god’s strongest soldiers are my mutuals who put up with me when I let the brainrot take over and start posting like I got possessed about something they haven’t even heard of yet
thinking about how when ariel got her voice back she will tell eric all the things she collected that belonged to the above world and how much it meant to her to find someone like him who loves to collect things too and is just as curious about the rest of the world as she is and now they get to go off exploring and collecting things together and teaching each other even more about the above world and the ocean 😭😭😭😭
So I went to see The Little Mermaid today and I loved it. Here’s a dissertation no one asked for
The cinematography was absolutely gorgeous, I saw people were complaining prior to the movie’s release that the lighting was too dark, it was perfect, a lot of films and tv do not know how to light people of color correctly and they hit it out of the park every single shot.
The singing was ON POINT. The live action films have tended to not cast real singers but every single song was on point, they were SANGIN
People have been absolutely disgusting towards Halle Bailey and they are about to cry harder because when I say she is The Ariel, I mean that. Not only was her singing like a crystal champagne flute, her acting was phenomenal. She was so ANIMATED, and got every single emotion and attribute of Ariel that was in the 1989 version and elevated it. She is elevation, hope, and curiosity and you can’t help but fall in love with her every time she was on screen. While I do love the actresses in other disney live actions, you can tell with their acting that they are acting like they put on the smile and the costume and go to set. Halle is Ariel, it would have been so easy for her to do a cutesy imitation for 2 hours and collect a check ( and I wouldn’t mind it one bit if she had did that get that bag sis) but Halle was in complete control of the character instead of drowning in it. There is no one else who could have played Ariel and she will go down in history for this performance.
I have to admit that the disney princes for the most part in the animated films with very few exceptions are the most milquetoast aspect of the story so I was fully expecting to kinda put Jonah to the side when the film started but he made me eat my words. He was excellent, he was such a breath of fresh air and gave Prince Eric such depth, he had me swooning and I was not prepared to swoon over Eric today.
I too had my doubts about Melissa McCarthy but just how good her singing was surprised me. She was so damn good and hit all the beats for Ursula with charm and humor. I’d like to see Melissa play more villains, she has the range.
I think the weakest part of the film was Javier Bardem. His acting was kinda all over the place, in some scenes he was perfect but in others he was phoning it in. That end scene though was his best scene and I did start crying and hugged my own father who I dragged to the movie with me.
The way twitter overhyped Vanessa is very telling. Jessica Alexander is gorgeous and had some great facial expressions but for the majority of her role she literally just a mouthpiece for Melissa McCarthy and Halle Bailey. I’m not sorry to say this but while stanning the villian is normal we all do it and she is great in her 2 and half minutes of screen time, but a lot of this is an attempt to decentralize the black lead in this film and that is rooted in racism. The fact that the actress has had to block multiple people who keep posting about her not to truly compliment her but to harm Halle says a lot about how even when the focus of a piece of media is a black woman there are always people willing to dismiss her in favor of championing whiteness. Jessica deserves her flowers but this behavior I see right now is not praise, it is erasure and neither Jessica nor Halle deserve that.
finally thoughts ( prepare for me to get sappy)
I saw this in a theater primarily filled with kids and parents and it was fun to hear kids’ reactions to certain scenes but there was one moment I need to talk about. While kids were laughing and screaming the whole time having fun, I looked over at one point and I saw a little black girl in the row across from mine just twirling to the music.
So often as black girls we are told to we are too fast, we need to be quiet, I remember seeing a post about Cardi B. and Offset’s children posing at the premiere of the little mermaid and how those two little girls needed to “ lose the attitude” when they were two little black girls in pretty gowns getting their picture taken.
To see a little black girl dance with abandon without having to humble herself or lose an attitude because she sees herself on screen, taking up space in this moment because sheis safe to be herself made my prehistoric ass want to cry. You see this film wasn’t just a cash grab, or “ forced diversity”, this movie was for her, for all the little and not so little ones to unleash the wonder that is so often ripped from us before we have a chance to shape it.
Go see it and get a little bit of wonder for yourself.
Hi, my name is Ashley. I love all things Natasha Romanoff and Steve Rogers! I reblog a lot of fandom stuff but also random other things I like. I post nsfw and don’t always tag so please be warned
