Upfront, let me admit I probably won’t be seeing the live-action The Little Mermaid in a theater. The only one of Disney’s remakes I’ve seen was Beauty and the Beast, though all of them are at my fingertips thanks to Disney+ So this isn’t about the false controversy over casting Halle Bailey as Ariel; I’m sure she’s good in the role. It’s that last week my wife showed me images of live-action Flounder and Sebastian. Once my initial disturbance passed, she asked “and have you SEEN Scuttle?”
Yes. Yes, I have. And it haunts me.
It gets to something that’s been bothering me for a few months now. Special effects have become so focused on being “realistic” that the talented artists behind them have been forced away from the magic of what they can do. Not in every case, of course; sometimes special effects should look seamless. I do want to believe a man can fly. I have yet to see him fly into a cloud of red kryptonite and have something wacky happen to him.
This isn’t the fault of the people working hard to bring these things to life. They work long hours for small pay, and it’s a small audience over the age of 50 that might be excited about Superman turning into a giant ant. But it might be a bigger crowd for Giant Turtleboy Jimmy Olsen…
In the 1980s when computer graphics came into their own, movies were excited to call attention to them. For Young Sherlock Holmes, the effort wasn’t to make a stained glass knight look like a real knight when it climbed out of the window; it was to make it look like the result of an hallucinogen. It was unique and memorable. Heck, even the influence of animator Tex Avery could be brought to bear on The Mask. The wackiness fit the material, but the point is that now even flights of fancy are forced to be grounded.
Let’s get back to The Little Mermaid. Already we know that mermaids don’t exist and fish don’t speak a recognizable language. So as a film based on a beloved animated property, why not make those fish magical and look like something imaginative? You don’t have to make Scuttle look like original voice Buddy Hackett, but Disney Imagineers have already proven you can at least make those animated characters into tangible figures. Let this Scuttle look like Awkwafina.
What triggered all this for me, before The Little Mermaid released those images, was actually Shazam: Fury of the Gods. I enjoyed it. That’s not the point. It’s that it’s based on a comic book hero whose adventures and friends and enemies go all over the place in imaginative design. Moreso than most comics, the hero formerly known as Captain Marvel was a cartoon. He has a friend called Mr. Tawky Tawny, the Talking Tiger, who is exactly what he sounds like. We did at least see glimpses of Mr. Mind, the evil worm, so why not swing for the fences and bring this cartoonish tiger to life? Think of the cereal he could sell! Let’s not even get into Hoppy the Marvel Bunny.
When the Daughters of Atlas called forth creatures of mythology, they clearly owed more than a nod to the imagination of Ray Harryhausen. But imagine if these monsters were funneled directly through, say, Freddy, having seen The 7th Voyage of Sinbad a few too many times? Instead of being made more realistic, dark, grim, and gritty, think of how fun it would be if they moved like they were in Dynamation? (Robert Rodriguez pulled off this effect in Spy Kids 2, and it’s one of the best elements of that film.)
Darla clearly has a vision of unicorns that the reality doesn’t shatter. Why not show them to us through her eyes? Sparkle ponies everywhere, proving to be both the cutest and the most dangerous creatures of them all. Audiences might have forgiven the Skittles tie-in if they were busy being delighted.
Again, this isn’t a slam against the filmmakers. It’s against this strange belief that to engender a sense of wonder, we have to make the fantastic earthbound. At least over on the Marvel side they’re working to bring specific artists’ visions to life, which works for some people and not for others. But I gasp every time I recognize an element that looks like it was pulled right from the heads of Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko. Why not let Shazam look like C.C. Beck?
Let us have wonder.
