The mermaid just dying was the original ending. The sisters of the air was tacked on as a reprint because people complained the original ending was too sad, but Andersen himself added the ending. Its not like someone else changed it posthumously.
Pretty much yes. The Prince never sow even a faint glimpse of the Little Mermaid when she saved him in the book. She got startled when she heard the sound of bells ringing and then swam a away when the girls from the convent were nearing the beach. It was the princess that first found the prince and so its her that the prince sow when he woke up
That makes sense. A lot of women in that time were sent to nunneries to get the sense knocked back into them. Kind of like sending kids to military school.
King Triton's complaint about humans being fish eaters is something that always ticked me off. Fish eat fish. They aren't all in the ocean noshing on kelp. They eat other fish, and occasionally land animals
Also, what exactly do the merfolk eat if not fish? Are they vegetarians and only eat sea plants? That would line up well with the idea that some merfolk legends are inspired by sirenians (manatees, dugongs and sea cows).
quick correction, the little mermaid was the start of the Disney Renaissance, not the gold age. the golden age of American animation was before the Disney dark age.
Some other differences are that in the original story, merpeople weren't forbidden from going to the surface. Once they turned 16, they were allowed to see the surface. Since the little mermaid was the youngest, she had to deal with constantly hearing her older sisters' and her grandmother's stories about the surface world and humans until she turned 16 and could see it herself. Another change is that the sea witch keeps trying to convince the little mermaid about what a bad deal she's getting herself into instead of trying to manipulate her into making the deal. Eventually, she tells her that she tried talking her out of it, but if she's so determined, then she'll make the spell for her.
The nun princess that the prince marries was a princess the whole time. She was living at an abbey for her education and he mistook her for a nun initiate. She was basically offered in marriage to him for some royal union.
Small addition, if I remember correctly the princess had contributed to saving him. She didn't pull him from the sea like TLM, but she is the one who found him on the beach, gave first aid, and contributed to his care afterwards. The prince and princess were completely sincere about her being his savior, they were just unaware that there had been another party who got him to the beach rather than him washing ashore on his own.
In fact, if I remember correctly, the Prince had the choice to marry and said he probably wasn't going to marry this Princess as part of this deal and wanted to marry "Ariel". However, as soon as the Prince recognized the Princess who was the nun acolyte who found him and spent time nursing him back to health, he decided to marry her instead.
11:33 For Sebastian, it's less a change of heart and more " oh sweet posidon, it's either marry a human or slave to a sea witch, so I guess I'm playing wingman. "
There is a bit of a change of heart. While he's ranting about going back and demanding Ursula change Ariel into a mermaid again, he sees her sad puppy dog eyes and changes his mind.
I feel like it's a bit of a blend. Like at first he goes along with it because explaining to his boss THE KING that he *let his daughter lose this deal* was terrifying, but later in the film you do see how much Sebastian feels for her as she is clearly in love with Eric and enjoying herself
I swear Dom is going to go through all of Disney's adaptations, and come out horrified at the end. Also I hope he talks about Great Mouse Detective soon.
Ursula has six mollusc arms, two human arms, and no tentacles. Squid have eight arms and two tentacles. Since she has a total of eight limbs, I'd argue she's closer to an octopus than a squid, although she's clearly not either of those things. She's the offspring of C'thulhu and a very sassy cuttlefish.
@@JennyBlaze253 They use the arms for swimming and the tentacles for hunting and grabbing. The tentacles are longer and only have the suckers near the end.
Ok my headcanon is now that C’thulhu is the mommy, and the sassy cuttlefish was one of the smaller ones that pretends to be female while the bigger boys are fighting so as to mate while they’re distracted. Thank you!
I would like to add, that Ursula doesn't seem to cause any damage or harm with her extra limbs. Squids have like little claws on each sucker, getting a hug from one would be painful. Octopus don't have that, so that speaks for Octopus too. It also looks more Octopus like from the shape.
From my understanding, the original ending of the book was the one where the mermaid just dies at the end, only for Anderson to release a revised version a few years later that tacked on the slightly happier "earn your soul" ending. That would probably explain why it feels so abrupt.
However, every version I've ever read (including Routledge's academic edition) has the happy ending. So *that's* all right. I suspect Dom's edition might have had other reasons for cutting the ending.
