The Little Mermaid (Live-Action)

[Sotiris]

The Little Mermaid was the #7 highest-grossing film of 2023 at the global box office.


Source: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie ... 235778767/


Incidentally, the Little Mermaid was also the #7 highest-grossing film of 2023 at the UK box office.

Top 10 films in U.K. & Ireland in 2023
(Data from Jan. 6, 2023-Jan. 4, 2024)

01. Barbie (Warner Bros): £95.5 million
02. Oppenheimer (Universal): £58.7 million
03. The Super Mario Bros. Movie (Universal): £54.8 million
04. Wonka (Warner Bros): £49.2 million – still on release
05. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (Disney): £36.7 million
06. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Sony): £30.7 million
07. The Little Mermaid (Disney): £27.4 million
08. Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning (Part One) (Paramount): £26.6 million
09. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Universal): £26 million
10. Avatar: The Way of Water (Disney): £25.5 million in 2023 (£77.3 million lifetime)

Source: https://variety.com/2024/film/box-offic ... 235862546/

[Sotiris]

FYC poster.


Source: https://nextbestpicture.com/disney-fyc-gallery/

[Vlad]

Best Original Score would be fitting. But none of the new original songs are that memorable, to be honest. I'm especially surprised to see The Scuttlebutt included.

[Disney Duster]

Are they actually not campaining for Best Picture? I mean...they did it for so many others, and this isn't their worst remake!

[Sotiris]

At the world premiere in Los Angeles last year, director Rob Marshall said he had been toiling away on the movie for more than five years. They had shot (and re-shot) during the pandemic and were finally here. The movie cost more than $200 million to produce. Internally, Disney thought it could crack $1 billion worldwide. It wound up with $569 million — a far cry from the halcyon days of “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King.”

Source: https://www.thewrap.com/sean-bailey-disney-legacy/

[MrXemnas1992]

Rewatched it again. Still easily one of the best of the remakes. Flawed but much better than Beauty and the Beast, Mulan, or Pinocchio.

Halle was the perfect choice for Ariel and I am so glad I was proven 100% wrong about potential miscasting.

[Sotiris]

John Musker has expressed criticism of the remake.

Companies are always like, ‘How do we reduce our risk? They like this, right? We’ll just do it again and sell it to them in a different form.’ Or they think, ‘Well, we could make it better.’ I think there was a question even with The Little Mermaid. They didn’t play up the father-daughter story, and that was the heart of the movie, in a way. And the crab — you could look at live animals in a zoo and they have more expression, like with The Lion King. That’s one of the basic things about Disney, is the appeal. That’s what animation does best.

Source: https://english.elpais.com/culture/2024 ... ncess.html

[PatchofBlue]

I think there was a question even with The Little Mermaid. They didn’t play up the father-daughter story, and that was the heart of the movie, in a way.

I think a part of that was the way that they didn't let Ariel be as snappy as she was in the animated film in order to try to placate all the parents who hated Ariel for teaching Suzie that you can get away with disobeying mom and dad. Sure, the story is still centered on Ariel breaking away from her dad, but gone are moments like "I'm sixteen years old, I'm not a child anymore!" which really speaks to that generational divide and the restlessness of late adolescence. In the remake, Ariel and Triton's tension over the humans was almost purely a matter of differing philosophies.

And I'm not saying that this is the worst way they could have played it. I find just as often, the spin-off material leans too hard into Ariel's rebelliousness in a way that she just comes off as more unlikeable than the animated film. And I think the remake was right in recognizing that at its root, Ariel's love for the above world has strong social justice elements to it that you can certainly choose to lean into. I just think that some parts of the story were neglected as a consquence.