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Disney is going under the sea.
The latest live action remake to come from Disney is The Little Mermaid, which will be released later this summer. The film still has not released a trailer, just teasers. However, it was announced yesterday that a trailer would finally be released this Sunday, during the Oscars. Along with this announcement, the official movie poster was revealed, and fans are not happy about it.
From animation to live-action… #TheLittleMermaid pic.twitter.com/Ijym8pWZiY
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) March 8, 2023
After the unveiling of the poster, people took to Twitter to complain about not only another live action remake coming from Disney, but also the lack of color in the recent Disney projects. The movie poster features Ariel on a rock, as a call back to the movie poster from the original cartoon. However, while the cartoon was full of bright colors and contrast, the poster for the live action version is dark and gloomy in comparison. While there were a few comments saying that the poster was fine and that it looks good, most of the reactions are negative. One user, @MHawk9955 jokes,
“Guess budget cuts meant they had to fire the lighting crew.”
A few people posted versions of the poster where they had adjusted the colors, brightening the shadows or adding more contrast, so that it looked lighter and happier, more in line with the original poster. But the overall reactions call the poster depressing, gloomy, and unattractive for viewers.
While there’s only so much that artists can do with a live action film before it starts to look cartoonish, many fans are complaining that the tone of the film itself overall just feels too dark. As @mhowe1980 points out,
“They’re definitely trying to homage the silhouette value in that 1989 poster…but it doesn’t help that the 2023 poster seems just as dimly-lit as what has been shown via clips and trailers.”
This just sums up every complaint people have been saying about taking some of the most vibrant films in American cinema and making them look dim and lifeless in the name of “realism”. https://t.co/MqcWBmlsaK
— New Adventures of M H😴WK (@MHawk9955) March 8, 2023
With Marvel Studios giving viewers superhero burnout and Lucasfilm giving Star Wars burnout, it seems as though Disney themselves are falling into the same unfortunate circumstance and giving fans live-action burnout. The studio also been catching criticism lately about their reliance on the use of 3-D animation as it leans ever more towards the scale of live action. It seems as though Disney may have to take fan input into heavy consideration going forward with future projects or risk losing the people that have helped make the magic in the first place.