When I was a child we had a record with the fairy take and it was the sad ending. The record was from the 70's and we listen to it in the early 90's all in german with all of the other tales from Hans Cristian Andersen.
me at the 1:30 mark "hes gonna tell the dickens story please tell the dickens story please t-" thank you for telling the dickens story. anderson truly is an actual irl bisexual disaster
In my fairytales in literature class we (including me) had some fun laughing about how dramatic he was. I to am a bisexual disaster and it kinda helped me laugh and see the silliness in some of my more dramatic behaviors. For example my best friends from college live kinda far away from me so I often feel kinda sad and alone because I miss not being able to hang out with them as much as before and I am still struggling to make new friends a little closer to my house. However I have the bad habit of waiting for them to reach out to me first to talk. So I’m there sitting in my bed sad watching videos ON MY CELLULAR DEVICE/metaphorically crying on the front lawn thinking “I miss my friends so much. I wish I could talk to them more often. It feels like life is drifting us apart. 😢”
Okay, I've been a little mermaid enthusiast since I was a kid. Confusion clearing: The princess and nun were thr same person. The princess was at the convent for her education, saw the prince on the beach, and prince saw her upon waking up. It was all a coincidence that she was also the princess the prince becomes engaged with, which makes it more tragic. Efit: Ursula is an octopus, her arms count as limbs too. Edit 2: The air spirit ending for the book was added later, as the tragic end went to print first. Source for all of this: I took a class in college where we specifically studied fairy tales! Majoring in English was fun! But I did extensive research about the little mermaid for 2 of my papers, so it's forever stuck in my brain.
Hello Dane here. I was wondering if your research was based on English translations only or if you also looked at the Danish version. Cause this video / comment section is the first time I have ever heard of a version where the ending didn't include the air-spirits. Is it possible that it is the first printing of the English translation that for some reason omitted the air-spirits and that later version chose to include them?
@Empress1989 It was 10 years ago, but what I remember from my research is that the air spirits were added by Andersen after he'd already finished the story and it was to be printed. I wish I had my computer in front of me right now, but from what I remember reading was that Andersen had a change of heart about the ending and it was affected by something in his actual life, so he decided to add a less tragic end - this also explains why the writing for the air spirit ending is different than the rest of the story, as it was written later. From what I remember the writing style was said to have an abrupt shift once it reached the air spirit ending in his native language, but it was edited or something by translators once it made it to the English version. I only speak English and broken French, so I would need to find the paper for my old citations. It was just such a key part that I found in my research and intrigued me, that the book ending was added, and it stuck with me all this time.
@@Empress1989I've not read the original in Danish, but I do know that the HCA ride in Tivoli in Copenhagen, at least in the English version, does not mention the spirits. I don't know if the Danish commentary is the same as the English one (my understanding of Danish wasn't good enough until after fairytale age), but it would be strange to me if that particular ride told a different version of the same story in each language. A bit of a roundabout way to show potential counter-evidence I know, but at least it was a retelling done in Denmark that was primarily created for a Danish audience that just so happened to also have an English translation to choose to listen to while riding!
The theory of the ending being a later addition is actually disproven by the original manuscript. It shows his working progress and the ending wasn’t added, it was actually shortened a bit. The title have also had some changes according to letters he wrote and the manuscript itself, from “daughters of the air” to “daughters of the water” to “the mermaid” to “the little mermaid”
In Denmark at HCA's lifetime blue (and by also grey and greenish) eyes would have been quite abundant, while dark brown was rare and mysterious. He probably thought of him as someone from the Mediterranean. Edit: Btw, the Disney movie doesn't really explain why Ariel has to give her voice. Mermaids are sirens, who lure sailors to rocky shores with their otherworldly and all enchanting singing and make their ships capsize and the sailors drown. In 1824 Heinrich Heine published "Die Lorelei" which was made into a song in 1837. This was already seen as an allogory for unrequited love and most likely heavily inspired The Little Mermaid. The Germanic sirens are not evil and do not intentionally drown sailors (unlike their Greek counterparts, I think). So Ursula taking Ariel's voice was a necessity to have Ariel and Eric meet and be together. She, as a mermaid will lure the sailor into his death with her voice, although she doesn't want it, because it's in her nature. A mermaid falling in love with a sailor is the ultimate forbidden fruit, they are not meant to be together, they are opposing forces, their meeting will always end with the death of one them - that's why in the original their love story ends tragically. In the context of gay love in the 19th century that's an important aspect to be mentioned.
It should be noted in original Greek mythology sirens were not mermaids but birds with old hag heads. Though there is a manfish named King Triton in Greek mythology as well, he’s a son of Poseidon and his official heir.
4:25 aside, we should all miss René Auberjonois. I saw him speak at a Star Trek convention when I was maybe ten or eleven, and it's still burned in my brain what a good natured human being he was. He sang a little bit of Little Mermaid for everyone, because of course he did.
Yes, Rene Auberjonois is definitely missed. Especially loved him as Odo in Star Trek Deep Space Nine. I think his 3 most famous characters, the ones he'll be remembered forever for, are Clayton from Benson, Odo from DS9, and Chef Louis from The Little Mermaid.
