There was a remake of this movie, and I won’t go too deeply into that, but this one was better. I have mixed feelings about some Disney Princesses; I was never a girl who just loved them all because they were pretty and wore dresses. For me, Mulan was always my favorite Disney gal; and, as far as princesses were concerned, Belle holds the title with Rapunzel getting honorable mention. As for Little Mermaid, while I liked Ariel, the movie is what holds up today. There’s two main points about this story which make it unique that people didn’t seem to notice were absent from the live action remake. I could talk about the charm, comedy, and music of the cartoon, but those aren’t what make it exclusively a unique tale.

The classic storyline which hinges on the main character’s flaws: Ariel, our protagonist, is a girl with dreams of going to land, but no life experience or maturity to back up her ambitions. This isn’t to insult Ariel as a character, many protagonists fall under Aristotle’s tragic method, and it makes the story more believable and compelling. The Aristotelian method of tragedy basically poses that there is no such thing as “bad things just happening to good people,” but that all tragedy is brought about from a series of poor character choices and mistakes that compound like dominos. This is seen most plainly in the master of tragedy—Shakespeare. There isn’t a single Shakespeare play that comes to my mind (if I’m wrong, I’ll gladly hear which one you can think of) in which it's just the evil people vs. the totally innocent party and the blame falls clearly in one camp. Even Shakespeare’s romantic comedies are a comedy of errors and not simply a good vs. evil. Shakespeare wrote flawed, real people who made choices that even if not morally wrong were not the best at the given situation and they led to the main tragic downfall in some small way. Romeo and Juliet choose to run away and plot an elopement because they’re families hate each other. Romeo kills her cousin because Tybalt kills his friend. Hamlet pushes away Ophelia because he’s afraid of her getting hurt but she ends up killing herself from depression/madness, the list goes on and on. And don’t get me started on Othello because that’s an article on it’s own. The same principle applies to this movie. Ariel is a flawed teenage girl whose circumstances push her into a bad decision, which is the actual root of the entire downfall at the end of the film.

• Ariel has a want, which blinds her judgement and an inciting incident with her father who responds to her dreams and desires with anger pushes her towards the enemy. Ariel wants to see land goers, and she sees a handsome prince who she becomes infatuated with after saving his life.

• Ariel’s infatuation makes her so desperate that she’s willing to go to the most evil person in the Mermaid world and Ursula—of course—exploits this weakness to her own ends. Ariel becomes that desperate because her father yells at her and destroys her collection of things from the surface which for her age, would be somewhat traumatic and very upsetting. It doesn’t excuse what she does, but she’s only supposed to be around 16. And what makes this more believable is even when she goes to Ursula she isn’t dead set on making a deal with her, she gradually slips into it after listening to her.

That brings me to another point the film does well, showcasing the slippery slope into a horrible decision like the one Ariel makes. She basically gambles with her soul to an evil person she knows hates her father. Why? Because she’s hurt, angry, sad and wants to see the Prince again. This sounds really dumb on paper but the truth is in real life the reason often is that simple. No one who ever did something wrong, made a deal with someone evil, borrowed from someone dangerous, cheated on someone, or had a relationship with someone they knew they weren’t supposed to was ever excused by saying “I didn’t know it was wrong.” They always know. Aladin knew it was wrong to lie to Jasmine, but he did it because he was so desperately insecure about his self-image as a “street rat” that he couldn’t fathom her accepting him otherwise. The Beast knew it was wrong to kidnap Belle and force her to stay with him just so he could get his curse broken but he didn’t feel guilty about it till he fell in love with her. The red flags on a conscience are always there, but the driving force is the character’s desire/pain and anger that makes them do it anyway. This is showcased when Ariel is hesitant the entire song of Poor unfortunate souls to sign the contract, and even when she does it’s done hurriedly, and she can’t even look at what she’s doing. This is often the way when seemingly decent people slip into sin. They don’t “fall” they “walk” by a series of small choices that culminate in something disastrous.

Ariel and the Prince are both needed in this movie: I think with our modern girl power culture that holds up all Disney princesses as being strong independent women we’ve forgotten what all of them were like. Belle is a strong woman which is why she was always my favorite (among other reasons like her being an adventurous bookworm and taking care of her father). All Ariel does in this film is sell her soul to go be with a guy and chase her dreams. As I said this isn’t to insult the character, flawed characters with strong desires are needed to move a plot forward. Simba’s entire story in Lion King is that he’s running away. It takes him the whole movie before he comes back and faces his fears/mistakes.

• If Ariel hadn’t gambled with the devil (Ursula) then everyone wouldn’t be in such grave danger by the end of the film. She’s needed to push the lot forward, but the prince saves her when her mistakes come back to bite her.

•   The prince is the one in the end of the film who impales the giant evil sea witch and saves Ariel along with her father.

The reason I point this out is because since the remake (and Ralph breaks the internet) people tend to view all the Disney Princesses as heroine’s and not damsel’s in distress but actually…many of them are. It’s not to say they don’t have character, or they arent likeable, but in ones like this and Snow White the princesses do need the male character in the story to help them. It’s not politically correct to say, but I call them like I see them. In the live action remake they did so many small tweaks to remove Ariel’s motivation, and even her choice to make a deal with Ursula that I don’t know what the character is anymore. At least in the cartoon I know she’s a passionate headstrong girl who makes terrible mistakes because she’s in pain.

In Summary: Today I feel like people are afraid to have their female heroes in movies make mistakes. They don’t want them to be flawed, or to act dumb or foolish at times and yet that’s what makes stories happen.

• If Hercules wasn’t gaga over Meg who’s using him, then Hades would never get the upper hand.

• If Prince Derek in the Swan Princess hadn’t uttered the top tier of dumbest words a man can ever say to a woman he wants to marry, then Odette wouldn’t break the engagement and get caught by the villain.

• If Pinocchio didn’t run to pleasure island we don’t have him being saved by the blue fairy and taken back to his father.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Real people do foolish, selfish, dumb, and passion driven things that have consequences and stories are supposed to show that. If they remove it then we stop connecting with the story because it’s nothing like our perception of reality. The live actions film downplays Ariel’s romantic motives with the prince by removing that she even knows why she became human, they water down her making a deal with Ursula. So really, we’re just watching a mermaid become human and sing songs till the end where she gets with the Prince. The element of consequences for actions is gone as is characters suffering for their mistakes and having clearly laid out motives. It’s one of the reasons the story in this movie still holds up today and the live action remake fell so short.