The Little Mermaid (1989 film)

The Little Mermaid is the twenty-eighth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon. Based upon the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale The Little Mermaid, the film was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and first released on November 15, 1989 by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution. ^* Grossing over $111 million in the U.S. and an additional $99 million worldwide, the film is given credit for breathing life back into the animated feature film genre after a string of critical and commercial failures (The Black Cauldron, The Great Mouse Detective, Oliver and Company). In addition, The Little Mermaid signaled the start of a decade-long period of successful Disney movies (except The Rescuers Down Under).

An upcoming stage adaptation of the movie is planned with additional songs by Alan Menken and new lyricist Glenn Slater and is expected to open on Broadway in 2007 or 2008. The book for the musical has been completed by Doug Wright. [http://newyorkmetro.com/arts/theater/profiles/16075/

Plot

The film follows the story of a headstrong sixteen-year-old mermaid named Ariel, who is dissatisfied with life under the sea. Ignoring the warnings of her father, King Triton, and the court musician, Sebastian the crab, Ariel and her best friend, a fish named Flounder, often sneak up to the surface of the ocean. There, they collect human artifacts with the help of a goofy seagull named Scuttle (he calls a fork and smoking pipe a Dinglehopper and a Snarfblatt respectively). Ariel knows that contact between the humans and merpeople is forbidden, but she longs to be part of the human world.

Worried about his daughter's behavior, Triton assigns Sebastian to look after her and report on her activities. Sebastian discovers that Ariel has been collecting all of the items she finds from the surface in a secret underwater grotto, but he decides not to tell Triton for Ariel's sake.

Unknown to anyone, all of this is being observed by Ursula the sea witch, who for many years has been seeking a way to exact her revenge upon King Triton for banishing her from the kingdom. She sees Ariel as the perfect pawn in her quest to rule the seas.

That night, Ariel and Flounder travel again to the surface to watch a fireworks celebration for Prince Eric's birthday. Eric is presented with a giant stone statue of himself, commissioned by his guardian Grimsby, who is pressuring Eric to get married so he can become king. The birthday celebration is cut short when a violent storm destroys the ship. Eric is lost at sea and almost drowns before he is saved by Ariel, who has taken a liking to the prince. She disappears just as he is awakening, but Eric is enthralled by the memory of her beautiful singing voice.

Ariel's dazed behavior the next morning causes her father to become suspicious, and Triton attempts to extract from Sebastian the name of the man she is in love with. When King Triton learns that his daughter is in love with a human, he becomes furious and destroys Ariel's grotto, including the stone statue from Eric's birthday party.

Ursula decides that now is the time to make her move, and she assigns her pet eels Flotsam and Jetsam to bring Ariel to her underwater cave. There, Ursula makes a deal with the princess to transform Ariel into a human for three days. Within these three days, if she plans to remain a human, she must give Eric the "kiss of true love"; otherwise she will transform back into a mermaid at sunset on the third day. If this happens, Ursula will own her very soul and wither her down into a polyp, to join her garden of other lost merfolk.

As agreed, Ursula makes a potion to change the little mermaid. As "payment", she takes Ariel's voice and makes her unable to speak, knowing that Eric remembers Ariel only by her voice. Ariel's tail is split into two legs and she becomes human. Sebastian and Flounder drag the drowning, helpless Ariel to the surface, where she takes her first breath of air and is helped toward the beach, where Eric discovers her. He has no idea who Ariel is and what she has done for him, and she is unable to tell him.

While Ariel is enjoying life with Eric in the human palace, Sebastian, Flounder and Scuttle try to get Ariel and Eric to kiss and break the spell. Ursula, however, is trying to prevent them from doing so. Taking the guise of a beautiful young woman named Vanessa, Ursula appears onshore, singing in Ariel's voice, which is housed in a magic nautilus shell around "Vanessa's" neck. She casts a spell of enchantment on Eric, who plans to marry her immediately, much to Ariel's dismay.