Given the actually out loud LOL it triggered, "like the world's saddest alkaselzer," may be my favourite Lost in Adaptation phrase since Aslan was described as Jesus's fursona. Keep up the good work, you beautiful bean.
Not an episode I expected to see given how very "In Name Only" this feels like as an adaptation. Side note, the Japanese (who have quite the love of mermaids) actually made an anime movie on the story before the Disney version came out and it's a lot closer adaptation wise to the original story.
@@MarceloZ2 The international version is quite literally “Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid (1975)” or as they’d say in Japan, when written in romanji “Anderson Douwa: Ningyo-hime” or “Anderson fairy tales: Mermaid princess”. Simply typing 1975 with the basic title will always get you the search.
i am the person who requested you to cover The Little Mermaid on Patreon - I'm so happy for you to do it, sorry for emotional pain, I didn't realize the story was so dark - it was interesting to learn of how Anderson was such a bisexual social oblivious - your video did not disappoint, I could not be happier
I never read it as him being a jackass, more just being a socially oblivious drama-inducing bisexual ROMANTIC with BIG FEELINGS he NEEDED to let the WORLD KNOW ABOUT *GOSHDARNIT*. A lot of the stuff he ended up doing seems more like him not really having an internal filter for what other people might dislike. Calling him a jackass would imply he's being difficult on purpose, which - as a fellow Dane - is a VERY un-Danish thing to do.
@@CrimsonCat87 i never really believed in national values of any kind but jackass probably wasn't the right choice of words more like social oblivious
@@CrimsonCat87So... Basically Hans Christian Anderson was Autistic. As an autistic person myself who's been not exactly treated the fairest because of my social ineptitude, I more or less understood what he was going through.
14:07 Yeah, you did miss somethig here, which isn't suprising, it's only explained in like...two sentences, if I recall corectly? xD When visiting the Princesses country (becouse yes, the prince went to HER, not the other way around, which also explains why the wedding party is on the ship: to get home), they have to wait on the Princess for quiet some time becouse she hasn't arrived yet. As it turns out, the Princess was beeing raised in a monestary, to learn how to be a real princess (I asume maners, and humbleness and stuff). When the Princess finally arives, the Prince imidiately calls out "It's you!", cluing the reader in that the Nun he had fallen in love with, was actually the Princess who simply lived at the monestary.
Also just to add because it seemed he was confused about this too. I don't think the Prince ever saw the little mermaid like in the movie. He woke up on the beach and the princess as the nun was there so he considered her his rescuer.
Thanks, I wanted to clear that up, but I see you safed me some time there =) Good to know that there are other readers in the audience, though considering the topic that's not surprising I guess.
Princesses we're educated in convents. Christ: They learned to ready and write (which a Lot of men in the middle ages couldn't as it was thought of as "weak"). They were trained in several languages, they were also taught foreign politics, Family dynamics, some Math, History, econmics etc. Queens in Former Times were Not eye Candy. They we're the second head of state.
So sad you didnt mention my favourite hans christian anderson story. He once reportedly turned up to the house of Jakob Grimm (of those brothers grimm) and basically tried to invite himself in for dinner and was completely outraged when Grimm didnt recognise him immediately upon seeing him
Poor Hans...At least he had managed to befriend Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas. Though, if I recall correctly, the Dickens incident seemed to have been troubled due to culture/language barriers (Andersen was said to struggle with English) along with Dickens having other problems at the time (I think it was marital issues but I'm not sure...).
I like the idea that Ariel's voice actually had power because the mermaids are in fact sirens and that was why Ursula wanted it. Despite full on staring at her on the beach the only thing Eric remembers is her voice and later Ursula seemingly uses it to entrance him.
@@lorelord2418 yeah. But they've been mermaids since the middle ages so it's not a new thing. No idea how that happened since if bird had an antonym, it'd be fish lol
You forgot to talk about TLM's grandmother, the Sea king's mother. She was the person who drop knowledge about the human world and human soul. Disney gave her part to Scuttle the seagull.
Regarding Andersen's awkward social life, I cannot begin to imagine how awful it would be to be neurodivergent in 19th century Europe, it must've been HELL. Being neurodivergent myself, I've always felt a lot of sympathy for H. C. (the story about his stay with the Dickens family always makes me cringe) having to go through life without any of support systems I benefitted from all my life and still rely on to this day.
