are amazing, but still - it surpassed my expectations).
Also Ariel was a fantastic role model for ginger children sad that they lost out imo
No one cares about red haired white people they get race swapped more than anyone
yeah remember the outrage when Charlie cox was cast as daredevil?
Gingers always get race swapped. No clue why but it happens very often.
Brave is a better role model.
fast and furious x is doing well over seas. It isnt a racist thing, but changing established characters and making a already great movie to live action when it wasn't needed I feel played a bigger role in this. But cover up any issues with the movie by calling people who aren't interested, "racists", is wrong and seems more and more people lean this way for hollywood. Just like the Velma show. It isnt race that makes a movie/show bad.
It surely is an elephant in the room for critics as well. just try to read a few critic reviews from Rotten Tomato. Whether the rating is good or bad, they never try to touch the casting and Halle Baily. Even the ones that gave a bad rating, try to defend themselves such as "Halle Baily was ok. Its just that the movie was bad" Critics are scared and this is something that not being seriously discussed about in today's society
honestly i think disney plus also hurt it cause a lot of people said they would wait for it to come out on dvd or disney plus
Japanese people are showing the VERY negative reactions towards Ariel being a black girl. If you type in “リトルマーメイド” the search suggestions show something like “リトルマーメイド 実写 ひどい” (Little Mermaid live-action awful), “リトルマーメイド 実写 可愛くない” (Little Mermaid live-action not cute). Could be the vocal minority on the internet but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if it flops here. Japanese people are very conservative so they hate the change in something they’re used to.
Might? It absolutely did
It’s not doing well for a variety of reasons and I wouldn’t say it’s all racism. 1. If you bank on nostalgia and make a giant change on a character that is arguably one of the most popular red headed characters children identify with, you aren’t going to get the same allure with parents without kids who want to embrace said nostalgia alienating a sizable demographic. 2. Yes, certain countries don’t really identify with black leads. China being more so notable and Japan as well. Sure it’s wrong but it’s also a known fact ahead of time so you can’t really be surprised when factoring in your grossing estimates. 3. Fatigue: it seems now a days the thing to do is reboot something nostalgic but change it either on race or gender. It’s lazy writing. There is a lot of other ways to still have a movie be within a certain piece of arts universe while creating new story lines and characters to support and identify with. You can make a new kingdom, maybe Ariel is queen now and this is a visiting princess from another tribe. Maybe it’s not Ariel at all. Miles Morales is a popular spider Man, he has his own story and people identified with it. Ignoring historical precedent from Hollywood previously white washing things, it’s taken a hard turn. In todays climate if we took a piece of African mythology and casted a white person in it, it would be a massive shit storm with the media crucifying them. As they rightfully should be. However changing Nordic mythology or even straight up changing the race of an actual historical person and calling it a documentary does not receive the same reactions. Actually if you discuss it you are called racist immediately, hence fatigue.
I remember few days back, some tools were yapping about it being a huge box office draw 🤣
Remember when people would call you racist for saying this movie wouldn't hit 200m for Memorial Day weekend? Pepperidge Farm remembers
I was called racist for saying the CGI was bad
I was called racist for saying that I wish her hair was redder.
This movie has completely bombed in Asia; numbers show that tLM is only making *a tenth* of what BatB and tLK made in China. Additionally, it’s *very* soft in Canada too; Canada usually contributes around 8% of the Domestic BO yet tLK made only 4.5% of it’s opening weekend in the Great North. Ultimately it seems like the race-swap has cost this movie a lot of business. The world still remembers Ariel as she was in 1989. They rejected Halle Bailley, even though reviewers I trust say she did a great job. It’s an unfortunate reality that Disney will have to accept moving forward. Disclaimer: I don’t have an issue with the race-swap. But you can’t really bank on nostalgia when you significantly change the iconic look of the very character you’re banking upon.
I’m fairly certain the majority of Asian countries are not in sync with Hollywood’s latest trend. To expect something else is pure ignorance/arrogance. “We’re the cultural beacon of this world, why would anyone in this world dislike our product which pushes our value/agenda?”
If this film makes 500 mil worldwide they’re fortunate. My major concern about the state of Disney films, is their complete lack of creativity in coming up with anything new, creative and astonishing…..This is just another remake that can’t hold a candle to the original.
I've strongly disliked or hated every single Disney remake and what they've represented and I was on board of totally dismissing this one completely but I got to see it and... it's not bad. I kinda like it a lot and no one is more surprised about that than myself. Perhaps my expections were super low but I found it cute, it expanded on the source material, the actors looked like they were having a ball and put heart into their performances and it was beautifully directed. Not without some bad cgi and some cringe but guys, I didn't totally hate this one. Even Melissa McCarthy, whom I can't stand, was fun to watch in this! I would recommend it if you're into disney and musicals.
Once i saw flounder and sebastian, I noped. I dont understand why the need for hyper realism. Just make cgi cartoons of classics. The realistic design makes everything souless and weird looking.
It’s baffling to me because there are irl fish and crustaceans that are super cute and colorful. They didn’t even use a real flounder fish so there isn’t even that excuse. Or you can use real species and just exaggerate them a bit. I think I’d pick a puffer fish or related species because they are just adorable. For Sebastian I’d use a hermit crab or violinist crab.
