The Little Mermaid Discussion

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Disney Duster
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

Post by Disney Duster »

Hm. I have no idea. But I like thinking Atlanteans were always merpeople. I think that's supposed to be the case.
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

Post by JeanGreyForever »

There was an old Marvel comic for TLM set during Season 2 of the TV series. Ariel encounters a magical wizard fish in a secret room in the palace who holds all this ancient history of Atlantica. She learns that the merfolk lived on Atlantis along with winged centaurs, but there was a feud between the two rulers. The two species became separated and Atlantis collapsed in the ocean (previously, the merfolk also lived on land).

At the heart of the story is a young mermaid and male centaur who resemble Ariel and Eric and their star-crossed love story. I think the idea is that these two characters were Ariel and Eric's past lives and although they failed to get together then, that's okay because we know they'll get together in their new lives.

So at least according to that, merpeople were always merpeople and not humans originally. Although there are non-Disney legends of ancient kingdoms that fell under the sea and the humans who lived there eventually came to live under the sea instead.
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

Post by Disney Duster »

Oh, wow, that story is cool! And I like how even though that version of Ariel and Eric, where they have past lives, didn't work out, they do get to be together forever later. But I don't get how merpeople would have also lived on the land!
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

Post by JeanGreyForever »

Basically Atlantis was an island with a big volcano, mountains and bays. So the merpeople would spend their time on the beach or on the rocks next to the beach, sort of like Mermaid Lagoon in Neverland. After the feud and the destruction of Atlantis, the merpeople went underwater forever, never to return to the surface. I think that was the start of the rule that King Triton also imposes that merpeople are forbidden to go to the surface. At the same time, the winged centaurs flew to Mount Olympus, one of the remaining mountains left and they never left that so the two lovers could never meet, although the mermaid would still secretly go to the surface.

Another thing I forgot was that the feud actually was with the Sharkanians. They were also involved and had some sort of squabble which is what caused the destruction of Atlantis and is the reason why in the TV series, we see that the Sharkanians are the most hated foes of Atlantica (after Ursula and the Evil Manta of course).
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

Post by Disney's Divinity »

Oh, wow, I wish I had all the TLM comics out there. This sounds amazing. I love that they tied it into the TV series and the Sharkanians.
JeanGreyForever wrote:
Another thing I forgot was that the feud actually was with the Sharkanians. They were also involved and had some sort of squabble which is what caused the destruction of Atlantis and is the reason why in the TV series, we see that the Sharkanians are the most hated foes of Atlantica (after Ursula and the Evil Manta of course).
I guess in 4th place would be that witch cursed to live in a cave for eternity? :lol:
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

Post by JeanGreyForever »

Disney's Divinity wrote:Oh, wow, I wish I had all the TLM comics out there. This sounds amazing. I love that they tied it into the TV series and the Sharkanians.
JeanGreyForever wrote:
Another thing I forgot was that the feud actually was with the Sharkanians. They were also involved and had some sort of squabble which is what caused the destruction of Atlantis and is the reason why in the TV series, we see that the Sharkanians are the most hated foes of Atlantica (after Ursula and the Evil Manta of course).
I guess in 4th place would be that witch cursed to live in a cave for eternity? :lol:
The Daring to Dream fansite has all the comics uploaded if you ever want to check them out. I own most of them, but there are a few I haven't gotten my hands on yet, including the issue I was describing above. The Marvel series was a tie-in to the TV series so it featured Pearl, Urchin, the Lobster Mobster and Da Shrimp, the crab scouts, and even the sea monster that Ariel woke up from playing the sea calliope.

Lol, I guess coming in fourth place means you don't get to have a name. I always wanted to know more about the Sorceress, especially since she was so familiar with Triton. I wonder if she had any connections to Ursula. Maybe she was Ursula's mentor and that's why she was imprisoned. She would have made a great recurring villain if the series had continued, especially since Ursula had started to make appearances by then and the Evil Manta had reformed.
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

Post by JeanGreyForever »

I recently re-read the original fairy tale and what I found most interesting is how the character of the little mermaid is completely changed from how she is in the fairy tale compared to the Disney one. In the fairy tale, she is the youngest of 6 sisters and is very quiet and dreamy. All her sisters have gardens that have objects they take from shipwrecks, but her garden is very simple. It's just flowers, specifically these bright red flowers and a statue of a human boy. Funny, how Ariel is the opposite case because her sisters have no interest in shipwrecks and human stuff, but her garden/grotto is the one with all the human stuff. On top of that, she isn't as introspective as the fairy tale mermaid although she's pretty dreamy as well.