It wasn't just he was clearly socially awkward. But also what makes him a unique author of his time is that he WASN'T from the higher class. he grew up very poor and in the lower class, and that was just not a thing that a writer could be at any lower class at the time. Which also makes Dickens vs Andersens works interesting to me as Dickens kind of romanticises poverty, really showing he never had to live it. While Andersen doesn't, he shows the brutality uncompromising nature of it because... that was his childhood and youth. But yeah... basically Andersen was an intruder of the upper class, he wasn't raised like them and didn't know how to behave among them. And the upper class didn't know what to do with him as he was a giant celebrity so they HAD to put up with him. But it also makes stories such as "Princess on the pea." really funny as you realize it's such a big f finger to the upper class as he outright satirises them and their cozy comfort ways XD
Not to mention, Hans always had a fear of becoming mentally ill like his paternal grandfather was. Didn't help that Hans was a hypochondriac who was terrified of being buried alive and even brought rope during travels in case of a house fire. On the plus side, that didn't stop him from traveling. He went to a volcano.
Here's the way I always interpreted The Prince and the princess. The mermaid drag the prince onto the beach unconscious then disappeared once she saw another human coming to help him. And that was the girl from the monastery who was the person the prince saw when he woke up he never even saw the mermaid at all. We know that the princess is the girl from the monastery because he mentions the girl who saved him and then the princess confirmed that she was at the monastery there for study when and saved him so the prince isn't an idiot, she just doesn't know anything the mermaid did for him. He fell in love with the girl he thought rescued him who was the girl who did find him unconscious on the beach.
@@lahlybird895 I’ll give credit that unlike the Disney version, Andersen doesn’t make the princess the villain who tries to steal the prince away from the little mermaid. As you said, the princess didn’t know that the little mermaid had feelings for him. The princess does her best to treat the mermaid with kindness.
@beethovensfidelio that too. I was just specifically addressing the idea that the prince mistook this princess for the mermaid, when I think it's more likely he just didn't know about the mermaid at all. But also yes The Prince and the princess neither of them did anything wrong, such a tragedy in the first place.
The way I personally interpret the Disney adaptation of this story is that a large part of it was Howard Ashman recognising as a Queer Subtext Story and using it to express his own hopes for a happy ending for the queer community and really all kids who don’t fit in with their birth homes and birth families (I think this hope is also present in “Beauty and the Beast” and the “Once Upon a Time in New York City” sequence in “Oliver and Company”). Yes, these stories are textually about M/F cis relationships, but they can still be read as stories connected to the queer experience in so many different ways. So basically, the adaptation process on this is basically a story of two different queer men processing their hopes and fears and dreams through the same story.
Same here. We cannot know for sure, but we know he was an integral part for not just the music of the films of the Disney Renaissance. I believe he had been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS during the production of The Little Mermaid, and worked on Beauty and the Beast while he was undergoing treatment. (Sadly he passed away before the movie was completed.) There is something beautiful about seeing this queer tragedy and making it have a happy ending, despite real life tragedies.
Huh, never knew these details! The little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast were by far the two movies that most influenced me as a kid and I resonated with them wholeheartedly. They are still some of my all time faves now that I'm an adult ♥
I really liked the original story when I first heard it. She had the choice to kill the prince and save herself but she chose to take responsibility for her choices. It’s a tragedy but acknowledges that he did not owe her his affections and it would not be fair to punish him for not reciprocating her feelings.
I disagree that in the original story the little mermaid wasn’t obsessed with the human world before seeing the prince. A large portion of the beginning of the story is dedicated to how much she loves the stories about the land, and longs to be old enough to visit for herself. To me her obsession with the prince just feels like an extension of that longing.
I would find this funny except that I keep asking having an argument with my stepfather because he keeps whining about people trying to change the Little mermaid even though the Little mermaid he's referring to is Disney's Little mermaid so he doesn't even seem to care that Disney's Little mermaid is an adaptation that's completely different from its original fairy tale. And that in and of itself would be fine except for the reason he's complaining about people adopting it because to quote him "if you're going to change things like that then you shouldn't call it the original and just use a different name because if you change things like that it's not the same story you're telling your own story so you shouldn't do it at all". Basically he hates all fairy tail adaptations thinks adapting fairy tales is a bad genre except he can't acknowledge the fact that Disney did that with the little mermaid. So pretty much his entire criteria for whether or not it's good is whether or not he likes it which is fine except that he's trying to apply it to all people ever. so the live action is a bad adaptation of The Little mermaid because it's two different from Disney's original animated Little mermaid but he won't acknowledge the fact that the animated Little mermaid is way different from the original fairy tale.
@@lahlybird895 The only main difference from the original book was the hair color and the way Anderson had merfolk in design. Otherwise, pretty accurate. I'd still have preferred to see a mermaid story that is all about those of the African continent, because it opens up for a lot of leeway. Not a re-telling of a book and movie already told. And blackwashed.
