The Little Mermaid is set in the Caribbean This choice was made by director Rob Marshall because of Sebastian's Creole accent, but also to allow the cast to be more diverse. As Allo Ciné explains, the Caribbean islands were colonised by Europeans during the Napoleonic Wars.
The live-action adaptation of The Little Mermaid utilized CGI and special effects to create the underwater world and was filmed in Sardinia, Italy, to give it a Caribbean feel. The villages of Santa Teresa di Gallura and Castelsardo in Sardinia were used to film various scenes.
The Little Mermaid animation was set under the sea in the kingdom of Atlantica and its adjacent surface world, both of which were believed to be located in Denmark. It's also where author Hans Christian Andersen, who penned the original story, was from.
In the original 1989 Disney animated classic, Ariel's character is White, with straight red hair. But as Murphy and other young Black and brown girls head to theaters this weekend to see “The Little Mermaid,” they'll find an Ariel that is very much a reflection of themselves.
It was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen's famous fairytale about a mermaid who gives up everything to be united with a young, handsome prince on land.
Ruby and Bonnie Little Mermaid Movie at the Cinema
What is the real story behind The Little Mermaid?
While the original tale was likely influenced by folklore about mermaids and sirens, scholars have speculated that "The Little Mermaid" was also inspired by the author's own life, as some events in the story parallel his experiences with navigating family pressures, discovering his true identity, and pursuing love.
Prince Eric is most likely Danish due to Hans Christian Andersen's appearance in the TV series. Prince Eric's original voice actor Christopher Daniel Barnes was only 16 when he recorded his voice for Eric.
Meanwhile, as Ariel explores the Caribbean island where the story takes place, The Little Mermaid even specifically mentions Brazil, another country that was notorious for its involvement in the slave trade in that time period.
He says they were looking for the best actor for the role of any ethnicity who could not only sing but convey traits such as strength, passion, beauty, joy and intelligence, which they found in Bailey.
Since the animated feature film had a white mermaid as Ariel, some people are angry that Disney has gone with a black actress in the live-action. Some people also believe that Hans Christian Andersen described the Little mermaid as a white mermaid in his book. Therefore, Disney should have cast a white actress instead.
Diggs was born in Oakland, California, the son of Barbara, a social worker, and Dountes Diggs, a bus driver. His mother is Jewish, and his father is African-American. His parents named him "Daveed", the Hebrew pronunciation of David.
There are several instances when Eric's mother Queen Salina (Noma Dumezweni), who is Black and adopted him as a child when he washed up from the ocean, chastises him for his obvious love for beings that are considered other.
All of king Triton's daughters represent their own seas all over the world and as such they are all different ethnicities in the movie. It is not specified where the movie takes place, i.e. where Ariel lives but it's obvious it's not in Denmark.
Is The Little Mermaid set in Denmark or Caribbean?
“The Disney artists moved the story from the frigid Baltic of Andersen's native Denmark to a warmer, sunnier that suggested the Mediterranean, probably off the coast of southern Italy. Elements in the costumes and building suggest an equally vague time in the late seventeenth or eighteenth century.
Sebastian (full name Horatio Thelonious Ignacious Crustaceous Sebastian) is a red Jamaican crab and one of the main protagonists in Disney's 1989 hit film The Little Mermaid, its prequel film, its TV series, and its sequel.
In 2011's Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, helmed by Marshall for Walt Disney Pictures, the filmmakers created a sequence in which Blackbeard (Ian McShane) commands his crew to capture a mermaid. He needs a single tear from one of the aquatic beauties in order to unlock the wonders of the Fountain of Youth.
Ariel, is a fictional character, with no defined skin color in her original material. She was originally written by a Danish author in the 1800s. She has been portrayed in ballet and movies by Asian, Russian, and mixed-race individuals, her cartoon depictions are typically pale.
In Anderson's telling and the original Disney film, the mermaid possessed white skin. In Disney's upcoming live action version of the story, Ariel will be portrayed by black actress and singer Halle Bailey.
Rather, Ursula's appearance is radically different from her family, and she sports tentacles that look like a permanent black dress. It's possible Ursula is not a mermaid in appearance because she and Triton did not have the same mother or father. If they're half siblings, Ursula's tentacles make more sense.
However, their accents are always a clear indication of their true behavior and intention. In The Little Mermaid, for example, dialects range from Ariel's Standard American accent, to the French accent spoken by the evil Chef, and Sebastian's Jamaican accent.
While it is known that her mother perished, there is no story attached to the event. However, much later, in 2008, an animated The Little Mermaid prequel revealed that Ariel's mother was crushed by a pirate ship during an altercation between humans and merpeople.
In this novel, Ursula is King Triton's younger sister who was betrayed by him as a child for choosing a tentacled form instead of a mermaid's tail, and grew up as a human in the town of Ipswich with an adoptive human father.
“There's so much you can do with tentacles. They give a creepy feeling,” supervising animator Ruben Aquino told Premiere magazine in 1989, adding the team ultimately decided to make her look like an octopus.
