The Little Mermaid Director Breaks Down One Big Change From Animated Film (Exclusive)
The live-action remake of The Little Mermaid is now playing in theaters, and it sees Halle Bailey taking on the titular role. The film was helmed by Rob Marshall, who is best known for directing Chicago, Into the Woods, Mary Poppins Returns, and more. Like most of Disney's live-action remakes, there are some big changes in the new version ranging from additional songs by Alan Menken and Lin-Manuel Miranda to lyric changes in one of Disney's most famous songs. However, the songs are not the only things that changed in the film, which isn't too surprising considering it is nearly an hour longer than the animated movie. ComicBook.com recently had the chance to speak with Marshall about The Little Mermaid, and he explained one big change from the original.
In the animated version of The Little Mermaid, Ursala turns her merpeople victims into polyps, the small plant-like animal hybrids. If you were a fan of the cartoon, you were definitely freaked out by the sea witch's form of punishment. In the end of the animated movie, Ursala allows King Triton to trade his life for Ariel's, and he briefly gets turned into a polyp before his daughter and Prince Eric save the day. However, the new version cuts out the polyps altogether.
"Yeah, it was interesting," Marshall explained. "It was really, I know this sounds crazy, but it was about where they were. You know, if I wanted to go back to the Hans Christian Andersen [fairy tale], where they're really these creatures who are outside of her lair ... it just felt like one thing too much for them to be actual people ... it was the idea that these plants would then turn into people felt almost like an animation idea, a concept ... When you watch Triton in the original turn into one of them, it's comical."
Marshall continued, "In a live-action, there's that line, you know, there are things that work in animation. There are just things that just don't work in live-action ... I felt like this feels like one step too far, that it will cross that line into something that seems silly."
Rob Marshall on Directing Halle Bailey:
"Well, you know, she was like a sponge," Marshall shared in his interview with ComicBook.com. "I mean, you know, she'd never done this before. And she shared with me later, which I wasn't aware of, that she was so scared every day. But I never felt that from her. She seemed as cool as a cucumber, but she was soaking everything in and everything that I would say or [producer[ John DeLuca would say. She absorbed so quickly and would just do it, but she did it with taste."
He continued, "You know, that was that's what's interesting. She understood camera and film immediately, and I thought that was sort of natural. You could see she's natural on camera, truthful. But there's something, you know, they say the camera loves you or, you know... the camera loves Halle. They it's just there's something about her. And so I was so excited to actually watch her grow into a film star as we were working. It was really exciting."
How did you feel about the changes made to The Little Mermaid? Tell us in the comments.