Ironically enough, the fairy tale mermaid is closer to Alana from the Disney version. Alana is also the 6th sister and in TLM books that they used to release in 1990 (which features the original order of the sisters before they changed it for Ariel's Beginning), she is the dreamy and quiet one who is very romantic. Her favorite place is her garden which she tends to along with all the sea creatures who reside there and love her. That sounds a lot more like the fairy tale version of the Little Mermaid so it's almost like if Ariel hadn't existed, then Alana would have been the youngest sister and potentially would have been the one to fall in love with a human. I've even seen Deviantart images that have her be the other sister besides Ariel to fall in love with someone who is not a merman. She falls in love with a centaur from Fantasia (which even parallels back to TLM comic I mentioned above since Ariel's past life did that as well).
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

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Hm, interesting observations! How would you say the original little mermaid was more introspective than Ariel?
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

Post by JeanGreyForever »

She's a lot more quiet and spends all her time alone in her little garden, dreaming, if not almost brooding about the lack of a human soul. Whereas, Ariel is very social and constantly around her friends and far chirpier.
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

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Oh. Ok thanks for the explanation. I do think her desire for an eternal soul is a deep desire.
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

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I hadn't encountered before a few of these.

Take A Magical Look At The Concept Art Used To Make "The Little Mermaid"
https://www.buzzfeed.com/briangalindo/t ... o-make-the
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

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I never noticed but in the concept art with Ariel looking at the fork, Flounder actually is a real flounder! I am also surprised they considered giving her an orange tail and hair, something I considered for if I ever made my own The Little Mermaid book.
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

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I hadn't heard of this before. Found in the Gallery Book that comes with the Target exclusive 4K/Blu-ray combo of The Little Mermaid.

Concept art by Dan Haskett.

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In early versions of the story, Ariel's best friend was a dolphin named Breaker who was voiced by Robin Williams. Later, animators changed the character to Flounder.
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

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Huh. Robin Williams. Weird how then he was the Genie, a much bigger role.
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

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Got the Target exclusive today. The cover’s a bit different than it was before. Honestly, I wish they hadn’t changed it (Flounder / Ursula / Triton’s palace all looked better before and they added those little scale effects from the Diamond cover to Ariel’s tail which I always hated), but it’s still the best of the three. Some might think Ariel’s face was improved; I think they’re even with one another. I liked the earnestness of the first drawing, although something about the color of the eyes / lips was weird… Her lipstick was never pink for one thing and her eyes are the same shade of blue as absolutely everything else on the cover. *shrug* So I’m bothered, but I’m not bothered. :lol: I love that the front of the slipcover is under the sea and the back of the box is Eric’s palace, the world above (and it’s a clean picture without any text over top of it). And I love how there are close-up pictures of Ariel, Sebastian, Flounder, and Ursula, too. The little book’s cover is pretty, too. Either way, Disney’s pricing is out of control. I paid $35 for this, Lord have mercy. :o

I’ll pick up the standard cover at a later time. Paige O’Hara seems like a lovely woman, but I’m skipping the BestBuy steelbook sadly. (Maybe that’s the aforementioned mercy I was looking for, because it’s priced at $36.99 on the BestBuy website ***dead***). If anyone buys that one, I’d be curious if there’s an inside cover or anything else special (or not).

The Leading Ladies bonus feature seems like it was sliced and diced, and they were forced to recount lyrics / film stories for some reason. I wish they’d left in whatever was cut; I wouldn’t have minded it going 30 minutes or more. Only a shame Pat Carroll, Angela Lansbury, and Susan Egan weren’t there as well (especially since the latter played Belle, too). I’ll never be able to forgive Lasseter for removing Menken from TP&TF. Anika Noni Rose (and Keith David) deserved a Menken soundtrack—what a travesty. You could really sense O'Hara's, Benson's, and Menken's shared sadness over the death of hand-drawn films.

The video of the various voice actors behind the microphone was nice. Buddy Hackett seemed a little crazy (especially with M&C talking about how he made his own song for Scuttle, lol). I was sad they didn’t show anything of Kenneth Mars. Triton in general seems to be forgotten and overlooked all the time. It’s one thing for Eric to be (since the princes prior to Beast are all seen as bland, even if Eric is an improvement), but Triton is as critical to the movie as Ariel, Sebastian, and Ursula, imo. Mars did such a great job and I wish he/the character would be remembered more.

