I liked your thoughts on diversity issues in the LA TLM. Would be happy to read your analysis of the whole movie.

Thank you for enjoying my thoughts! I think people are really blinded by the casting of Halle to realize that a film set in the Caribbean (TLM 2023) should not look like this:

It's also worthy of noting that the only two people of color in this picture aside from Halle are only featured via their voice- Halle's father, uncle, and love interest are all white- even Ariel's "alter ego" (ie the one who stole her voice and is using it, so should conceivably look enough like her to believably be the original owner of the stolen voice) is also a white British woman...such a missed opportunity. Especially since Disney doesn't have a black Prince (Naveen is South Asian).

Honestly, that specific fandom is probably the worst to interact with if you aren't blindly praising the movie. I think it was a mistake just like every other live-action Disney movie, which are always inferior versions of their original counterparts. I could get more granular but, again, I really don't feel like being countered on why this movie is the best ever and every choice was genius when I have a difference of opinion. I think the added lore was confusing and convoluted and never paid off, the design of the costumes and the worldbuilding was ugly tbh, I think they put WAY too many expectations on Halle and the character of Ariel to the point where it obliterated the very human and vulnerable components of her, they went against all of Howard's original notes of effect vs going broad, and Rob Marshall showed who he was multiple times by saying how he felt the original had a shallow love story that he never connected with, Eric was two dimensional character in the original, and just all the other negative things he said about Ron and John's great work while simultaneously ripping them off (Jodi's said multiple times that Ron kept mentioning to her during the screening that they used a ton of his lines from his original story treatment).

I think the performances were wooden, to put it mildly. And, honestly while a lot of this boils down to bad acting and lack of chemistry (Javier might give the worst performance I've ever seen in a film), it also isn't fair to have actors navigate a heavily CGI'd world compared to the medium of animation that has like four performances for a single character (between the many supervising and sequence animators a single character might have, their voice, the dialogue director, etc). In the original, you can see how Triton and Ariel keep interrupting one another in a masterclass of expressive animation and dimensional voice acting, they're almost one top of each other, and the heave Ariel musters as all the emotions build in her chest. We can feel how frustrated she feels at her inability to be heard and how she's fighting to keep her emotions from getting the best of her. Halle and Javier have a different dynamic, where they never really get that heated or emotionally charged and they're barely interrupting one another; they're super still, and the calm way with which she stares at him before swimming off...I'm sorry, this just isn't it for me lol the film isn't as bad as Lily's Cinderella but nothing ever will be lol