There are many reasons to be skeptical about Disney’s upcoming live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. The studio’s track record with these remakes hasn’t been great lately, we’re a bit burnt out on underwater adventures after Avatar: The Way of Water and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and some of the CGI character designs look extremely uninspired. The new trailer has made us feel a little better about the film’s chances, but we think it’s still a coin flip.
All that said, there’s one weird attack on the film that’s just unvarnished racism against its star Halle Bailey, which has caused people (who clearly have nothing better to do) to brigade it. After a campaign site called this out, Frozen star Josh Gad didn’t hesitate to leap into the debate:
We’re with Gad on this: if the skin color of a fantasy mermaid in a Disney princess movie primarily aimed at young girls is genuinely making you upset, you probably should take a step back and figure out where it all went wrong for you.
All that said, there are still some big questions about this movie. We’re still smarting from Disney’s awful live-action remake of Pinocchio, which unforgivably wasted Tom Hanks as Geppetto. The Little Mermaid appears to have been given a lot of production resources and a hefty marketing budget, though for us, the overall aesthetic of the movie still pales in comparison to the technicolor underwater delights of the original animated classic.
We’ll find out for ourselves if life really is better down where it’s wetter on May 26, 2023.