The Little Mermaid Comparison Essay

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“The Little Mermaid”, originally written by Hans Christian Andersen, tells the story of a young mermaid who loves the human world. This curiosity leads her to fall in love with a human man, and she acquires a pair of legs in order to make the man return her feelings. A Disney movie adaptation by John Musker and Ron Clements follows a similar plot. While the two versions of “The Little Mermaid” share a common theme, the Disney animated film version is by far a more interesting story because of its wide and diverse cast of characters.

Though the Disney adaptation underwent drastic changes both plot- and character-wise, the two versions of The Little Mermaid share a common theme. This theme, “infatuation can blind you, leading to reckless actions”, …show more content…

Examples include Sebastian, the palace chef, Flounder, and more. Scuttle, the comic relief replacement for the short story’s grandmother, tells Ariel of the human world, though he’s not always right. The king and Ariel also have more complex personalities, with Ariel being rebellious and the king being overprotective (Musker and Clements, The Little Mermaid). This demonstrates how many different side characters there are in the Disney movie, as well as how much more the king and Ariel’s personalities are developed. This ultimately puts the movie far in the lead when compared to the original. However, one could argue that scenes including the aforementioned characters add a lot of unneeded bulk to the movie. One of these scenes is the “Les Poissons” scene, in which the chef dances around and attempts to make Sebastian into food (Musker and Clements, The Little Mermaid). The entire section is generally useless regarding plot, only used for humor. Too many relatively minor or unimportant characters can drag down and pull focus away from main characters or plot. However, though these happenings may seem unnecessary because of their minimal contribution to the main plot, they improve the movie in their own way. In addition to “Les Poissons”, during Ariel and

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