The ceremony is set to take place at sunset, which is when Ariel's deal with Ursula ends. Sebastian rushes to inform Triton, while Scuttle, Flounder and Eric's sheepdog Max stall the wedding by causing all sea and air animals to distract the wedding party. Scuttle and his fellow seabirds pull at "Vanessa's" hair and conch necklace. After a flock of seagulls fly between her causing her to stumble, Max bites her bottom and she becomes susceptible to revealing her true identity. When "Vanessa" is distracted, the conch shell around her neck is broken, and Ariel's voice is restored. Realizing that Ariel was the girl who saved his life, Eric rushes to kiss her, but he is too late; the sun sets and Ariel transforms back into a mermaid. "Vanessa" transforms back into Ursula and she grabs Ariel as she disappears into the sea.

Triton catches up with Ursula and attempts to destroy the deal she made with Ariel, but is unable to do so. Before Triton's eyes, Ursula begins the process of transforming Ariel into a polyp, but then offers Triton a deal: she will accept his soul in the place of Ariel's. Triton sacrifices himself for his daughter and is transformed into a helpless polyp.

Ursula takes Triton's crown and trident and declares herself ruler of the sea. Ariel tries to stop her, and accidentally causes Ursula to destroy her pet eels. An enraged Ursula transforms into a giant and attempts to destroy Ariel. Eric sails out to sea and joins Ariel in the fight against Ursula, but the two of them appear to be no match for the behemoth, who forms a massive whirlpool that drags wrecked ships from the bottom of the sea. She then uses the trident to blast Ariel into the bottom of the whirlpool, where she is trapped and helpless. Ursula raises the trident to finish Ariel with a blast of energy, but Eric jumps aboard one of the vessels and rams the ship's splintered bowsprit through her heart, killing her.

With Ursula dead, the polyps in Ursula's garden, including Triton, are all changed back into merpeople. Noticing how unhappy his daughter is and how much she truly loves Eric, Triton decides to give Ariel what she wants. Ariel watches in astonished delight as she is changed permanently into a human, and walks gracefully to shore before her proud father's eyes. She runs into Eric's arms, and the two finally kiss.

In the next scene, presumably a year or a few months later, she and Eric are seen kissing again, this time at the true wedding. Both humans and merpeople turn out for the wedding, and Triton accepts Eric as a part of the family. Eric and Ariel sail away into the sunset to live happily ever after.

Criticisms

Hans Christian Andersen purists have criticized the film for dramatically altering the story to give it a happier ending, thus dramatically changing the intended meaning of the classic fairy tale, in which the mermaid dies. This has altered the conception of the Little Mermaid among many people, who may only be familiar with the Disney version. Also there is little reference to Danish culture in the film, unlike other Disney films such as Beauty and the Beast or Mulan which include many references to the original culture of the story.

It has been argued that the film also derives elements from Shakespeare's The Tempest, especially considering the inclusion of Ariel.

Theatrical release history

November 17, 1989 (original release)
November 14, 1997 (re-release)

Home video release history

1990 (VHS)
1998 (VHS)
1999 (VHS and DVD)

NOTE: Disney will re-release the movie on DVD on October 3, 2006, as part of Buena Vista Home Entertainment's Platinum Collection of the classic Walt Disney animated features. Deleted scenes, new musical sequences and several in-depth documentaries in the style of the Platinum release of Cinderella in 2005, are expected to be included. ^*

Significance

The Little Mermaid is an important film in animation history for many reasons:

It marks a return to the musical format that made Disney films popular from the 1930s to the 1960s, after a test run with Oliver and Company the year before. It features seven original songs by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman, who also served as the film's producer.

It had the most special effects for a Disney animated feature since Fantasia was released forty-nine years earlier. Effects animation supervisor Mark Dindal estimated that over a million bubbles were drawn for this film, in addition to the use of other processes such as airbrushing, backlighting, superimposition, and some flat-shaded computer animation.

The wedding scene at the close of the film marked the first use of CAPS (Computer Animation Production System) in a Disney feature. CAPS is a digital ink-and-paint and animation production system that colors the animators' drawings digitally, as opposed to the traditional animation method of tracing ink and paint onto cels (see Traditional animation). The rest of The Little Mermaid is painted traditionally. All subsequent Disney features have used CAPS instead of ink-and-paint.

This film signaled a renaissance in Disney animation; the films were popular and financial successes, causing Disney's feature animation department to begin significant expansion, from about 300 artists in 1988 to 2,400 by 1999.

The Little Mermaid won the 1990 Academy Award for Original Music Score. Both "Kiss the Girl" and "Under the Sea" were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song; the Oscar went to "Under the Sea".