Meanwhile my dad, in his 70s, got taught today (we were talking about pantomimes as one of the trivia shows we watch had some special guests in who were dressed up in their panto costumes) that Frozen is based on The Snow Queen. Which is from like 1840's. He's never heard of it until today. How??? I know he didn't have the internet growing up but he knows HCA.
@@BrokensoulRiderAriel didn't risk being turned into seafoam if her love was unrequited and there was nothing about immortality or how mermaids are soulless
Answers to Dom’s questions: The Prince never saw the little mermaid at all, the girl who saved him that he remembered was the princess who just ‘found him’ on the beach and he saw that as her being the one who saved him. The princess wasn’t a nun but had just been sent to the convent for schooling. The happy ending was a revised edition because people didn’t like the sad end and he was basically bullied into doing it. Also shocked Dom didn’t mention the fact the prince made the little mermaid sleep on the floor at his bed like a puppy!
So wait you’re telling me Hans Christian Andersen was in fact a neurodivergent bisexual fumbler whom anyone who knew him could immediately tell wasn’t straight? Guy just went from some dude who wrote fairy tales to the most relatable king in my eyes
One hates to diagnose historical figures, but if Andersen wasn't autistic I'd be *very* surprised. RIP to Dickens not knowing how to clearly communicate 'you need to go home now' I guess
He's also very famous (in Denmark) for being so afraid of being buried alive, that he would always leave a note saying "not dead, just sleeping!" by his bedside.
The idea with the spilled popcorn meaning Part of Your World should be cut was that Katzenberg thought it indicated that the kid was bored with the scene, like if the popcorn was distracting him, he wasn't being entertained.
19:25 I wonder if filmmakers wished they had included Ariel feeling isolated and alone on land in the original because the added song "For The First Time" in the live-action actually focuses on how lonely and isolated Ariel feels after she realizes everything she traded to be with Eric who she can't even talk to.
The important thing about Ariel that so many people miss is that her motivation is SO MUCH FUCKING MORE than "but daddy I love him". Not only does she sing a whole love song about the human world and only a reprise for her love interest, falling for Eric isn't even the inciting incident for her leaving home and making the deal with Ursula. Her dad destroying her collection is. She leaves home because she's got a controlling father who doesn't understand her and destroyed all her priced processions in a fit of rage. That's a pretty good fucking reason to leave home. And before anyone gets on Ariel's case for saying she loves Eric before really meeting him, not only is this a fairy tale about mermaids, but she literally saw the man jump onto a flaming ship to save his dog. Like, can you really blame her?
Exactly! If her father hadn't destroyed her collection she never would have gone to Ursula. She was even planning on going to visit Eric as a mermaid until all that happened. Ariel was just a nerd for human stuff at the start.
Ariel is also Hercules' second cousin. Triton is the son of Poseidon, Poseidon is the Brother of Zeus, Zeus is the father of Hercules, thus the SECOND cousin to Ariel, since Triton would be Hercules' cousin.
Ohh I'm so happy you cover this! I was obsessed with the tale as a kid. The sad ending, the way it was written as she turns into seafoam and the other mermaid spirits welcome her...was so eery and sad. But I also listened very often to my cassette of that movie, great times!
So, I love fairy tales and love to collect different variations of them and have since I was a teenager. That being said, I was aware of the HCA ending of the little mermaid, however, my younger sister, whose favorite princess is Ariel, at the age of 17 had only known the Disney version with the happy ending. I remember breaking the news to her, it was before Christmas we were looking at lights the city puts up in the park as a family and all of us had been discussing differences between Disney and the fairy tales. I realized my sister didn't know the Little mermaid had a fairy tale and warned her she didn't want to know and to just keep the Disney version as her only version but she insisted and CRIED and cried when she found out. Oh I felt so bad
Old person here who is a bit of a fairy tale nerd. The "air spirit" ending is the original Andersen one. Andersen frequently included Christian themes in his stories, and while many of them have "happy" endings where the suffering soul ends up in Heaven is a not infrequent one. Also keep in mind, this is the Victorian times when Andersen was writing. As an extra aside, many original translations of Andersen weren't entirely accurate, and frequently eliminated what humor the author included. Hope this helps.
