Continuing on with Twisted Disney, we come to The Little Mermaid.
I had really mixed feelings about this one at first, because why would Ursula stay in disguise as Vanessa and be content with manipulating humans when she could just rule Atlantica? I was further dismayed to see them using the canon from the 3rd Little Mermaid movie when it came to her sisters.
This drives me insane. The original movie CLEARLY spells out the age order of the sisters. IT IS LITERALLY IN A SONG.
Aquata.
Andrina.
Arista.
Attina.
Adella.
Alana.
Ariel.
That is the correct order. I will accept nothing otherwise. The old chapter book series sticks by that.
I was bitterly disappointed that the author didn't use the rather blank slates of the sisters to create characters for them, but she wrote them off as forcing Ariel to rule as punishment for the death of Triton while they spent their time on frivolity. It's hinted later that this frivolity is how their grieve their mother, but as Ariel points out, that was over a hundred years ago.
Yeah, I have no idea how mermaids age. Ariel was 16, yet her mother died 100+ years ago, so one mer year is many, many human years. It's been 5 or 6 years since Ursula defeated Triton, so figure Ariel is 21 or 22, but actually well over 100.
Anyway, Scuttle is still alive and does some spying on Vanessa. He realizes she's still got King Triton alive in polyp form, so he quickly gets the news to Ariel, who as I mentioned is Queen of the Seas. Ariel is still mute but communicates in sign language, using an old signed form of the mer language.
Ariel goes to the castle to try to find her father, able to become human thanks to the power of the trident. And yes, there's some bitterness that her father could have made her human all along.
So thus begins the adventure. Ariel is aided on land by Scuttle, but as he's quite old, it's mostly his great grandgull Jona that's helping. Ariel ends up stealing the nautilus necklace while Vanessa is bathing and gets her voice back pretty early on, but this also alerts Vanessa that Ariel is there and it frees Eric from the spell she's had on him (and the entire town) for years. Eric and Ariel team up and rekindle old feelings while working together to find King Triton and stop Vanessa, who's amusing herself by trying to cause a bunch of wars.
And...get this...Ursula's big final plan is to cast a spell that summons the Elder Gods, who will give her power on land, as she has none. (Likewise, the trident doesn't work on land.) It even uses a twisted Lovecraftian language.
Yep. Ursula's gonna summon Cthulhu. Classic.
I started out disliking this, but ended up enjoying it quite a lot. Attina in the role of the oldest sister shows up the most of the other 6 and is the only one to really get a personality. She's snarky and sounds a bit silly compared to the well-read Attina that's my favorite, but she ended up being a decent character. I still swap her with Aquata in my head though. As it should be. All the old favorites are there: Sebastian, Scuttle, Flounder, Carlotta the maid, Grimsby, Max. And they're joined by Jona, a badass older woman tattoo artist named Argent, and Vareet, Vanessa's young servant girl. It's a pretty fun ride and all the questions you have at the beginning do get answered by the end.
No comments:
Post a Comment