My Biggest Problem with The Little Mermaid

It's so refreshing to hear a critique of this movie that doesn't boil down to the fact that the main character falls in love.

I would say, I feel like Triton's change of heart actually comes in pretty well at the end, because of two things. First, Triton had realized he went too far with Ariel, and seen how she'd gotten herself into such a terrible situation. He realized that his rabid anti-human fervor had hurt his daughter. Second, Eric acted to save Triton, and by extension the entire ocean. He probably had never imagined a human would do that. So I think those two things - seeing a tangible harmful effect of his beliefs, as well as proof that his belief was wrong - culminated in him deciding to accept Ariel's wish. Sure they could have used an extra scene to make that more discrete, but I believe the pieces are there.

My favorite little detail with Part Of Your World is the towards the ending where it zooms out as she falls back to the bottom of the sea. It showcases the large scale that her desires are on in comparison to the other Disney princesses. So while it could've been better in execution, I do find it satisfying for her to finally get a chance to make her way on land. She deserves a happy ending after everything she's been through.

Yes I agree idk why they never allowed triton to apologize it definitely would’ve made the finale feel more realistic. But writing characters has improved over the decades. Also I never noticed the similarities between King Triton & Alma Madrigal.

There’s an alternate ending/deleted scene where Triton acknowledges that a human saved his life this changing his opinion on humans. He and Ariel also have an exchange where she apologizes for the things that have happened. I feel like these were missed opportunities that would have made the story end better but given the crunch Disney was in I see why they chose not too and kinda rushed the ending.

I agree that Triton’s motivations weren’t explored that much and maybe the live action remake can explore it more. However, I think Triton changing his mind about Eric is justified because he helped Ariel defeat Ursula at the end. Probably thought humans weren’t all that bad after that 😂. Great video though!

I actually agree with a lot of your points. Just didn't really know how to put it into words. It's interesting to see a different perspective from a lot of the mainline critiques regarding this film.

This is a really good perspective on this movie, and it reminds me of the weird prequel that came out later. They tried to reestablish Trident's problem with humans deeper, but even then, it was mostly focused to be a Footloose knock off from what I remember. To be fair to this sequel I'm talking about, I watched it when I was VERY young. But, it does say basically he hates humans because they killed his wife (Ariel's mom), but he blames like... Music more than anything? It's just overall weird.

The alternate ending of the film does feature Ariel apologizing to Triton and Triton acknowledging how heroic Eric was, but I guess they changed it to better fit the fact that Triton wanted to make Ariel happy rather than his own feelings changing. He took something from his daughter, and now he was giving something to her.

Personally, i rather Triton more than Abuela of Encanto, most because, he wanted to protect his daughter, and Ariel was the only one who was impulsive, like trust in Ursula, or act by impulse only because she saw a handsome guy. Yeah, Triton overracting but its understood because he's a worried father. Abuela was cruel for being cruel and promoted that the rest of her family seen Mirabel like Bruno.

Thank you for talking about something different about this movie, I never really thought about this about her father