I came to the same conclusion. The Royal Danish Library website has a transcription of the 1837 version, which I'm pretty sure is the first published edition. With a bit of help from automated translation, it's clear that the Daughters of the Air, 300 years of service, and the sentence reduction/increase policy are in there. Also, I found a passage allegedly from a letter he wrote in 1837 discussing the story: "I have not, like de la Motte Fouqué in _Undine_, allowed the mermaid's acquiring of an immortal soul to depend upon an alien creature, upon the love of a human being. I'm sure that's wrong! It would depend rather much on chance, wouldn't it? I won't accept that sort of thing in this world. I have permitted my mermaid to follow a more natural, more divine path." (I can't confirm this letter or its translation myself, though, because the sources for this English quote are physical books that would be time consuming to access.)
it's a type of reoccurring theme/plot in folklore, apparently. Herr Manneling is the first thing that came to mind that's kinda similar, and wikipedia says it's no. 5050 in Christiansen classification, "fairies' hope for christian salvation"
@Niels_Larsen You mean the "first" translation to cut off the air spirit ending. Certainly it matters in scholarly terms. Andersen's stories have repeatedly suffered through translations where editors made choices for the stories, sometimes eliminating much of the flavour and background Andersen brought to his writing. Denmark is very protective and proud of him. By the way, World Reading Day, a move to get more kids interested in books, was originally set for Andersen's birthday.
Toei’s 1975 adaptation of the Little Mermaid called Hans Christian Andersen’s the Little Mermaid predates Disney’s 1989 version by 14 years. Also the Soviet animated adaptation.
I came here to mention this, I grew up watching this version as a child of the 80's. It is also more true to the original story and you can see many similarities that 'inspired' Disney's version, ie a talking dolphin BFF ('Flounder')
I loved them both. I read it a while ago and definitely was heartbroken over the ending, but loved the moral and heroism in not taking their lives. The fact she accepted this made me appreciate her and showed me just because someone loves you doesn’t mean you have to love them back.
One thing I've learned recently that just enhanced my love for many Disney films and the company's history, is that many times films get worked on for years off and on by different teams before finally making it to the screen. I highly recommend the book "The Queens of Animation" as it goes into detail about the many women that have worked at the studio since the beginning, who often go overlooked by many documentaries. Two of those women were Sylvia Holland and Ethel Kulsar, who worked on treatments for The Little Mermaid in the 40s, around the same time the studio was working on Bambi and Fantasia. Sylvia's concept art paintings served as inspiration for the writers and animators that picked up the project in the 80s, and her story is really inspiring.
The whole air spirits were added for a second edition. The original ending was her turning into foam and dying, which is so, so sad and the one reason why I forgive the happy Disney ending.
Aaah! Thanks for explaining! I was confused there for a minute since I could not, for the life of me, remember that ending. Yeah, I don't mind the happy ending either.
@@ghostrouxinol6169 I was about 5. I HATED Andersen after that because... Nope. Sorry. I kinda got a bit over it when I learned his backstory but still, heartbreak doesn't give you the right to traumatize generations of children!
@@kalinka5333 I heard that it was added due to religious insistence? But I can't find the source for that. What I do know is that the spirits of the air ending was not known in Japan until the 70's, because previous anime adaptations don't include it!
Clarification on the nun/visiting princess thing... My understanding was that the prince assumed it was one if the nuns that found him on the beach (after TLM saved him) but it was actually the visiting princess that found him because she was staying at the nunnery at the time. 🤷♀️
I'm pretty sure the air spirit stuff was a later addition in order to give the little mermaid a happy ending. The original version just had her dying and that's that
Fun fact: Between the time the Soviet Union's version of The Little Mermaid and Disney's that came out in 1989, there was an anime adaptation and one for Shelly Duvall's Fairytale Theater in which Pam Dauber played the part of the mermaid (she played Mindy in Mork And Mindy). These two adaptations rarely get mentioned.
12:42 Despite having haven't seen them either, I can tell you Disney did not break them up. One of them is a prequel, and the other is about Ariel and Eric's daughter basically taking the opposite deal to become a mermaid through (and I kid you not) Ursula's Crazy Sister Morgana.
The discussion about how Andersen and Dickens got along was very interesting to me because I'm a huge fan of an interactive fiction (text adventure) series of games based on the Little Match Girl. At the end of her first adventure, she was rescued and adopted by the well-known philanthropist, Ebenezer Scrooge, and he named her Ebenezabeth Scrooge. She also met Poseidon during this adventure, and he ordered his two mermaid daughters, Eunoia and Eirene, to henceforth treat her as their very own sister, which they have done ever since. Elements of other stories by both Andersen and others have been woven into the series, making for an expansive epic tapestry.
@lasseehrenreich5502 This is a real thing after glossectomy (surgical removal of the tongue). After it, people can still make sounds, so in that sense still have 'a voice', but shaping it into words is the problem.
I think a thing that stuck out to me in the book was the prince had the mermaid sleep on a bed outside his door. He treated her the way you would a cherished pet. I don't think he ever had romantic feelings for her. The princess who found him on the beach and being the right status for his wife was definitely an extra kick to the heart.
