Giving Ariel A New Voice: An Analysis On Disney’s Live-Action Adaption ‘The Little Mermaid’

Starting in 2015 with Cinderella, the world has witnessed Disney taking the classic Disney Princess franchise to the next level with live-action remakes. In general, these remakes have done pretty well at the box office; Cinderella brought in $542.4 million worldwide, Beauty and Beast pulled $1.3 billion, and Aladdin showed figure of $1.05 billion. These modern revamps each saw intentional changes that reflect recent social movements, most notably the feminist movement and the push for racial justice and LGBTQ+ rights. While the effort to include more diverse cast and empowered storyline has not gone unnoticed, a fair amount of critics still say they are overdone, unnecessary, or insufficient. Notably, the live-action remake of Mulan was flanked by controversy before it even debuted, causing many people to boycott the film. While the Disney remakes have gone to such lengths to make their narratives more progressive, Mulan seemed to take ten steps backward for the industry. This is mainly because it is filmed partially in the Xinjiang province of China, region that has attracted international attention in the past few years as the Chinese government has forced over two million of the local Uyghur Muslim minority into concentration camps.  

Besides box office numbers and political repercussions, responses to remakes have overall been relatively positive. Still, in the words of literary theory and criticism scholar Linda Hutcheon, every adaptation is always ‘haunted’ by its source text. The goal of an adaptation is to translate something across medium, pay homage to the original to invoke nostalgia from the audience and add something new to keep viewers excited. While all the animated Disney princess movies are already working off of a set text, the live actions have the challenge of juggling multiple sources to create a new twist while ensuring the original is recognizable. Recently, The Little Mermaid, directed by Rob Marshall, hit theaters with a bang, already generating $353 million worldwide at the box office. Even before it was released, The Little Mermaid received landslide of criticism, particularly racist comments regarding the decision to cast Halle Bailey as Ariel. Following the movie’s release, it has received few critiques besides casting choices ranging from Ursula’s makeup to the mildly creepy character designs of Ariel’s animal friends, Scuttle, Sebastian, and Flounder. However, despite these reviews, the movie still managed to serve as perfectly suitable adaptation by keeping much of the original animation and 1836 story while still adding new musical numbers by Alan Menken, Howard Ashman & Lin-Manuel Miranda, as well as fleshing out more of the characters and general settings. 

True to the 1989 version, many of the songs were kept exactly as they were, with choreography and styles matching almost scene for scene between the two movies. Many shots looked like they could have been copied and pasted from their earlier counterpart.

This attention to detail showed just how much heart went into The Little Mermaid’s creation. Despite all the initial critiques, the entire cast and crew wanted to prove how fantastic the movie could be.

While many scenes and songs were kept the same, the added details served to flesh out the story and make the other characters more lovable. A big one was Prince Eric. In both the original 1836 story by Hans Christian Andersen and Disney’s 1989 animated film, Prince Eric has little to no backstory besides the fact that he’s a prince, lives in a seaside palace, and that Ariel saves him during a storm on his birthday. The 2023 movie gives more insight into his family life, showing that he was washed ashore and adopted by the queen at a young age. Given how Ariel is treated when she appears off the island nation’s coast, this warm welcome is not uncommon. Even so, I would have appreciated just a bit more information about Eric’s story, even just a flashback or two.

All the hints and details that were dropped regarding him were left there and swept past rather than fully fleshed out, which would have added even more to his character. However, with runtime surpassing two hours, it would not have been easy to give more than what we got about Eric. All that said, Eric’s little storyline endeared and humanized him a bit more, and the effort and his new solo number were appreciated. 

The island’s joyful and colorful marketplace and warm culture were also intriguing. The energy of the townspeople and the musical numbers that accompanied Ariel and Eric on their journey through town was a nice touch. It lets the audience in on another part of the story, showing the human world was just as lovely, welcoming, and accepting as Ariel always dreamed it would be. 

Another subtle change that attracted attention was related to Ariel’s singing voice. Per legend, mermaids are traditionally sirens or mythical creatures that lure sailors to their deaths using their beautiful singing voices. In the original story, the sea witch tells Ariel that as her beautiful singing voice is her greatest strength, it must be the price for becoming a human. In comparison, the live-action movie’s Ursula insists that Ariel give up all her mermaid powers, including her magical siren song that she can use to attract men. This reference to mermaid ‘lore’ gave Ariel’s character a bit more depth and turned her choice to give up her voice from a willingness to throw her life away for a man into a detachment from the mermaid species. In the flow of the story, it seems to make more sense and puts more faith in Ariel’s decision to trade her tail for legs.

Along with this addition, the film adds a new musical number for Ariel and a reprise that was not in the 1989 version. These are sung while Ariel lives as a human and narrates some of her initial impressions of the human world, giving insight into her thoughts and feelings. These songs do the job of making her not entirely mute while she’s in the human world and allow her to regain some agency, or at least give her a chance to have independent thought. 

Overall, while the 2023 live-action version of The Little Mermaid has received its fair share of critiques as a film and as an adaptation, it still serves as a heartfelt tribute to Disney’s 1989 animated film and Hans Christian Andersen’s original story. When creating an adaptation, the audience will forever think of the original nostalgically, so producing something new with a backdrop of something old and wiring them together seamlessly is no easy feat. In the past few years, Disney has based much of their energy on these live-action remakes with mixed results. By maintaining many of the original songs and scenes from the 1989 version, fleshing out characters like Prince Eric, and even giving Ariel more agency in her situation, Rob Marshall managed to create a film that touched on modern social ideas while still paying tribute to the classic film. Overall, it was an entertaining movie that recalled many childhood memories, and I’ll be curious, after the initial excitement wears off, what kinds of reviews will come out.