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Disney casts 19 year-old Halle Bailey as Ariel in "Little Mermaid."

Timelord Victorious said:
Ugh. If you divide white people into enough sub-phenotypes, any recast becomes discriminatory.
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The battle over this will rage won’t it?

I find it interesting because the announcement turned up at about the same time was discussing the Scarlett Johannesen GiTS with the mrs. I feel the movie handled it well, and in keeping with Shirows work and the 95 movie, she sees it more as an iconic Japanese character. Then this came up..

A traditional Scandinavian folk tale remember, very much a cultural artefact (there’s statues and stuff) going through the Disney grinder, and here we are, and the arguments will flow....and it’s going to be entertaining.


I will say this though regarding the ginger thing....historically they have a lot of bad press, I believe Americans have some kind of saying about red-headed stepchildren that turned up in a film somewhere too. Of course, there’s Jean Grey, but there’s also Storm....
They are also somewhat not exactly a sub-phenotype, certainly no more than skin colour...you can divide darker skinned humans into ‘sub-phenotypes’ just as easily, and well...geese and ganders. This is going to be one of those rows where at the bare bones of it, very true and good points will be made on either side, but people will be far too busy getting their teeth in to notice.

Shame. This is one of only two Disney animations I ever saw in the cinema, só I was quite interested to see how it will turn out. I have found the twisting over Aladdin very interesting, given the history of the original story there as well.... I am slowly thinking Disney should perhaps move on from its picking over older distant cultures, and that should probably include Europe.

It’s going to be a long year though for this kind of discussion...I believe there’s a Witcher series happening.
 
EnderAKH said:
The thing I hope they fix int he live action version is Ariel has ZERO agency in act 3 of the movie. Things are happening to and around her, but she is making no choices and affecting no change. Everything is being accomplished by Eric or Triton, not Ariel.
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I don’t know...it may not sit well in some ways, but as a metaphor, we have to remember she gave up her voice. There’s an essay in that somewhere. It’s making me think a modern retelling that looks at the difficulties of cultural assimilation would be interesting as well, as that’s at the heart of the Conflict. Ultimately though...this is a retelling of a fairy tale for children, so I wonder what will be changed this time.
 
tomalak301 said:
That was a claim people made? For one that’s the first I’ve heard of that and 2, I guess they missed the lyrics to “part of your world” which pretty much summarizes the whole movie. Eric being there was lucky happenstance. Ariel was curious what the human world was like and was willing to give up anything to live in it. That song wasn’t even about the relationship.
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I think some people just try to find problems. But it was originally parent's groups who likely objected to the whole leaving her family angle which they likely saw as 100% wrong. Now the case could be made that her father was toxic and she was fully justified in wanting to get away from him.

Reverend said:
I tend to agree. Perhaps I was being naive, but when I saw the movie I took the story as being about a controlled, "kept at home" girl wanting to be part of the wider world and choose her own path.

The "she gave up everything for a man" claim I've seen batted around the last few years never really felt true to me. I mean sure, art is subjective and if that's what people see then that's what they see, but I honestly don't think that's ever been the main take-away for a lot of little girls.

Ariel is portrayed as intelligent, curious, outgoing, non-conformist, willing to sacrifice to achieve her goals, but not willing to let others suffer for it. Hell, she's even ready to go so far as to permanently change her own body to suit her new identity. Honestly, I think one would have to try very hard to claim that this is some pro-patriarchal, or even hetero-normative allegory. It may dress in the trappings of one, but then it's based on a 19th century fairy tale, so what would one expect?
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Exactly. Her father was clearly controlling and destroyed her collection of human stuff, part of her motivation is anger over that. She is a teenager after all and likely would've thought harder if she were a little older, plus she was taken advantage of by Ursula who is trying to get revenge on her father.

But from the way she say things, we wanted to be a human and had a father who hated humans so she knew that she could never turn to him or her sisters to discuss it, she couldn't even turn to Sebastian and Flounder while supportive seemed a bit too young to understand. The only person who seemed to understand was Ursula who gave her exactly what she wanted, she just had to get a kiss from a guy who already thought was attractive, that's a win win in her head. She is a bit sheltered and I assume her father never mentioned Ursula or she'd be a little wary of him, so she goes ahead with it even though she'll never see her family again. They don't seem to be particularly close, so I'm not sure how much that actually weighed on her decision but it wasn't a dealbreaker. The poor girl just ends up being the pawn of an evil witch's revenge plot. It does work out in the end and she gets her wish and I assume that she could still have some sort of relationship with her family. I have vague memories of the sequel with her daughter, that was the original plan. She and Eric have a daughter and Triton and some merpeople are at the celebration of her birth. Ursula's sister shows up and they end up having to hide the child from the ocean to protect her. The kid wants to be a mermaid, there's a deal with a witch, some subpar songs and all works out in the end with the kid getting to get live at home and go stay with grandpa when she wants to. Granted this could be Disney trying to course correct from the original complaints, something they were doing as early as Aladdin. That's why Jasmine doesn't immediately fall for Aladdin and they don't get married at the end.
 
Awesome Possum said:
I think some people just try to find problems. But it was originally parent's groups who likely objected to the whole leaving her family angle which they likely saw as 100% wrong. Now the case could be made that her father was toxic and she was fully justified in wanting to get away from him.

