The Little Mermaid | Disney | May 26, 2023 | Queen Halle will rule the summer!

[poweranimals]

On 3/20/2023 at 4:04 PM, scabab said:

Ive showed 5 people the trailer for this movie, my parents, my girlfriend, my girlfriends friend and a coworker. None of which are hardcore movie fans like myself or most people here. None of which have any disdain towards live action Disney Remakes as you see so often on the internet.

 

And they all had the same reaction, the exact same, interest when they know there's a The Little Mermaid remake being done which then just disappears completely when they see who is playing Ariel. All of them just wondered....why is Ariel black? By the end of the trailer they just aren't interested anymore.

 

These aren't racists or the type you'd find in the YouTube comments or on movie forums, just casual movie people. 

 

The dislikes on YouTube don't surprise me at all. I think they've made a tremendous mistake with this. It's got a very good chance at flopping and you already know the excuses they'll make but really all they had to do was make Ariel look like Ariel. They've done the same mistake with this new Peter Pan.

 

And Disney won't learn.

I know people will get offended but it's true. And just for context, if they were to have made a Princess and the Frog movie instead, I would've been interested in seeing that, but Disney  idn't want to make that movie. Will they eventually? Probably, but who knows at this point? It's just that it doesn't look like the Ariel I know and love which as a Little Mermaid fan, makes me lose interest. It's nothing to do with being racist. I'm just sick of the game Hollywood is playing where they can't bother to create original characters or IPs. They have to change the characters that are already popular and people are already attached to because they know they can pander and it'll get them more money in the short term than if they had built up more original characters. Look, I'm sure Halle Bailey is great and will do a wonderful job in the role and I definitely don't support any of the racist comments which will inevitably come because internet assholes, but yeah.

Edited March 21, 2023 by poweranimals

[jedijake]

I would think that most people who have a surprised reaction in the beginning would get over it quickly. I too had a knee jerk reaction of surprise when I first heard of the casting. But I did a little research and saw that Halle was really the perfect person for the role. Her mannerisms, voice (both singing AND speaking) and her youthfulness are perfect. My biggest question was how they will market merchandise and park presence of Ariel with two very different "looking" versions. It was more curiosity though.

 

There seems to be two sides of the protest against casting. One side is obviously racist rage. But the other (and possibly more common) is made up of those who are very stubborn Disney traditionalists who cannot accept a beloved character looking different. But even if a white girl was cast, she'd STILL look very different than, well, a cartoon. It's okay to beholden to the classic. 

[scabab]

20 hours ago, filmlover said:

That sounds like a "them" problem. Next.

 

It'll become a Disney problem soon.

[filmlover]

3 hours ago, scabab said:

 

It'll become a Disney problem soon.

Cool. You're gonna have to find someone else to try and convince that Disney should be afraid of a small but loud and obnoxious minority who lack the self-awareness to realize they're the villains in the story (and should in no way feel validated in the first place because if one can't see how having a collective "oh the horror!" pity party over the race of a fictional cartoon mermaid - whose race is completely irrelevant to the character's identity in the original movie this is a remake of! - is making a bold and heroic statement and not a sign of "I might have issues I need to work on," well good luck cause clearly I can't help them) and were unlikely to see this (or any movie, let's be real) to begin with because they're too busy finding the next property that gives minorities the spotlight for a change to try and frame themselves as victims (when they're not victims of anything), because it's not going to be me or everyone else who can see through the casually racist BS.

 

 

 

Edited March 22, 2023 by filmlover

[Nikostar]

3 hours ago, scabab said:

 

It'll become a Disney problem soon.

Good luck with that prediction. 

[Nikostar]

20 minutes ago, filmlover said:

Cool. You're gonna have to find someone else to try and convince that Disney should be afraid of a small but loud and obnoxious minority who lack the self-awareness to realize they're the villains in the story (and should in no way feel validated in the first place because if one can't see how having a collective "oh the horror!" pity party over the race of a fictional cartoon mermaid - whose race is completely irrelevant to the character's identity in the original movie this is a remake of! - is making a bold and heroic statement and not a sign of "I might have issues I need to work on," well good luck cause clearly I can't help them) and were unlikely to see this (or any movie, let's be real) to begin with because they're too busy finding the next property that gives minorities the spotlight for a change to try and frame themselves as victims (when they're not victims of anything), because it's not going to be me or everyone else who can see through the casually racist BS.

