Live-Action Cartoons

[bloodyrosemccoy]

So I watched, against my better judgment, the """"live-action"""" (as much as anything that CGI can be classed as Live-action) Little Mermaid. Live-tweeted here!

It was ... not as unwatchable as the """live-action""" Beauty and the Beast*!

I do not care for these Disney remakes as a rule. They're wildly unnecessary, and the originals have worn such grooves into my brain that I don't think it's possible to make a movie that would not jolt those grooves and cause me great discomfort, like trying to sing along to a cover of a song I know and love. So I generally avoid them at all costs. But this one was at least pretty to look at, and I loved the casting of Halle Bailey. I did not know it was possible for an actual human to look that much like a Disney Princess. Also, Melissa McCarthy won me over as Ursula, which should be impossible.**

But something about the attempt to make it "live-action," or at least realistic-ish CGI, makes these movies lose some kind of energy that comes from the cartoonishness. Sidekick abuse is much funnier in cartoons, for one thing, But also, it somehow feels more low-key for all it's trying to look big and bold; the songs feel muted and boring, the emotional beats feel like they're barely paid any attention, and Triton especially was not nearly shouty enough for me.*** But I kinda appreciated Eric having an overbearing mother to bounce his personality off of, though it was a transparent attempt to flesh out his character. I did kinda miss his meet-cute with Ariel on the beach, though. They seemed like such a teenage couple in the '89 version.

Basically, it was an unnecessary but inoffensive foray into Disney's """live-action""" remakes. And hey, Black Ariel is pretty cool!


*Honestly, if the Beast had transformed into Ron Perlman at the end, I'd have loved it.

**Look, Ursula was responsible for rearranging my synapses at a formative stage, okay?! I'd have been all for Drag Queen!Ursula, except with the current moral panic about drag it seems smart not to make your boundary-ignoring tentacle-monster villain a drag queen.

***He sure made an impression on an almost-4-year-old, I tell you what.

Comments

[matsushima]

It's weird to me that Disney - Disney, of all companies! - doesn't seem to appreciate that animation is its own art form with its own rules, its own strengths and weaknesses, not merely an inferior style to live action? Tho I guess that's what I get for expecting a multibillion dollar international conglomerate to have any feelings about "art" as such…

[bloodyrosemccoy]

I was thinking yeah!, but then I remembered that this sort of unease with animation goes all the way back to Snow White. There were a lot of skeptics outside the company, but inside, they weren't sure if people could get emotionally invested in a cartoon character for a feature-length film. They had a breakthrough when storyboarding her flight through the woods, when she falls into a pit, and one animator said with worry, "Is she gonna be okay?" That convinced them that they might be on the right track.

Although I do seem to recall that Disney himself talked about how the goal of animation was not to be realistic, but to stylize the action to invite the audience to join the fantasy. That's what these "remakes" lack, if you ask me.

[spacewastrel]

I remember finding the cartoon version of Les Poissons hilarious, but I think I might have felt differently about a live-action version of it at the time, I can tell you *that* :P I'm torn between finding Divine awesome as any species and also totally getting what you mean with the contextual drag tentacles there >.>

[bloodyrosemccoy]

They didn't do a live-action version of it, which I can understand. I thought it was funny, too--I like picturing Rene Auberjonois doing the ridiculous Angry French Chef yells in the recording booth