The Little Mermaid Discussion

[Sotiris]

5 Facts About The Little Mermaid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1ayMPcW-G8

[Disney Duster]

^ Cool.

Well, it's reached 30 years now. When I was a child, I was too young to see The Little Mermaid in theatres, but I saw it on home video, and many, many, many times after that. It became my second favorite Disney film. Today it's my third, but sometimes I still think it's second. The mystery and majesty of the misty and murky sea and sky in the beginning, then the magical, mystical world under the sea with (gasp!) merpeople! Such beautiful tails with hip fins, a unique idea to connect the human halves to the fish halves. King Triton's shiny, glittering palace. His magical trident. The cool giant clams Ariel's sisters come out. The scary thrills of the shark chase. The comforting humor of Scuttle. The cool eels with glowing eyes and the magic of Ursula's spying bubble. Her cool cauldron, her cool lair. Her cool, creative octopus design! And that neat-looking and magical gold nautilus shell. I spent a lot of my life looking for a sea shell that looked exactly like that and never found one. Ariel's beautiul voice. Her feelings expressed in song in her grotto. Asserting herself as a "bright young woman". The weird sexual feelings of Triton destroying her grotto (anyone else feel this? No, just me, I'm weird? Ah, embarassing). Ursula's amazing, impressive, magic spells. Those creepy green hands stealing Ariel's voice like they're sucking her soul out of her. The shocking transformation. The striking sillhouette of her against the sun as she splashes through the ocean surface. Her funny but kind of chic sailboat dress. Ariel being funny to me when she huffs in exasperation at Eric not understanding her. Ariel looking a vision in her pretty pink dress. The romantic "Kiss the Girl". Ursula's awesome transformation into Vanessa. Ariel's sad, heart-tugging tears when she thinks Eric's marrying someone else. The funny wedding crash. The thrilling climax. Ariel walking out of the water as a human like a goddess in that beautiful sparkling periwinkle dress. And then, she's part of his world.

Happy 30th Anniversary, The Little Mermaid. One of the greatest film ever made, and one of Disney's very best. Somewhere in the top ten.

[Sotiris]

Q: Do you have a favorite character?

Ron Clements: Talking about your favorite movies and characters is like talking about your favorite kids. But having said that, I would have to admit that Little Mermaid is very special to me. John and I were in our early 30s when we started the project, and we were some of the oldest on it. We all knew the stakes were very high. And I've always identified with Ariel. I know she's taken some heat about giving up her legs just to get a guy, but I never saw it as that. Coming from a small city in the Midwest and dreaming of one day going to Hollywood to work for Disney, to me she was like anybody dreaming about being part of a world very different from their own, no matter how impossible that seemed.

Source: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/ ... ss-1271493

[Disney's Divinity]

Aw. Yes, Ariel's appeal transcends the specifics of her story. It's the American Dream, really.

[JeanGreyForever]

I'm glad that recently both Clements and Jodi Benson have spoken out against the criticism against Ariel and reiterated that they find her a strong role model.

[Disney Duster]

They have? Where?!

[JeanGreyForever]

Clements did it above. Jodi did it somewhere in this thread too I'm sure because somebody posted her interview on this forum. It was a few months ago like past the summer of 2019.

[Disney Duster]

Oh, I must have read Jodi saying it and just forgot, but I am glad they did it!

[D82]

Could this be the interview with Jodi Benson you were referring to, JeanGreyForever?

[JeanGreyForever]

Could this be the interview with Jodi Benson you were referring to, JeanGreyForever?

Yes, thank you, that's exactly the one!

[Disney Duster]

Oh, thank you D82. I did read that. I like that she thinks making a classic classic means it keeps things that are old in them. Even though I also like that we often talk about how classics are classic because they transcend time.

[UmbrellaFish]

https://youtu.be/C-2H7O2iR3A

Disney cake artist recreates Little Mermaid wedding cake.

The video’s almost a year old, so maybe it’s already been posted— I know I’ve seen it before, but I had to share in case it hadn’t been on here. I’ve talked before about how I loved this cake in the movie and it set the basis for what a wedding cake should look like in my imagination (it also bears some resemblance to my parents’ 90’s wedding cake— mostly those Grecian columns and buttercream flowers). Very cool to see it brought to life, I just wish they’d chosen a wedding cake topper which more accurately reflected the movie’s design.

[Sotiris]

^The attention to detail is impressive.

[Disney Duster]

That is one cool, magnificent cake! That's so cool it was like your parent's a little, UmbrellaFish!

[Mooky]

So I have this Disney desk calendar for 2020 with neat little facts about Disney films, one for each day. And one of the trivia facts states that Alana was named after Alan Menken, while Attina was named after a character from Menken's unproduced musical Atina, Evil Queen of the Galaxy. I didn't know either of those things!

[Disney's Divinity]

I've heard the Attina thing. I'm not sure if I heard about Alana for Alan or not, or if I just forgot about it over time.

[Disney Duster]

That's cool, Mooky!

[Sotiris]

Dark Horse is releasing a comic book mini-series that tells Ursula's origins story.

Dark Horse Explores Origin of Ursula the Sea Witch in New Disney Villains Series
https://www.bleedingcool.com/2020/03/18 ... ns-series/

[Disney's Divinity]

Can't say I'm fond of the design (the way the fat around her chin isn't separated visually from her lower body reminds me of the Witch of the Waste from Ghibli's take on Howl's Moving Castle), but you know I'm a lock for buying this regardless of whether it turns out to be complete crap. It sounds sort of like an underwater Wizard of Oz--as far as a witch for every sea, like the witches for the north, south, east, and west. I'm surprised Disney actually allows for things like this that play with their characters. Or do they only care about how their recent releases are handled these days?

I once created my own Dorian-esque story for Ursula, tracking her life to her downfall. I remember using Tarot cards for chapter titles, silly. I wonder if this will acknowledge things like Morgana from the sequel or the octopi race of people in the series? The former, I hope not; the latter could be interesting.

[Disney Duster]

I love the artwork and the story sounds very, very cool! I think it sounds original and awesome at the same time!