I remember reading somewhere that the death ending was written and published first, and the "air spirits" was a revision that came later but Andersen himself much preferred it and claimed he had always planned to include it, but just didn't for whatever reason
So in no specific order: • The Prince in the book is described as "Black haired" and "Black-Eyed", so Eric is 50% accurate to the source material. • The Mermaid in the book did actually have an interest in the surface world before meeting the Prince, that was the reason her flower garden was full of red flowers with a red willow-like tree in the middle forming the shape of the sun. • The Mermaid in the manuscript of the story actually gets a more detailed description: She had "Grass-Green Hair" and a Silver Fishtail in addition to her deep blue eyes. If you ever read that she should be entirely green because in the danish text she is described having a "Rosenblad" (literally "Rose-leaf") complexion are mistranslating the word, "Rosenblad" more accurately translates to as "Rose Petal". So Pinkish. From the Manuscript: Der nede boe Havfolkene, og de see ud foroven ganske ligesom Mennesker kun at deres Øine ere saa forunderige blaae og deres lange Haar er græsgrønt, men hele Nederdelen, derfra hvor Benene skulle begynde er en lang Fiskhale. der er saa smidig at den kunne bøie[s den] bag op over deres Ryg og deres. Down in these depths lies the home of the merpeople, who from the waist up look just like people, save for their eyes, which are so marvelously blue, and their long grass-green hair, while the whole waist, from where the legs should begin, is a long fish-tail, so flexible that it could be bent up over their backs and head. • While the "Daughters/ Spirits of the Air" weren't foreshadowed properly in the final version of the story, they were foreshadowed in the original manuscript. A lot more allusions are made to how humans are to the Little Mermaid as angels are to humans, along with a lot more allusions to the world "above the earth". Far from what some people might tell you that the whole ending was tacked on by HC Andersen, the ending where she becomes a "Daughter of the Air" was part of the plan from the very beginning, with the original title for "The Little Mermaid" being outright "The Daughters of the Air". Furthermore, in said manuscript, the daughters were referred to as "Sylphs" before Andersen changed to the more indirect name they have in the final one. • Funny thing, Disney actually got the setting for the story correct! People tend to think that The Little Mermaid is set in Denmark due to where HC Andersen lived, but if one pays attention to the description of the land the Mermaid travels to, it more directly resembles Southern Italy, which is what Disney based the animated setting on. • WE WERE ROBBED!!! In the final version of the story, it mentions how The Mermaid went on a hunting trip with the Prince and a retinue. However, this gets expanded on in the Manuscript, it mentions how a FREAKING TIGER came out to attack the Prince, and it was the Mermaid herself who saves the Prince from being Tiger Lunch... though considering how the book ends perhaps it would've been better if he indeed became kitty food. A Qoute with Translation from the Manuscript: "følge med ham naar han reed paa Jagt eller besteeg høie Bjerge. Ingen var ham ikke mere tro, end hun, hans lille Hittebarn. Hvilken Glæde følte hun ikke, da hun første Gang paa den en stolt hvid Hest Jog med Prindsen gjennem den tætte duftende Skov, hvor de rede gjennem de.…" "friske Blade. Hun svingede sit Spyd saa godt som de andre Jægere, og da den glubende Tiger, som de gjorte Jagt paa styrte Pri ind mod Prindsen sprang han modig imod den, jog sit Spyd ind i Tigeren Varme Gab. Hun klattrede…" "follow him when he went hunting or climbed high mountains. No one was more faithful to him than she, his little foundling. What joy she felt when she first rode with the prince on a proud white horse through the dense fragrant forest, where they nestled through the fresh leaves." "fresh leaves. She swung her spear as well as the other hunters, and when the ravenous tiger they were hunting rushed towards the Prince, she sprang boldly towards it, thrusting her spear into the tiger's hot jaws. She..." • The original planned ending for the Little Mermaid was, in fact, somewhat happier than the final version! Andersen had cut out a final paragraph following the Daughters of the Air explaining how she can shave off time from that 300 Year wait, where she expresses optimism and determination to do exactly that and reunite with everyone in Heaven. Still a sad ending in that the Mermaid dies, but hearing the Mermaid get the last words and express that she's game for the challenge helps take away the sting. From the Manuscript: „Self vil jeg stræbe efter at vinde en udødelig Sjæl“ sagde den lille Havfrue, „da skal jeg i hiin Verden samles med Prindsen og alle ham, som jeg gav min hele Kjærlighed. Til Rige og Fattiges Huus vil jeg flyve, svæve usynlig gjennem Stuen hvor Børnene sidde, de gode jeg møder ville forkorte min Prøvetid!“ "I myself will strive to win an immortal soul," said the little mermaid, "then I shall gather with the Prince and all those to whom I have given all my love in this world. To the houses of the rich and poor I will fly, floating invisibly through the rooms where the children sit; and the good ones I meet will shorten my trials!" I'll add more when I rewatch the episode to catch anything else I forgot to comment on... which is probably a lot. In case anyone is wondering, my sources come from a very old book that was only ever printed twice called "Den Lille Havfrue: Facsimile og Tekst" or "The Little Mermaid: Facsimile and Text", which contains the original danish manuscript for the Little Mermaid and a record of what was left out or changed in the story.
