What is your opinion on making the Little mermaid Black?

There are tons of non-white characters played by whites, even in the culture historical characters like Jesus are portrayed as white Europeans when he was never really white, but this does not matter to anyone. The controversy over the skin color of the little mermaid only shows that there is still a great racial prejudice towards non-white people.

If they really want to bring diversity, that they make movies and other stories about characters with other color skins. And make them true to reality and history instead of making them caricatures or manipulate things for their own gain.

Plus it's just for another soulless live-action remake, another shameless cash-cow.

Let's talk about it when they will finally return to make original movies and to tell actual stories instead of using the current political and social agendas.

In a way it might be disrespectful to have cast her in this role because casting her for Ariel could come off as Disney thinking black people aren’t good enough to play original black characters that haven’t been introduced.

I don’t like it (no its not because of her race its because its simply unoriginal)

But, I really don’t mind as long as they do a good job in the role

I never cared for the original story anyways.

If Disney wanted to make the story interesting, they should switch the genders of Ariel and the sailor. I would watch that.

1. I find it funny how anything non-white, non-hetero is seen as political because being straight-white is seen as the default.

2. Y’all really hijacked the term “woke” and turned into anything that doesn’t align with your political views

OT: I watched it twice and thoroughly enjoyed it. Halle did her thing. I’d much rather they not race bend white characters tho. Not because it matters (unless it’s in a cultural or historical context), but because I’m tired of hearing people cry about it, while ignoring characters made white like in the MCU

As someone who didn't know a movie called The Little Mermaid existed before this controversy, I like the fact that the mermaid in this movie is black

@eredin12: it's unreasonable. It's just common. There's no good reason to care about changing a mermaids color. Don't worry, people do unreasonable things all the time, it's pretty common.

Your example is silly as mermaids are fictional creatures, they have no ethnicity. If it was like Julius Caesar you'd have a point

@vjbthe3: That is why I said that I do not care about Mermid at all, while I do dislike changing someone like Cleopatra, for example

@comicvinepoozer1:

while ignoring characters made white like in the MCU

The difference here is that most of the time, characters cast differently in the MCU are lesser known on average, so changing them isn't as big a deal. For example, they cast Samuel L Jackson as Nick Fury, and they changed the Ancient One to a female. If there was any controversy around these decisions, I didn't hear of any of it; in fact, people adore SLJ as Fury. This is because these characters were not already well-established in popular media, and changing their character design isn't a big impact on their overall view, even if it's a drastic change. Even more well known characters can be changed to some degree if their character design is a lesser part of their character, i.e. Jimmy Olsen in CW's Supergirl. It's really about looks more than anything else. I don't know if you watched HBO's The Last of Us, but that show did casting well for the most part, even when using different races for characters from the game. Two of the biggest gripes were with the characters Ellie and Tess, who looked notably different between game and show, while characters like Henry and Marlene looked nearly 1:1 between the game and show, and thus got little complaint. Joel, the white, Texan protagonist, was played by Pedro Pascal, with more people being against Ellie's casting than Joel's. Because it's not race that ultimately matters to people, it's looks.

Who cares? People whine about wokeness, and to some extent I agree, but who actually cares? Being white was never a part of her character in the OG, so her being black changes nothing. People just don't like diversity in general.

I’m glad that they made a fictional mermaid black and that Halle did a great job as Ariel. The haters can keep on hating. If her race is that big of a deal to you, then take your anti-diversity issues somewhere else!

People are boycotting. Its only doing ok in white majority countries and pretty much flopped in other countries. All the other well known shiity disney live action movies made a billion while this is going to flop

This^

People with no lives care about Mermaid being black!

Hey Luke they made The little Mermaid a black woman.

They made what who?

Ariel from the little mermaid.

Oh.. that’s cool IG.

Isn’t that crazy how they’re changing the skin colors of movie characters I’m so sick of this woke B.S.

Umm… Sure Dave… Hey I’m going to grab a coffee.

Tokenism.