Exactly. Her father was clearly controlling and destroyed her collection of human stuff, part of her motivation is anger over that. She is a teenager after all and likely would've thought harder if she were a little older, plus she was taken advantage of by Ursula who is trying to get revenge on her father.

But from the way she say things, we wanted to be a human and had a father who hated humans so she knew that she could never turn to him or her sisters to discuss it, she couldn't even turn to Sebastian and Flounder while supportive seemed a bit too young to understand. The only person who seemed to understand was Ursula who gave her exactly what she wanted, she just had to get a kiss from a guy who already thought was attractive, that's a win win in her head. She is a bit sheltered and I assume her father never mentioned Ursula or she'd be a little wary of him, so she goes ahead with it even though she'll never see her family again. They don't seem to be particularly close, so I'm not sure how much that actually weighed on her decision but it wasn't a dealbreaker. The poor girl just ends up being the pawn of an evil witch's revenge plot. It does work out in the end and she gets her wish and I assume that she could still have some sort of relationship with her family. I have vague memories of the sequel with her daughter, that was the original plan. She and Eric have a daughter and Triton and some merpeople are at the celebration of her birth. Ursula's sister shows up and they end up having to hide the child from the ocean to protect her. The kid wants to be a mermaid, there's a deal with a witch, some subpar songs and all works out in the end with the kid getting to get live at home and go stay with grandpa when she wants to. Granted this could be Disney trying to course correct from the original complaints, something they were doing as early as Aladdin. That's why Jasmine doesn't immediately fall for Aladdin and they don't get married at the end.
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There’s that.
But then there’s also the coming of age story, and the fairly strong argument that Triton is protecting her (how much and how strongly is another question) from going down a path that can only lead to sadness and death (she literally cannot live on land) and from a fascination with a group of people who historically plunder and kill his lands and subjects whom he is sworn to protect.
She also has to undergo a transformative process that is shown in this instance to be evil in nature and takes away something that is precious and key to the individual as part of the Faustian pact...even then, the king would rather give up his own identity than see his daughter harmed.
It’s a more nuanced thing.

Still the original is very much into transmutation and the changing of one thing from another, and the story itself has changed along the way...this is a version of a version that was sort of an adaptation after all. The symbolism of mermaids is all over the place as well, só it will be interesting to see what is made of it here. (At it’s most basic level, the mermaid legend is about that dangers that can come from being led by ones hormones as it were...)

I do like the idea that Eric was simply the final push over the edge for Ariel’s fascination though...I don’t think the romance aspect can be downplayed too heavily though, this is a Disney film after all. They were practically all traditional romances.
 
Nerys Myk said:
The number of black women who wear wigs while performing on TV, on stage and in movies is probably larger than either on of us knows.
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Indeed. For example, during her entire run on Law & Order, S. Epatha Merkerson wore a wig (her natural hair is twisted / dreds).
 
Serveaux said:
Redheads are not systematically discriminated against in the United States and never have been.* So I can't relate to this "technical discrimination" of which valkyrie03 speaks.

*Well, the Irish were discriminated against. But still no.
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It’s not America. Just Hollywood that hates redheads. :)
 
Exactly what I was thinking.. Red heads in school and in general, are tormented and bullied just becuase they have red hair, and its nice to see a person, man or woman, that looks like you ( this time red hair) to overcome adversity, stick up for themselves, etc. in a movie, tv series etc. Same can be said for any type of minority.

Now thankfully they have another "Redhead" to chose from in the movie "Brave" ..
 
I’ve seen Haillie (and her sister) in Grown-ish and from what I’ve seen, she has the acting chops to handle Ariel. Grown-ish is a great little show, really smart, diverse, and funny. This young woman is a large part of it.
 
Gaith said:
I wonder if this'll be the last of the "A-list" Disney animated movies to get entirely unnecessary redos? I mean, I'm sure there'll be more, with sequels for Jungle Books and the like, and there's always Bambi and a few others, such as Hercules and Tarzan, they could go with, but it seems to me that this flick could mark the end of a Phase, if you will, of animated-to-filmed remakes...
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Disney currently have 15 live action movies in the pipline so I doubt it's going to end anytime soon.
 
NOVE9 said:
Disney currently have 15 live action movies in the pipline so I doubt it's going to end anytime soon.
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I thought I read something about a Mulan movie coming soon. I actually think a great movie for a live action remake might be Hunchback of Norte Dame. It might be their darkest remake if they go that route.
 
So, what happens when they've redone all their animated movies into live-action? Do they 2D-ify the Pixar movies into classic-style Disney animation?
 
Owain Taggart said:
So, what happens when they've redone all their animated movies into live-action? Do they 2D-ify the Pixar movies into classic-style Disney animation?
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I could very easily see a version of Toy Story within the next few decades with the humans shot live action and the toys either entirely redone, or just re-rendered into the new scenes complete with the original vocal performances.
 
The only Disney movies that I think could be particularly good in live-action are Snow White and maybe Hercules as they were so cartoony, and the former, for better and worse, just so much of its long-ago time and style, that live-action movies would pretty much *have to* be very different. Most of the others are so either timeless classic or contemporary-feeling that remakes would be pretty redundant (pretty disappointed with both the live The Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast, a little intrigued with Aladdin but weary of it being too much the same).
 
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