For months now, Disney fans have been waiting with bated breath for a sneak peek at one of the year’s most anticipated films: Rob Marshall’s The Little Mermaid. Many thought it would air during the Super Bowl, but the official trailer did not arrive until the 95th Academy Awards, when stars Halle Bailey and Melissa McCarthy took to the Oscars stage to introduce it.
What followed was another teaser-ish look at the film, with a promise at the end of the trailer that a new one had dropped online. The real trailer, which was a bit more official than the one that aired during the ceremony, offered a more thorough look at the film, but only just. We got a closer look at Bailey’s Ariel and McCarthy’s Ursula, and thankfully we also got a look at the supporting characters who really make the classic Disney tale sing ⏤ but this rendition seemed a bit off-kilter.
Ariel interacts with various characters in the extended trailer, including a fish, a crab, and a bird voiced by Awkwafina. The audience is led to believe that these characters are, in fact, Flounder, Sebastian, and Scuttle. The only problem? They look nothing like Flounder, Sebastian, or Scuttle. At. All.
When the film’s first teaser trailer dropped in September 2022, fans didn’t want to believe that the tiny fish hovering above Ariel’s shoulder was Flounder, but as the official trailer proves, wishes made on stars don’t always come true.
Yes, that cold, dead-looking thing is somehow Ariel’s best friend. One can’t help but notice the bright cheerfulness present in the animated version and the mix of nausea and depression inherent in his live-action counterpart.
Fans are understandably flabbergasted, probably because the fish looks like it’s suffering from a mix of renal failure and plague.
Is this Flounder, or the pasty, unmoving, gill-bearing shape you might find at the bottom of your roommate’s fish bowl?
Flounder is one thing, but for Disney to ruin Sebastian, too ⏤ there just aren’t words.
We get it. He’s a crab. That’s what crabs look like. But some fans are making a valid point: if Disney animators can afford to design characters that actually look something like their animated counterparts, why don’t they?
You don’t need to be fluent in Spanish to understand the sentiment of this post.
And don’t even get us started on Scuttle.
Who are these animals? If you saw them in the wild, would The Little Mermaid even cross your mind?
This animation makes Pinocchio look like Avatar.
For the love of God, Disney ⏤ we’ve been waiting for this film for years. We want it to be good. We want it to be great! ’80s and ’90s kids in particular want to see this classic tale from their youth come to life in spectacular fashion on the big screen, stellar cast and song list in tow.
But what you’ve given us even in just these brief flashes ⏤ well, the words poor and unfortunate come to mind.
Now look, the new movie poster looks amazing, but that’s an illustration. Disney isn’t known for creating images that don’t move; it’s known for its world-class animation and storytelling, neither of which are apparent in the new trailer. And while there might still be time for some fixes to be made ⏤ epic Sonic-style ones ⏤ the film has already taken this long to even release a trailer, so how much more can we expect?
Our guess is not much, but we truly hope that Disney takes a dinglehopper to some of these characters (even more than it already has), goes back to the drawing board, and makes us actually want to be more a part of this world.
Otherwise, the company may want to consider tossing the final product into the Disney vault, or perhaps just leaving it under the sea.