Just make a new princess who's black. Tiana is wildly popular.

I am fine with mermaids being black, but I don't support the choice of using black actress in this movie.

Why don't they make a new movie with the black actress as a mermaid? I would've supported that. But if they are going for the same story as it were in the original cartoon, then they should adhere to white skinned mermaid as it was in the original, since that's what's popular among many.

Imagine having a real-life dragon ball film, but some black person is chosen actor for Goku's character. Or for example, captain marvel movie (2019), imagine the chosen actress for her being black (despite the comics depicting her as white). Wouldn't you be mad?

I think even the director knew this. But they "intentionally" chose a black actress cuz they want to spread their woke propoganda like "mermaids can be black too" or whatnot.

Another scenerio would be, people don't give a damn about mermaid story. And my guess is that the director already knew this, and hence he chose a black actress, cuz it would attract a lot of attention like what's happening now. Think for yourself, would little mermaid be this much popular if the actress were white?

My favorite thing in topics like this are always the people with the uniform, low IQ, social media copy and paste opinion of "being white isn't part of the character".

I mean, the character is a fair skinned, red headed, blue eyed mermaid (a mythological being from European folklore) that is based on a European character, from a European story, from a European author, that takes place in Europe. In the animated adaption, they made her father basically a stand in for Poseidon and her home is a nod to Atlantis (both products of European mythology).

Like, does the character have to be named "Whitey McWhiterson" from the mythical land of Crackerstan and go around screaming "white power!!" for the character to be acknowledged as such??

Anyways, all these same people that say this shit would have an aneurysm if someone like Aladdin was cast as white dude.

Honestly feel bad the for the girl too. She seems nice and will get a lot of racial remarks directed towards her and many years from now will be remembered as one of those token character from that weird ass time in American history.

@pr03: so they chose her to attract attention as a marketing strategy for this film so everyone would see it? Some haters still gonna hate no matter what i guess, I don't really care about racebend but what if in the next BP movie Shuri or majority of the cast turns into white actors how will people react especially these people who always support racebend?? Just curious

It's fine

@sixpathsofcapra: but how tho

Kinda sad to see people wash characters just to push an opinion. I probably wont watch the movie even if she was white but if I hear something good about I guess I would watch.

It's inevitable

Don't really care

Also every example using Black Panther or Luke Cage is pretty dumb.

The creators made being Black a big part of their character. Especially a nation located in Africa that has never been found by the outside world due to their technology.

Try harder.

@pr03: I mean, they did make Goku white in DB evolution. And I’m pretty sure the little mermaid would be just as popular if not more if she were white. Disney remakes were making bank regardless

I consider it fine tbh, but not the same as those animated disney films....

It doesn’t matter but it still “feels” weird

Also tbh I'm surprised people are so invested in this story lol

I have zero attachment to the original, so I wouldn’t care about a race change. Even if I did, or if someone preferred the original, that version still exists, so just go watch that instead. These types of things shouldn’t even be part of reasonable discourse.

she was the best for the job. better singer than any red head i can name and has that same curious sparkle in her eyes the animated character had. nobody could’ve played the part better honestly. i understand the frustration that she isn’t identical to how we all remember ariel looking, but nonetheless she did an excellent job with what she was given.

When did it become mandatory that an actor need to sing. Hailee could sing and Little mermaid looking actress could ad lib it . And in most countries the songs are dubbed to local Languages so your argument make no sense

Don't care lol. LA Disney adaption movies will always be garbo to me. Catching the same magic the originals had is almost always impossible.

1. It doesn't matter. Ariel is a mermaid who's race plays no part in her story. You could have made her Native American or Asian, the story would still remain about the same. I don't get the comparison to characters like Tiana, Mulan or Moana who's culture and race plays a major role in the story. Halle's voice is phenomenal and she did great as Ariel.

2. Why has Disney recently only been making live action after live action? Are they running out of ideas or something.

@tobeymaguire84: they chose the best actress/singer that auditioned. in the same sense another country would choose the best actress/singer to dub.