 

 

 

This. The general public could care less about what color a mermaid is. Plus the number an little black girls who want to see the film because of Hallie will vastly outweigh some angry little anti woke fool behind a computer screen who will was never going to see the film.

[Hatebox]

12 hours ago, poweranimals said:

It's nothing to do with being racist.

 

If you have to qualify a post about a crappy Disney remake with this sentence, the post definitely isn't worth making.

[ThePrinceIsOnFire]

This will do well in North America and flop internationally. Both sides will argue over the results and claim success/flop to fit their own agendas.

Disney will proclaim the movie as a triumph based on the USA performance and ignore the flop elsewhere.

Americans SJW will feel satisfied  and fakely act like Halle Bailey is Meryl's streep's and Whitney Houston's love child, while Europeans skeptics will be critical of her and bash the movie. The real effect of this movie controversies will be seen on Snow White's performance which IMHO will flop everywhere, USA included...but that is another story.

 

I mean, we are already seeing crazyness happening here with users praising Halle Bailey as a beauty goddess, while on the extremely trashy british site dailymail everyone is criticizing her appearance (her eyes especially for being set too far off on the side of her face). I can only imagine how divisive this whole thing will be.

Edited March 22, 2023 by ThePrinceIsOnFire

[JustLurking]

8 minutes ago, ThePrinceIsOnFire said:

This will do well in North America and flop internationally. Both sides will argue over the results and claim success/flop to fit their own agendas.

Disney will proclaim the movie as a triumph based on the USA performance and ignore the flop elsewhere.

Americans SJW will feel satisfied  and fakely act like Halle Bailey is Meryl's streep's and Whitney Houston's love child, while Europeans skeptics will be critical of her and bash the movie. The real effect of this movie controversies will be seen on Snow White's performance which IMHO will flop everywhere, USA included...but that is another story.

 

I mean, we are already seeing crazyness happening here with users praising Halle Bailey as a beauty goddess, while on the extremely trashy british site dailymail everyone is criticizing her appearance (her eyes especially for being set too far off on the side of her face). I can only imagine how divisive this whole thing will be.

I largely agree with this though think this will underperform in Asia more than Europe. Japan and SK were massive markets for BaTB and Aladdin and this will probably do way less (less than half of aladdin in these markets could be in play), both for race reasons and external reasons (SK being a very weakened market in general post-covid and Disney's presence in Japan having completely crashed and burned in recent years). China will also struggle here.

 

Black leads are usually a tough sell internationally (Will Smith is probably the only exception to this). Domestically I am sure the film will be fine as they draw in more black audiences than they lose bigots but that sort of offset is not present in most other countries.

Edited March 22, 2023 by JustLurking

[scabab]

9 hours ago, filmlover said:

Cool. You're gonna have to find someone else to try and convince that Disney should be afraid of a small but loud and obnoxious minority who lack the self-awareness to realize they're the villains in the story (and should in no way feel validated in the first place because if one can't see how having a collective "oh the horror!" pity party over the race of a fictional cartoon mermaid - whose race is completely irrelevant to the character's identity in the original movie this is a remake of! 

 

Can't be that small when the trailer has over 1.3 million dislikes and every single comment is taking the piss and that's just the YouTube video. On Twitter it's got 600,000 likes to 3 million dislikes. 

 

Still everyone always makes that tired argument of which the counter argument will always be the same. If her race is so irrelevant then why not just keep the character white? It's clearly relevant enough that the fictional cartoon mermaid still had red hair, a purple seashell bra and a green fin. 

 

It is going to flop.

[scabab]

I'll add though that most of this backlash isn't really about racism. Everyone knows that people are fragile as glass now and any kind of criticism towards something like this and now you're a racist because that's always going to be the easy copout excuse for people.