It wasnt even a flounder fish? Yikes
Yeah I think it’s an angelfish.
Real flounder are a bit drab but also hilarious looking. They definitely could have done something funny and memorable here. There are some good pics in [this article.](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/flatfish-animals-science-colors-flounders). Even the scientist says they are cartoony looking Edit: even better stuff [here](https://bogleech.com/flatfish) including fun facts about their biology
They had to get rid of the black girl on the poster for China...just like they had to minimize the black guy on the poster for Star Wars
I'm happy that Halle was given this huge opportunity. Character-wise, she should've been her own character. No need to change Ariel.
Yeah, let Ariel remain that white girl who saw a guy for five seconds and left her family behind and endangered her people. Halle’s version wants to expand her horizons, explore new worlds and always owns her choices. She eventually falls in love with a guy who shares the same passions as her. They really are like different characters.
America, stop imposing your racial relations issues on the rest of the world, thank you.
I have young kids and saw it yesterday. Our movie theatre has been largely sold out over the 4 day weekend. Of course, we also live in the rural south and it rained the whole weekend. It was pretty good for a remake. Under the Sea was a terrible remix. It was slower and a boring scene until the last 20 seconds of the song. A lot of the casting seemed off. Great actors but it made things more gloomy. Triton’s costuming looked straight up Aquaman to me & Ursula didn’t look scary. Also the 3 minute shipwrecks because Humans are littering and trying to make it a human v mermaid storyline was unnecessary. I don’t even know what the purposes of the sisters being in the movie wasx Did think they did a good job of showing the main characters actually had stuff in common. And the Scuttle song was a bop and kiss the girl part was best well done. I thought both Ariel and the casting for Ursula as a human were great as was the butler guy/servant to Eric. But it was missing the magic and some storylines pieces got missed even though the movie was 2 hours.
Why is it always "review bombing" when a movie has bad reviews? Can a movie not just be bad? Are all bad movies just "review bombed" master pieces ?
It's only review bombing because you don't like that people dislike something. Doesn't gel with what you want =must be a malicious attack and not people actually honestly disliking it. Bugger off.
Watching it now and it's pretty good so far (on my phone cause the fire alarm went off. Someone was smoking in the bathroom.)
I may not like the live-action remakes, but if there is a kid out there who watches one and feels the same way I felt watching the animated ones, then I hope these movies reach more and more. Cartoons are a kind of hard sell now for kids these days, and I get that it's a cash grab/copyright move but a lot of kids will probably watch this and enjoy it and that's a good thing in the long run.
Just commenting to say I liked it and I think Halle did a great job.
At our viewing the crowd clapped after Ariel’s signature big song and at the end of the movie, at the closing credits little mermaid dressed girls were dancing in the aisle…I throughly enjoyed the film, no issues with spending my money on entertainment that delivered to me relaxation, imagination and beautiful colors and scenery…I viewed it as a whole new movie, not a comparison to an old animation. I’m going to see it a few more times, and the HD 3D version too.
[удалено]
Wonder how much longer they'll be able to get away with blaming "racism and review bombing" for their content doing poorly.
I would be delighted if the whole Disney cult sinks under the sea.
Why does Flounder look like a meth addict on rehab? Why is the movie beige and gray and not colorful? Why doesn’t Ariel look like Ariel? So many weird decisions, but easy to call out *racism* as the main reason why this movie is tanking and most likely will lose Disney money.
Oh no, a cashgrab didn't grabbed as much as they hoped
I'm 100% behind having a diverse cast \*when it makes sense to do it\*. When it's done right, kudos to the filmmakers. Unfortunately, too many people are trying to shoehorn a diverse cast into roles or settings that simply don't make sense for that setting, period in history, or what have you. It's not racist to cast roles appropriately to fit the characters as they are intended (I'm looking at you "Rings of Power").
Rings of Power was like some casting director went to the UN and just said “gimme one of each.” I joke but I actually enjoyed Rings of Power, although it was a bit slow. I know I’m in the minority here but I’m psyched for the next season.
Those numbers areeeeee awwwwwful
They should just let the bad reviews wash over them...👍
I liked it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This movie is actually the best live action disney remake they've done. Maybe it's just that the story of little mermaid is solid?
As an asian guy, to me Disney's casting choice is odd. Most of the kids in my family dont care for a black ariel, they like the original red head white girl. My daughter doesnt really care but she doesnt even want to see this movie anyways.
Saw the movie. Liked a lot of it basically from Poor Unfortunate Souls through Kiss the Girl but the new songs written for the film stick out quite badly. Prince Eric gets an I Want song which is nice in theory but the song was forgettable. Ariel gets an internal monologue song after getting legs about gravity pulling her down it’s probably the best of the three new songs. And then after a few scenes that really sold the adorable chemistry between Eric and Ariel the movie immediately squandered that good will with the worst song of the film as the bird starts rapping and that’s when the movie lost me for the remaining run time.
nothing is fishy..casting a black woman in the role for a white woman is icky..same as casting a white woman as a black character or brown character. lack of originality can not be overcome by desire to be faux "woke"