TLM trailer 1 - March 14

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks, and you can always count on your family to make you feel worse, so let us talk about something else – the upcoming ‘Little Mermaid’ film, perhaps?

The movie itself is shaping to be fairly typical for Disney – not unlike the ‘Pinocchio’ reboot, where the film was mostly like the original animated version, save for minor details there and here, and as for the details themselves…

Do you remember us discussing ‘The Whale’ recently? It was pointed out, that the excessive weight of the main character – Charlie – as well as his homosexuality were only ‘window dressing’ to disguise the fact that Mr. A has depicted a thoroughly miserable and lonely man, who was also a deeply flawed individual; in fact, it can be argued that Charlie’s supposedly defining features are actually flat-out redundant and unnecessary for the movie’s narrative. The trick here is the same can be said about the female lead of ‘The Whale’ – Liz the nurse, whose defining trait is her race – she is played by a P.O.C., but, unfortunately, her race never plays a factor in ‘The Whale’, even less than Charlie’s traits do. Still, politics of the day must politic, and so ‘The Whale’ had a token P.O.C., even though Liz’s race never played a factor in ‘The Whale’… Now what?

…The same can be said about the upcoming ‘Little Mermaid’ reboot. OK, Ariel is going to be played by a P.O.C., of an Afro-, rather than of Asian-American origin, but so what? What exactly the role that her race is going to be playing in the film? None whatsoever, and given the fact that it is a movie about mermaids and other mythical beings, the arguments that are being raised both pro and contra Ms. B’s role as Ariel are ridiculous and stupid. Both God and Caesar must have their dues, for TLM reboot to lift-off there must be some POCs in the cast, and so there are. Why does TLM need a reboot in the first place is another story, but it is going to get one regardless. Anything else?

Yes, getting back to the film’s trailer, I just want to talk about the bird – it has changed species completely. In the original movie, it was a gull – just a generic gull, starring in a magical animated film, nothing more. Now, however, Disney is going for realism, and so the bird… turned from a gull into a gannet. Despite being seabirds, gannets do not have any connection to gulls – they and the booby birds are related to frigate birds, cormorants, and darters, and beyond that – to bustards and storks. They do not even look like gulls, and the two bird groups do not act too similarly either, so I do not know why the film’s cast decided to do this. Ah well, human logic does sometimes manifest in odd ways.

For now though, this is it. See you all soon!