 

But nobody complained about the live action The Jungle Book, it was very successful and well liked. Nobody was complaining about Mulan for having a Chinese lead. Moana of course was very successful though that wasn't live action.

 

The backlash rather obviously is that they have unnecessarily changed the appearance of an iconic character for the remake. People don't like that. Just like they didn't like how Be Prepared was different in The Lion King or that Mushu wasn't in the remake. 

 

If Sebastian was no longer a lobster but a different creature altogether then people would hate that. If they changed the songs then people would hate that. People don't want change like that, not when remaking a classic, people want things to be the same as what they remembered fondly as a kid.

 

When you also take into account that it's obvious why this has been done in the first place because it keeps happening now then that's why there's backlash. 

 

They kept things pretty much the same for The Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast, it sound and looked like it should and it was hugely successful. That was all they had to do here as well. 

[filmlover]

It's a good thing the average person doesn't sit around all day blasting a Disney remake of all things (or any movie, really) online when they're busy doing much more productive things than spreading bile without consequence while trying to hide behind usually revealing comments like "I'm not racist but" before continuing to make thinly-veiled racist statements. Hard to think of anything that defines "first world problems" more than that.

 

We truly live in a weird era of self-pity where too many people have figured out that the way to avoid accountability for their own dumb statements/actions over the most inconsequential nonsense is by deflecting blame to others and saying it's their fault. Imagine channeling all that negative energy towards something truly worthy of being outraged over (like the fact circa 2023 we can't send our kids to school without worrying about whether they'll come back home alive at the end of the day every single day, but I'll spare everyone that particular rant for another time in another thread).

 

And that's my two cents on this topic. Anyone who wishes to continuing whining about something so silly, well, good luck to you.

Edited March 22, 2023 by filmlover

[eddyxx]

3 hours ago, ThePrinceIsOnFire said:

This will do well in North America and flop internationally. Both sides will argue over the results and claim success/flop to fit their own agendas.

Disney will proclaim the movie as a triumph based on the USA performance and ignore the flop elsewhere.

Americans SJW will feel satisfied  and fakely act like Halle Bailey is Meryl's streep's and Whitney Houston's love child, while Europeans skeptics will be critical of her and bash the movie. The real effect of this movie controversies will be seen on Snow White's performance which IMHO will flop everywhere, USA included...but that is another story.

 

I mean, we are already seeing crazyness happening here with users praising Halle Bailey as a beauty goddess, while on the extremely trashy british site dailymail everyone is criticizing her appearance (her eyes especially for being set too far off on the side of her face). I can only imagine how divisive this whole thing will be.

 

I was fine with the rest of your post but whats crazy about saying Halle is beautiful? She is, and so is her sister. They're total babes. Anya Taylor Joy has that same physical feature btw and no one ever denies she is beautiful. What a crazy opinion. Beauty is in the eye of the  beholder

 

.

Edited March 22, 2023 by eddyxx

[scabab]

49 minutes ago, filmlover said:

It's a good thing the average person doesn't sit around all day blasting a Disney remake of all things (or any movie, really) online when they're busy doing much more productive things than spreading bile without consequence while trying to hide behind usually revealing comments like "I'm not racist but" before continuing to make thinly-veiled racist statements.

 

You're literally proving my point. 

 

Again all these "racists" complaining about Ariel not being white....where were they when The Jungle Book came out and was a huge success? Where was the backlash then?

[filmlover]

12 minutes ago, scabab said:

 

You're literally proving my point. 

 

Again all these "racists" complaining about Ariel not being white....where were they when The Jungle Book came out and was a huge success? Where was the backlash then?

The group of people you're referring to was too busy wailing about an all-female Ghostbusters at the time. Try harder with the whataboutism. Next.

