Over the past few decades, we have been subjected to a great many live-action remakes of Disney films. When these projects started, it wasn’t too bad. Aladdin was better than you thought it was once you remove your Robin Williams bias, Beauty and the Beast was shit but accurate, and then it went downhill from there. The further down and more live-action remakes that hit the movie marketplace, the worse they have performed… With good reason, and The Little Mermaid proves this.
It’s Not What You’re Expecting
Now before you jump into the comments section and go crazy with the “Disney is woke”, or the “You’re racist against X people”, I’m not going to talk about those types of things. I won’t discount those people or ideas either, since there is some truth to those claims too. But I’m wanting to point out something that you might not have noticed before.
My big problem with the Disney live-action remakes is that due to the original versions being animation, you could get away with the fantasy aspect more than you can with realistic live-action. With animation, things like talking animals seem more possible because the animation allows this fantasy to seem like it fits in the film’s world.
With live action, people come into a film with realistic expectations depending on the situation. Most Disney films will have some form of talking animal in them, and given the hap-hazard nature of modern CGI, these creatures just look completely unnatural and stick out like sore thumbs.
Yes, I’m talking about talking animals breaking the immersion of Disney live-action films.
How The Little Mermaid Proves This
While The Little Mermaid is not the first film to show talking animals in it, it is the most obvious when it comes to how much these animals remove the illusion of disbelief that is needed for films of this kind.
Watching the most recent Little Mermaid trailer, I was on board with most of the things I was seeing. Halle Bailey is doing a good job as Ariel, (though she does look a bit of a muddier red/brown in the hair color instead of a solid red… Gingers are the true victims in these recasts) with her singing voice getting almost on par with Ariel’s original voice actor: Jodi Benson. Hell, I’m no Melissa McCarthy fan, but she is looking good with Ursula and does the laugh almost perfectly.
What got to me was Flounder, Scuttle, and Sebastian. But it wasn’t their voices that got to me and ripped me out of my seat like being shot out of a cannon into a brick wall, it was their appearance. Flounder was a fish, and we don’t see him talk, but we hear it, almost like Disney is hiding a bad CGI job. Scuttle just doesn’t look right at all, too goofy of a look while looking on the creepy side of realistic… Then we have Sebastian… My god… Having a realistically proportioned crab talking and singing is the stuff of nightmares.
It was Sebastian who pulled me out of the trailer and turned the movie from a “maybe” to an “oh hell no”. The image of his crab body with any accent is going to be enough to really scare kids, not to mention adults, when they see the finished film, and that’s not something you want.
The Curtain of Realism and Fantasy
The Little Mermaid is the most recent example. However, other films from Disney have the same issue. The Jungle Book relies heavily on a talking Panther, Bear, Tiger, Snake, Orangutang in order to tell its story. This didn’t work because the CGI used for the animals again didn’t help the problem of keeping things realistic and in the realm of the folk tale fantasy that the story is.
A lot of this comes from the way people experience things that they view. Again, animation allows people to forget that talking animals aren’t real, seeing as animation in itself is not real. Viewing animation, you tend to turn your brain off and go “It’s cool, it’s animation, it’s not real”.
But when you view a live-action film or any other media, your brain will cement itself in the fact that because this looks real, then you have to compare it to the reality around you. So, you see talking animals that are talking to a kid or adult, your brain goes “nope, this is wrong”. It’s the same logic that stops some people from watching Pro Wrestling as a sport, but instead, see it as a staged performance. It’s also why we can watch films like John Wick, which is a fantasy in itself, but set in a somewhat realistic world that we think could exist.
The One Exception
As with everything, there is one exception to this issue. The Lion King live-action was a monumental project that did extremely well with audiences. In a world where just the animals exist, even with a realistic tone, you see this as the animals talking to each other without any humans being around. You think that you are getting a look into the animals’ world, so you view this differently.
If you added a human element to The Lion King, say a Hunter or some local Tribes that hold the narrative structure of the movie, then you would view this differently and the veil of the fantasy would give way to the reality of the world.
Hell, even Aladdin did something similar. Yes, you have the fantasy with the Genie and all that, but did you notice something? Abu doesn’t talk. Sure, Abu understands what is going on around him and “speaks” like he understands when he is being spoken to, but he doesn’t talk back in English or any other language, so you don’t get a disconnect that you would with the other films.
A third example of how this can work is the Chip and Dale route. Disney released a Disney+ exclusive film that set Chip and Dale as retired TV show actors in a world where cartoons were cast by real beings and could be updated into CGI models. While the film wasn’t great, it gave a different way to have these characters in a realistic world by making both worlds compatible.
So How Could Disney Fix This Issue?
So here comes the question: “How can Disney reconnect from this disconnect?” Well, they need to stop. By “stop” I don’t mean give up on the live-action remakes completely, but take a step back and think long and hard about what properties they decide to adapt into this medium.
I think that the fewer adaptations where you have to rely on CGI realistic animals that talk, the better the film has a chance of doing. If The Little Mermaid moved Flounder and Sebastian into more silent roles as “friends” who help Ariel without talking, then the disconnect wouldn’t be so jarring (or frightening) … and Scuttle can scuttle right out of the movie, to be honest.
Sure, we can do the whole “Ariel is a mermaid, they can talk to fish like Aquaman”, but do the fish talk back to Aquaman? No, he understands their hearts and feelings, so the same could be applied here with The Little Mermaid.
The main thing in my mind is that Disney should look into remaking some of their rarer films into live-action when it comes to talking animals. Cinderella could work because the fairies can cast a magic spell that allows her to talk to animals and they talk back, a simple script change and it works. However, I’d like to adaptations like The Aristocats and The Great Mouse Detective, both movies that have very little human interaction and keeps the illusion of a secret look into the world of those animals.
I really think that a more thought-out approach towards these live-action remakes could help put them into a realm where people won’t groan when they hear that there is another Disney live-action remake coming out. I know Disney wants to put all the heavy hitters, the sure-fire box office hits, back out into the market to gain a dollar or two, but they need to think about the legacy and content of these films and realize that reality can’t hold a finger to animated fantasy unless you give the world a reason to break reality into becoming fantasy.