I listened to the commentary (again, since I believe this was just a carryover feature?). They could make a new commentary for every edition and I’m sure they’d find new things to say. :( M&C noted the resemblance between the opening of Ursula’s lair and the shell she lies in with Georgia O’Keefe’s work, and I definitely see it (and both make me think of…ahem, lady parts, lmao).

They point out the lack of color in the beginning with Eric on the ship in the mist, and how they wanted the underwater world to be Oz-esque in how colorful it was compared to the boring, mundane world. I love it, but that’s part of the reason the land scenes in the 2nd half could never have lived up to all the wonder and amazement Ariel has for it. :P

I remember being so unexpectedly, entirely satisfied with the restoration for the Diamond that I wasn’t sure what to expect with this. I almost didn’t want anything to be changed, but somehow it turned out even more striking to me? There seems to be a lot more blue everywhere--less green--and the reds pop more because of it. Right or wrong, that is much closer to my memory of the film as a child (with Ursula appearing almost blue-ish at times). The animation of the film—the key scenes especially—is still so gorgeous and amazing to me. Every time I see the animation of Ursula folding her hands with her tentacles coiling, I'm taken back to being a child pausing frame by frame trying to re-create the images on paper for myself.
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

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BuzzFeed's interview with Jodi Benson:

https://www.buzzfeed.com/briangalindo/t ... -wanted-to
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

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I love knowing all that about how Jodi was led through by Howard and how she describes PoYW as a monologue set to pitch and a story song, and I like who she wants for Ariel in the live-action film!
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

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I admire how gracious Jodi Benson is to Howard Ashman still after all these years. She, Pat Carroll, Alan Menken, and M&C try so much to keep him alive when talking about this and B&tB. John Musker crying re-telling Ashman singing "Part of Your World" for them the first time made me tear up. I think that's another part of the sadness Menken and Benson showed when talking about how hand-drawn films don't happen at Disney anymore in the "Leading Ladies" feature, because reviving hand-drawn animation was part of Ashman's legacy, too, really. If TLM and/or B&tB had both failed, hand-drawn animation may have been dead 20 years sooner.

I agree with Benson, they need to cast an unknown with a great voice to go along with acting talent for Ariel--the same way they did for Aladdin.
Sotiris wrote:I hadn't heard of this before. Found in the Gallery Book that comes with the Target exclusive 4K/Blu-ray combo of The Little Mermaid.
In early versions of the story, Ariel's best friend was a dolphin named Breaker who was voiced by Robin Williams. Later, animators changed the character to Flounder.
During the commentary, Musker was saying that either Eisner or Katzenberg told them they had to look at comedians for their movies. That's how they ended up with Buddy Hackett. So no surprise they might've looked at Robin Williams for TLM, too. I've never heard about this either. That explains what M&C meant when cutting the dolphin meant a lot of energy went to Ariel instead. Williams sucks the energy out of most movies he's in. Genie was the perfect character for him. That kind of larger-than-life personality wouldn't have meshed with TLM at all....
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

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Disney's Divinity wrote:I admire how gracious Jodi Benson is to Howard Ashman still after all these years. She, Pat Carroll, Alan Menken, and M&C try so much to keep him alive when talking about this and B&tB. John Musker crying re-telling Ashman singing "Part of Your World" for them the first time made me tear up. I think that's another part of the sadness Menken and Benson showed when talking about how hand-drawn films don't happen at Disney anymore in the "Leading Ladies" feature, because reviving hand-drawn animation was part of Ashman's legacy, too, really. If TLM and/or B&tB had both failed, hand-drawn animation may have been dead 20 years sooner.

I agree with Benson, they need to cast an unknown with a great voice to go along with acting talent for Ariel--the same way they did for Aladdin.
Sotiris wrote:I hadn't heard of this before. Found in the Gallery Book that comes with the Target exclusive 4K/Blu-ray combo of The Little Mermaid.
During the commentary, Musker was saying that either Eisner or Katzenberg told them they had to look at comedians for their movies. That's how they ended up with Buddy Hackett. So no surprise they might've looked at Robin Williams for TLM, too. I've never heard about this either. That explains what M&C meant when cutting the dolphin meant a lot of energy went to Ariel instead. Williams sucks the energy out of most movies he's in. Genie was the perfect character for him. That kind of larger-than-life personality wouldn't have meshed with TLM at all....
I agree with everything.
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Re: The Little Mermaid Discussion

Post by Farerb »

When I think about Robin Williams as a Dolphin, all I can imagine is that the film would have turned out to be like FernGully... Yikes
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