If you’ve heard the buzz about The Little Mermaid live-action remake, you probably know that they’ve made quite a few changes to the film. This is par for the course for Disney remakes (remember when the Mulan live-action movie had none of the songs?), and it’s always the subject of heated debate on social media. Flounder’s new look is a jump scare, TBH.
For The Little Mermaid, changes made public before the film was released include lyric changes to some songs (or cutting the songs entirely), changing Scuttle to a diving bird, and adding an entire extra hour to the movie. But if you’re wondering whether it’ll ruin your memories of the animated classic and want to know what you’re getting into before you head to the theater, look no further. And I’m not talking about the diverse casting or anything else that’s already made headlines for the movie — that’s old news by this point. Instead, here are some of the big changes made in The Little Mermaid that you might not have known about. Spoiler warning: Spoilers for The Little Mermaid follow.
- Ursula and Triton are siblings.
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Disney In the original movie, we don’t really know why Ursula hates Triton so much beyond that she’s just evil. Which, like, is probably reason enough for a kids’ movie! But I get why director Rob Marshall might have wanted more of a backstory for her (after all, the villain origin story has been a recent trend in movies). In the remake, Triton and Ursula are brother and sister, and Triton banished Ursula to her cave 15 years ago, where she’s been biding her time. We don’t really know what she did back then, nor do we see that many scenes of these siblings interacting, so it’s kind of a toss-up as to whether this really changes anything for the story.
- Eric gets a backstory, and his parents are alive.
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Eric, played by Jonah Hauer-King, isn’t of royal blood in this version of the fairytale. Instead, he was taken in by the king and queen of the island as a baby and raised to be a prince, but also a voyager. He goes out to other nations by sea in hopes to connect with them and make his own kingdom a better place, to the chagrin of his adoptive mother Queen Selina (played by Noma Dumezweni). His adoptive father, the King, is also around but supposedly isolates himself in the castle — we only get a glimpse of him at the very end. Eric also gets his own new song, “Wild Uncharted Waters.”
- We find out how Ariel’s mother died, and some backstory about mermaids and humans.
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It’s kind of a running joke among Disney fans at this point that a Disney princess must have at least one dead parent, and for Ariel, that’s her mom. We didn’t really get insight into her in the original Little Mermaid film, but this time around, we learn that Ariel and the other mermaids used to be allowed to go to the surface, but then Ariel’s mother was killed by a human.
The opening scene also makes it clear that 1. Mermaids are thought to have siren songs that can lure sailors to their deaths, and 2. Humans are aware of mermaids, and the two species do not like each other. It explains Triton’s anger at Ariel wanting to know more about humans, and the siren song detail also provides a reason for why Ariel’s voice is so beautiful.
- Ursula’s deal with Ariel has an extra element.
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Disney We all know how the story goes: Ariel trades her voice for legs, and Ursula gives her three days to get a kiss of true love from Prince Eric, or else she’ll be stuck as a mermaid forever. But there’s an extra evil twist this time, in that Ursula uses magic to make Ariel forget that she even needs to try to get Eric to kiss her every time Sebastian or one of her other animal sidekicks reminds her. It certainly ups the stakes of the situation, but didn’t actually seem to change the timeline of anything at all.
- Sebastian’s subplot with Chef Louis is cut.
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In the original, Sebastian gets stuck in the palace kitchen while Ariel is having dinner with Eric and Grimsby. He fights off Chef Louis, who sings a song about wanting to cook seafood and tries to kill, cook, and serve Sebastian for dinner. That is… definitely something that would only work in an animated version, and I did not miss this subplot at all in the new movie.
- Ariel and Eric get more time to connect one-on-one.
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Disney Rather than the dinner scene I just mentioned, the remake shows Eric and Ariel having a moment to themselves where he shows her maps of their kingdom and the surrounding areas, and she teaches him about different sea objects he’s kept from his voyages. He also gives her a “little mermaid” figurine, which is just so darn cute. The whole thing makes their relationship feel a little more organic when they finally do go out on the town together. And at the end of the movie, the two of them are not only married, but seen leaving for another grand voyage together while their families cheer them on.
This isn’t all the changes in the movie — Ursula’s sidekicks Flotsam and Jetsam can’t talk in the remake, there are a couple other new songs that didn’t really need to be there, IMO, and we see just a little bit more of Ariel’s sisters (including Simone Ashley as Indira!), who watch over the seven seas and have returned for the coral moon — but these are the ones that have a bigger bearing on the actual plot. If you’re a staunch purist who doesn’t want anything about the original to change, it’s up to you whether these differences are worth putting up with, but the heart of the story is mostly the same.