#tlm 2023

[womeninfictionandirl]

Ariel by Tanya Lehoux

[dearest-alexander]

#I love my two hoarders.

[makesitprecious]

Eric's mom: you almost died!! you have to stay in the castle. no more going out on the ocean for you.

Eric, the immediate scene after that:

[pickypickypeak]

the category is. alan menken deep emotional solos in disney remakes sung by the love interest who had none in the original movie but definitely deserved one cause they have their own story to tell and it really puts them on the same level as the main character

[ottoriver]

2023 has been the year of angsty men singing about their feelings and I am here for it.

[blackthornluce]

Noma Dumezweni as Queen Selina and Jonah Hauer-King as Prince Eric in THE LITTLE MERMAID (2023).

[cancerian-woman]

I love good chemistry.

[lenoreamidala]

Well, it’s like I always say, children got to be free to lead their own lives. Oh, is that what you always say? Somethin’ like that. Yeah.

[bohemian-nights]

Prince Eric x Ariel -The Little Mermaid (2023) 🧜🏽‍♀️

[thelaziestmotherfucker]

She was very real. And so were your feelings for her, I see that now. It's just that our worlds were never meant to be together.

[galindathrop]

The Little Mermaid (2023) - music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman, and new lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda

[nicaminoru]

"Ariel...it’s a beautiful name. Written in the stars.”

[dearest-alexander]

Eric, looking after Ariel

and of course,

[dalfurawa]

CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW when eric is singing the lines “taking me with your song” and “i cannot get over you” you can see him smiling??

LOOK AT HIM

HE CAN’T HELP BUT TO SMILE when he’s remembering her and singing about her!! like he’s resigned himself to the fact that she’s already consumed his entire being!!!! our simp king

[artist-issues]

I know we're all over this topic right now. But one of the main things I think was important in the original The Little Mermaid that the remake totally missed was that Ariel's faith was in a person.

She starts out having faith in an idea. A vague concept. "Humans might be wonderful and worth loving because they make wonderful things. They might not be barbarians. They might even understand me."

And that's great. She has some evidence to put her faith in. But that evidence is how kind and harmless a scatter-brained seagull is, and his nonsense explanations of human trinkets.

So she deduces that the humans might not all be bad and they might actually be wonderful. If they can make things, maybe they must be inventive--maybe they see the world as full of possibilities--just like she does.

And that's enough to make her argue with her dad, the king, and buck against the entire undersea worldview.

It's enough to make her spend her days collecting and dreaming.

It's enough to make her visit the surface despite the fact that it's forbidden and potentially a risk to her life.

But the collection, the good Surface-Seagull, and all her guesses about the Surface are not enough to make her leave her family and her world behind.

And the original movie's creators knew that the audience needed to see that, in Act 1.

She thinks about it. But she doesn't actually pull the trigger. She doesn't actually take the leap of faith, or make the big sacrifice.

Not until she meets a person who embodies all the things she's hoped were true after her experiences with trinkets and seagulls.

When Ariel discovers Eric, he brings all her dreams about what the Surface might be like to life. He makes it real.

That's why she's in love with him. There's a combination of "he's everything I hoped humans would be...and he's even better, because I know how he feels."

In the Script for The Little Mermaid, when Eric asks if Grimsby is still "sore because I didn't fall for the Princess of Glowerhaven," there's just one break in the dialogue before Grimsby responds. It says "Ariel listens closely."

Because that's important. It's not just because she thinks he's handsome and she's listening to learn more about what his love life is like. She's listening closely because there's a conflict, like the ones she has with her father, and she wants to see if this human is "reprimanded" for his way of thinking or not.

She not only finds a human who is brave, sacrifices himself for an animal, and free to explore--she also finds a human who has dreams that the people around him can't understand.

He makes her ideals real, and expands on them, just by being himself.

Ariel learns precisely what she needs to about him, in one scene, for her in-character response to be "falls deeply in love."

And he's the straw that breaks the camel's back. Suddenly it's all real to her. Now she can sacrifice. Now she has something powerful enough to put her faith in--now she has someone worth loving enough to take a big leap of faith to.

That's why having her forget that she needs to kiss him, and having her only decide to give up her life under the sea when Ursula specifically mentions "never leave home again," is not Ariel. It implies that most prominent reason for her sacrifice was so that she could be free to explore instead of imprisoned where nobody gets her. But that's not Ariel. That's not the most important reason behind why she left in the original movie. She left because she finally had someone to love, and put her faith in.

She left for love, not independence. She left for Eric, not just for herself. You can dislike that all you want, but then you're disliking Ariel. Because that's who she is; that's why she did it.

[blackthornluce]

THE LITTLE MERMAID (2023)