Edited March 22, 2023 by filmlover

[ThePrinceIsOnFire]

31 minutes ago, eddyxx said:

 

I was fine with the rest of your post but whats crazy about saying Halle is beautiful? She is, and so is her sister. They're total babes. Anya Taylor Joy has that same physical feature btw and no one ever denies she is beautiful. What a crazy opinion. Beauty is in the eye of the  beholder

 

 

Oh I'm not saying that she isn't beautiful, just that there is exaggeration already on both sides. The Haters/ Average dailymail Brit reader act like she is the ugliest creature, while some people here are commenting on her as if she were the finest woman ever. I Mean, saying that she looks like a supermodel, Tyra Banks (literally where/how, when Tyra is tall, curvy and light-eyed) etc... is a bit hyperbolic imho.  According to my personal taste, Naomi Scott (Jasmine in the Aladdin LA) is/was much more beautiful than Halle, if we want to talk about the disney princesses actresses.

Edited March 22, 2023 by ThePrinceIsOnFire

[Nikostar]

I know this is hard to accept for racist and the small anti woke crowed but nobody gives a shit about a black mermaid or white mermaid in the real world. Just like nobody gave a shit when the karate Kid was black or when the genie from Aladdin was black and not blue.  As long as the movie is good and the music is great people will be happy. I hardly doubt little girls are sitting behind the internet ranting about a colour of mermaid. It's 2023 not 1923. Also Hallie Bailey being the star will likely get a higher percentage of the African American audience that would not have made the movie a priority anyway. Look at all the videos of reaction from little black girls that was posted. The internet trolls are making a big fuss because they know when the movie comes out the entire world is about to ignore them as usual and see and enjoy the film.

[PlatnumRoyce]

15 hours ago, jedijake said:

I would think that most people who have a surprised reaction in the beginning would get over it quickly. I too had a knee jerk reaction of surprise when I first heard of the casting. But I did a little research and saw that Halle was really the perfect person for the role.

I honestly think that's making the opposite point you're intending because the default assumption really is always going to be apathy/not-seeing a film. The average person who has a surprised-negative reaction to a film trailer isn't going to actively seek out additional information, it's just going to decrease their interest in seeing film ___ by x%. Even live action Disney remakes don't start out 100% pre-sold to most audiences. 
 

Quote

she'd STILL look very different than, well, a cartoon. It's okay to beholden to the classic.

I also suspect that's a value of star power in a star powered weakened world. Will Smith and Hermione Granger don't exactly mirror their inspirations but they're movie stars that still gives a hook independent of comparisons to the previous film (and the slavish remake formula limits your ability to see as a compelling new stand alone character). 

[PlatnumRoyce]

1 hour ago, filmlover said:

Hard to think of anything that defines "first world problems" more than that.

Ironically, arguing about arguing about it seems like even more of a "first world problem?" 
 

Quote

It's just that it doesn't look like the Ariel I know and love which as a Little Mermaid fan, makes me lose interest

Overly intellectualizing that gut fandom response to successful or failed attempts to invoke nostalgia dopamine hits is at the core of what's going on here. Demanding said dopamine hits be extrapolated into mega-political stakes is a staple of "very online/first world problems" discourse that will subordinate any actual causal mechanisms to broader political status games. 

[WittyUsername]

2 hours ago, scabab said:

I'll add though that most of this backlash isn't really about racism. Everyone knows that people are fragile as glass now and any kind of criticism towards something like this and now you're a racist because that's always going to be the easy copout excuse for people.

 

But nobody complained about the live action The Jungle Book, it was very successful and well liked. Nobody was complaining about Mulan for having a Chinese lead. Moana of course was very successful though that wasn't live action.

 

The backlash rather obviously is that they have unnecessarily changed the appearance of an iconic character for the remake. People don't like that. Just like they didn't like how Be Prepared was different in The Lion King or that Mushu wasn't in the remake. 

 

If Sebastian was no longer a lobster but a different creature altogether then people would hate that. If they changed the songs then people would hate that. People don't want change like that, not when remaking a classic, people want things to be the same as what they remembered fondly as a kid.

 

When you also take into account that it's obvious why this has been done in the first place because it keeps happening now then that's why there's backlash. 

 

They kept things pretty much the same for The Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast, it sound and looked like it should and it was hugely successful. That was all they had to do here as well. 

This is a very bad comparison, and I hope you realize that.