As if all of the woke news surrounding Disney’s live-action remake of the beloved 1989 animated classic The Little Mermaid wasn’t bad enough already, reports continue to trickle in making it sounds worse and worse.
Composer Alan Menken, who helped score and lyricize the songs for some of Disney’s most iconic animated classics, from The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, returned to the story to help add a few new numbers and modernize some themes found in songs dating back thirty years.
“There are some lyric changes in “Kiss the Girl” because people have gotten very sensitive about the idea that [Prince Eric] would, in any way, force himself on [Ariel],” Menken said of the song featured while a voiceless Ariel and Prince Eric are out for a quiet boat ride and Sebastian croons some suggestions to help his friend both find love and regain her freedom from the antagonist.
“We have some revisions in “Poor Unfortunate Souls” regarding lines that might make young girls somehow feel that they shouldn’t speak out of turn, even though Ursula is clearly manipulating Ariel to give up her voice,” Menken added.
As absurd as the lyric changes are, they are hardly the main reason prospective audiences are already outraged at Disney’s presumed abomination. Other than the song change, the focal point of fan disgust centers around the all-too-common race swapping of the protagonist Nordic mermaid. Disney got absolutely trounced when they shared trailers for the film slated to be released May 26th.
There is also the recasting of Scuttle, Ariel’s plucky seabird friend. Clearly voiced by a male in the 1989 version, he is now going to be decidedly female.
Of course, one thing that hasn’t changed is the representation of Sebastian. Markedly Jamaican – i.e. black – in the animated film, the voice actor chosen to represent him on screen is hip-hop artist Daveed Diggs. As always, the swapping only ever goes in one direction.
And that’s far from the only IP Disney has ruined recently. It also somehow managed to ruin its best show, the Mandalorian. Bounding into Comics noted that not only is the show bleeding viewers, but those who somehow stick through the increasingly bad episodes are giving it worse and worse ratings. In that site’s words:
The latest season of The Mandalorian is not only seeing viewers tune out of the show en masse, but viewers who do happen to continue to slog through each episode are giving the series some of its worst ratings yet with the most recent episode featuring Lizzo and Jack Black currently holding the crown for the worst reviewed episode.
The Mandalorian “Chapter 22: Guns for Hire” currently has a mediocre 6.8 audience score on IMDb. Not only is this score the worst of this season, it is the worst rating for the entire series.
This latest episode unseated “Chapter 19: The Convert” that was previously the lowest rated episode with a 7.1 rating on IMDb.
The Season 3 premiere “Chapter 17: The Apostate” was previously tied with “Chapter 5: The Gunslinger” for the worst rated episode with a 7.5.
Featured image: Screen shot from embedded YouTube video.
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