Production

In 1985, "The Great Mouse Detective" co-director Ron Clements discovered a collection of Hans C. Anderson's fairy tales while browsing a bookstore. He presented a two-page draft of a movie based on "The Little Mermaid" to CEO Michael Eisner and Walt Disney Pictures boss Jeffrey Katzenberg, who green-lighted the idea for possible development, along with "Oliver & Company".

That year, Clements and "Great Mouse Detective" co-director John Musker expanded the two-page idea into a 20-page rough script, eliminating the role of the mermaid's grandmother and expanding the roles of the Merman King and the sea witch. However, the film's plans were momentarily shelved as Disney focused its attention on "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" and "Oliver & Company" as more immediate releases.

In 1987, songwriter Howard Ashman became involved with Mermaid after he was asked to contribute to "Oliver & Company". He proposed changing the minor character Clarence, the English-butler crab, to a Jamaican Rastafarian crab and shifting the music style throughout the film to reflect this. At the same time, Katzenberg, Clements, Musker, and Ashman changed the story format to make Mermaid like an animated Broadway musical. Ashman and Alan Menken (composer) teamed up to compose the entire songtrack. In 1988, with "Oliver" out of the way, Mermaid was slated as the next major Disney release.

More money and resources were dedicated to Mermaid than any other Disney animated film in decades. The artistic manpower needed for Mermaid required Disney to farm out most of the bubble-drawing in the film to Pacific Rim Productions, a China-based firm with production facilities in Beijing. Principal artists worked on the animation - Glen Keane and Mark Henn on Ariel, Duncan Marjoribanks on Sebastian, Andreas Deja on King Triton and Ruben Aquino on Ursula. Originally, Keane had been asked to work on Ursula, as he had established a reputation for drawing large, powerful figures (the bear in "The Fox and the Hound," Professor Ratigan in "The Great Mouse Detective".) Keane, however, was assigned as one of the two lead artists on the petite, charming Ariel and oversaw the "Part of Your World" musical number.

Another first for recent years was that live actors and actresses were filmed for reference material for the animators. Broadway actress Jodi Benson was chosen to play Ariel, and Sherri Lynn Stoner, a former member of Los Angeles' Groundlings improv comedy group, acted out Ariel's key scenes. Not all of Disney's animators approved of the use of live-action reference; one artist quit the project over the issue. An attempt to use Disney's famed multiplane camera for the first time in years for quality "depth" shots failed because the machine was reputedly in dilapidated condition.

Aside from its main animation facility in Glendale, California, Disney opened a satellite feature animation facility during the production of Mermaid near Orlando, Florida, within the still-unfinished Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park at Walt Disney World. Though the park opened to the public a year later, work at the animation studio began in May 1988, and the Disney-MGM facility's first projects were to produce an entire "Roger Rabbit" cartoon short, and contribute ink and paint support to Mermaid.

Mermaid is the last Disney feature film to use the traditional hand-painted cel method of animation. Disney's next film, "The Rescuers Down Under", used a digital method of coloring and combining scanned drawings -- CAPS (Computer Animation Production System), which eliminated the need for cels. A CAPS prototype was used experimentally on a few scenes in Mermaid, including the final wedding scene. Other CGI includes some of the wrecked ships in the final battle, a staircase behind a shot of Ariel in Eric's castle, and the carriage Eric and Ariel are riding in when she bounces it over a ravine. (Notice that the wheels aren't moving when it comes down for a landing.)

In November 15, 1989, Mermaid began critics' screenings in Los Angeles and New York City. In November 17, 1989, the world premiere of Mermaid took place near Orlando, Florida on all ten AMC Pleasure Island screens at Walt Disney World's newly-built Pleasure Island nightclub.

Voice cast

Actor	Role(s)
Jodi Benson	Princess Ariel Vanessa
Samuel E. Wright	Horatio Felonious Ignacious Crustaceous Sebastian
Pat Carroll	Ursula
Christopher Daniel Barnes	Prince Eric
Kenneth Mars	King Triton
Jason Marin	Flounder
Buddy Hackett	Scuttle
Ben Wright	Grimsby
Rene Auberjonois	Chef Louis
Paddi Edwards	Flotsam and Jetsam
Edie McClurg	Carlotta
Will Ryan	Seahorse

