Disney Jr.'s Ariel (2024 TV series)

Ariel's latest reboot is a flaming piece of garbage wearing the skin of something everyone used to love, sanitised heavily and clearly written with both a marketing and PR checklist at hand at all times.

Premise

Atlantica is now just about culturally homogeneous, except it's in the direction of less YTs, so it's approved by the PR department. Ariel, titular character, gets up to all sorts of hijinks and early-learning-specialist approved didactic adventures, learning that the real treasure was the friends we made along the way. Lucia, ornamental Latinx-coded character and one of the Main Three, wears token Andean-patterned fabrics for no reason except to signpost her cultural alignment. Fernie, Ariel's masculine counterweight, has the unique and defining features of: 1. eyebrow scar, and 2. huge nerd.

Issues

1. Atlantis/Atlantica has no reason (in either iteration) to be culturally homogeneous. In the original movie, at the very least it was located next to White People Land, so it made some kind of passing sense there, but this iteration has no diegetic reason except that it's Desirable to be homogenously non white.
2. Lucia has no reason to exist, and all of the other Latinx coded characters are so background they may as well be 2D.
3. As the Main Character, Ariel has serious Main Character Syndrome. Obviously. this makes sense. However, it's done to 11 here - she has massive thick braided red hair, set with all sorts of trinkets, unexplained magic iridescent eye tattoos, and a magical colour changing tail that signposts her emotions if anyone couldn't pick them up. This screams 'look at me I'm the main character' in a particularly Anvilicious way, but more than that, sets her up to be a particularly attractive marketing and merchandising target. That's right kids. for only $50 you can have your own Ariel doll, and her tail changes colour in warm water!

Stakes

This deserves its own section.

1. King Triton has gone from well-meaning-but-overbearing-and-heavy-handed dad to model supportive father. This is fine in most cases, but Triton was one of the driving forces that gave the original movie stakes and something to be nervous about. Without that, he's a cardboard prop. We have gone from Darth Vader commanding both respect and fear even without a face to Darth Vader showing up at Luke's door with milk and cookies asking if he needs anything else.
2. Notably as well, Triton knows about Ariel's obsession with human stuff, and even knows about her human stuff cavern. He not only supports but encourages this. She's become something of a human scholar - but on the surface only. There's no depth to her obsession and no stakes to her having it.
3. Ursula, previously terrifying, proud holder of a license to evil and 7th-tier master of all magics to ever exist, has been tranquilised, neutered and lobotomised. This too might be fine - if she wasn't the other driving force of narrative tension. Ursula had been almost universally critically praised for her villainy - she's scary, and she should be. Her eel buddies extend her malice as far and wide as they can swim, including her capacity for knowledge, rumours and blackmail. She knows magic that can take someone's voice - which in Ariel's case seems tied to her essence or soul, making the feat all the more impressive. In the reboot, she's now Tauntie Ursula, wisecracking compassionate sassy Black auntie who is now besties with sanitised King Triton. All narrative force is gone, all stakes are gone. Ursula literally uses a spell to stop time to extend a sleepover for Ariel to teach her that it's possible to have too much of a good thing. Another notable spell is making fried plantains. Underwater. Cultural relevance badge attained. What's next, Sebastian asking for jerk chicken?

Who cares?

Probably nobody. It's a kids show. It's appropriate for kids. However as someone who grew up with the cultural wave that was Ariel, and as someone who learned what a cinematic and narrative masterpiece it was as an adult, and why it earned those titles, this reboot sits horridly wrong with me. And let me be clear - the Blackness is not the problem. The problem is, if this is the story they wanted to tell, why did they have to murder the original story, scoop out its brains and parade around the corpse as if it's an achievement? You had an idea for a story - use it. w:Make it so. Don't gut another concept and play it safe. Tell the story properly. This absolutely reeks of departments on departments wanting to hedge their bets and approve some new IP only if it tests well and/or is based on previously commercially successful concepts. Fuck that. You want to tell a story, fucking tell it. You don't need the corpse of a well-loved IP to do it.