The new live action movie, “The Little Mermaid” comes out May 26, 2023, directed by Rob Marshall.  The movie is about a young mermaid who makes a deal with a sea witch to trade her beautiful voice for human legs so she can discover the world above water and impress a prince. 

   “The little mermaid,” is one of Disney’s most popular and beloved animated movies, and it’s one of the studio’s most important projects as it changed Disney in many aspects, and the remake has the potential of also bringing important changes to Disney, now on its branch of live-action movies. 

     Diving more into the movie, ‘The Little Mermaid’ tells the story of Ariel voiced by Jodi Benson, a 16-year-old mermaid princess who dreams of becoming human. After saving him from a shipwreck, Ariel falls in love with a human, Prince Eric, played by Christopher Daniel Barnes, this leads her to make a dangerous deal with the mysterious sea witch Ursula, Pat Carroll, who agrees to turn her into a human in exchange for her voice. 

 There have been a lot of negativities with Ariel’s skin color. Ariel, played by Halle Bailey, was able to rise above the negativity and come to the realization of the weight this role will hold for the Black community. She went on to talk about how having a Black actor in a role like this when she was younger would have been life changing. “What that would have done for me, how that would have changed my confidence, my belief in myself, everything,” she said. “Things that seem so small to everyone else, it’s so big to us.” 

     With Bailey being an African American actress, many claimed that Disney wasn’t staying true to the story with the original Ariel. That started the trend with the hashtag, #NotMyAriel, circulating on all social media platforms.  

      Now, it shouldn’t matter who plays the character Ariel, or what they look like at all. The movie itself isn’t about what they look like; it’s the story they are telling that is important. Being that “The Little Mermaid” is one of Disney’s most popular and beloved animated movies, they should just enjoy the new live action.