Songs

"Fathoms Below", performed by Sailors
"Daughters of Triton", performed by Aquata, Andrina, Arista, Attina, Adella and Alana. (Note: Ariel was supposed to be a part of this, but she was busy exploring the inside of a sunken ship.)
"Part of Your World", performed by Ariel
"Part of Your World (Reprise)", performed by Ariel
"Under the Sea", performed by Sebastian
"Poor Unfortunate Souls", performed by Ursula and Ariel
"Les Poissons", performed by Louis
"Kiss the Girl", performed by Sebastian
"Happy Ending", performed by Merpeople

Controversy

Rumors of subliminal sexual images being hidden in The Little Mermaid have dogged the film twice. One of the castle spires was said to bear a striking resemblance to a circumcised phallus. (This was on the Walt Disney Black Diamond Classics video release, and an early promotional poster.) The artist (who was not a Disney employee) claimed not to have noticed the resemblance until a member of his youth church group made him aware of the controversy. Later promotional posters and video/DVD covers were redesigned to exclude this content.

A second rumour claimed that the priest performing the wedding between Eric and Vanessa (Ursula in disguise), had an obvious penile erection in one scene. The alleged erection also appears to be a bony knee poking through his robe. Nevertheless, The Walt Disney Company has been subject of attacks in the recent years and even boycotts regarding not only this film, but others such as The Rescuers, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Aladdin and The Lion King, which were said to contain similar sexual references.

The following two external links lead to pages on the Urban Legends Reference Pages that explains these urban legends in more detail:

A phallus was drawn on the video cover for the movie by a disgruntled artist.
A minister becomes aroused during the wedding scene in the movie.

TV series and sequels

The animated series version of this movie titled The Little Mermaid premiered in late 1992.
A direct-to-video sequel called Return to the Sea was released on September 19, 2000. A second direct-to-video sequel called The Little Mermaid III is in development for a 2007 release. It was originally scheduled for 2008, but when John Lasseter took over Disney Animation, more resources were spent on completing the sequel for a quicker release. A trailer is attached to the upcoming DVD re-release for the original film.

Broadway

A Broadway version is in the works in London. Alan Menken is working on the music.

Trivia

The Little Mermaid was originally planned as one of Disney's earliest films. Production started soon after Snow White, but was put on hold due to several circumstances.
Glen Keane, the supervising animator for Ariel, jokingly stated on the Pocahontas: 10th Anniversary Edition DVD that Ariel looks exactly like his wife 'without the fins'. The character's body shape and personality were based upon that of Alyssa Milano, then starring on TV's Who's the Boss? and the effect of her hair underwater was based on footage of Sally Ride, when she was in space.
The world of The Little Mermaid, Atlantica, appears in all three games of the Kingdom Hearts series, where Ariel teams up with Sora (the main character of the series), Donald Duck and Goofy to fight Ursula thrice. In order to blend in with the atmosphere of Atlantica and survive underwater, Sora becomes a merman (With a dolphin tail instead of a fish's), Donald's legs become tentacles like an octopus', and Goofy becomes a sea turtle.
In Kingdom Hearts 2, Atlantica features a series of games that feature new songs such as "Swim This Way," "Ursula's Revenge," and "A New Day is Dawning." It also uses songs from the movie such as "Part Of Your World" and "Under the Sea" with vocals by Sora, Donald, and Goofy. It more closely follows the plot of the movie than the first game.
Ursula's death is based on the shark's death in Jaws: The Revenge
In Ursula's spell to turn Ariel human, she uses types of caviar in her incantation. (E.g., Beluga, Sevruga...)
When Scuttle is providing "vocal romantic stimulation" while Eric and Ariel are out at the lagoon, he is actually squaking his own version of Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet".
In The Simpsons on episode Homer Bad Man There is a spoof of the song Under The Sea where Homer eats all the sea creatures featured in The Little Mermaid.

References

Finkelstein, Richard, ‘Disney's Tempest: Colonizing Desire in The Little Mermaid’ in Ayres and Hines, eds. The Emperor's Old Groove: Decolonizing Disney's Magic (2003)

External links

The Little Mermaid Special Edition - Product page on DisneyVideo.com
Daring to Dream - A fansite dedicated to the movie, plus its sequel and spin-off tv series
'UltimateDisney.com: Limited Issue DVD Review with Pictures'
The Big Cartoon DataBase entry for The Little Mermaid
Meeko's The Little Mermaid Fansite

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