On the tiger attack comment that reminds me of the 1974 toei version of the little mermaid and while the mermaid has spent some time as human on land she gets attack by a bunch wolves who was then rescued by the prince, not sure if that was an intentional nod to that tiger part or just a similar enough coincidence but its interesting to think on it.
@@brandonlyon730 I'm suspecting its a similar coincidence since knowledge of the manuscript and its contents are SURPRISINGLY sparse. The book with this information was printed twice: first in the 1950s, and then a reprint in the 1970s... making the book rather rare. If said knowledge of the manuscript is rare now, imagine how hard it would have been to come across for Toei back when the '74 movie was released. THAT BEING SAID. I absolutely love Ningyo Hime. Disney's version may be nostalgic, but I dearly love the anime one.
New Note: To Answer Dom's confusion about "multiple endings", the short version is that because of the Public Domain nature of the Little Mermaid, some releases of the Little Mermaid (such as ones from the 1973 all the way to the 90s) were released that remove the intended ending with the "Daughters of the Air". This stems from critics believing the intended ending of the story was basically a “compassionate lie” and that it added "unnecessary mysticism" to the ending. In other words, these critics felt it was basically a cop out and the equivalent of today's crowd of people who complain about endings being too happy. So if you ever picked up a version of The Little Mermaid that leaves out the Daughters of the Air and just has her die at the end, you got ripped off. As mentioned above, the intended ending of The Little Mermaid always was that she would become a Sylph at the end. A funny addendum: Ariel's name in the movie comes from a "Spirit of the Air" that works with Prospero in Shakespear's "The Tempest", making her own name a subtle reference to her original fate. Expect more notes on the way.
@@brandonlyon730 I'm suspecting its a similar coincidence since knowledge of the manuscript and its contents are SURPRISINGLY sparse. The book with this information was printed twice: first in the 1950s, and then a reprint in the 1970s... making the book rather rare. If said knowledge of the manuscript is rare now, imagine how hard it would have been to come across for Toei back when the '74 movie was released. THAT BEING SAID. I absolutely love Ningyo Hime. Disney's version may be nostalgic, but I dearly love the anime one.
@@caelumis3630Thanks for sharing. I suspected that the shorter version would be due to editors cutting for various reasons…including trying to save on paper and printing costs. But I had no evidence for it.
Thinking about the story you tell of Anderson writing himself as the mermaid, I wonder if there's a connection between the 'spirits of the air' and authorship. A way to live on and gain immortality, separate from everything that came before it.
Saw a French anime-ish adaptation in my hometown movie theatre in the very early 80s. It was the Saturday kids matinee where the theatre played whatever kids appropriate movie they could get their hands on. Usually stopping after the first reel to draw a prize to one lucky kid (I won a spiderman bank and Wayne Gretzky posters). This was the darkest movie they ever played. She was destined to either kill her human love or turn into sea foam. One scene has her holding a dagger over her sleeping human love. The next… sea foam on the sea. We walked out as quiet as can be.
When you said Edward Collin at around 13minutes I thought for a second you said "if Edward Cullen was really as disinterested in..." and my brain immediately went "what is sparkles doing in this video?!"
Funny that you mention the soviet movie. There's also a soviet animated short film adaptation that sticks to the tragic ending and even shows the little mermaid statue in Copenhagen
Hans Christian Anderson was the king of overcomplicating his fairy tales and adding multiple fine print stuff. One of my favourites, the Snow Queen, is ... wow
I guess authors that put overcomplicated lore that might make for good discussion but overall it just pointless to the story is a older concept then I thought
Walt himself had wanted for years to adapt both "The Little Mermaid" and "The Snow Queen." Efforts to do so were off and on at Disney but, of course, never came to fruition until long after Walt passed.
I am swedish and my mum used to read HC Andersens little mermaid to me as a child. It is not sadder nor weirder than any other Scandinavian fairytale really. I remember an other one about a troll child getting switched with a normal child and the mother protects the troll child even if the husband tries to kill the troll child in various ways. An other was about a boy competing with a giant eating porridge and it ends up with the giant slicing up his stomach. With that said, I can understand from a different cultural lens it can seem weird. They are mainly tales with a moral ending really.
@@Xehanort10 The same can be said for “The Nightingale” and “The Snow Queen”, which were the results of Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind rejecting Hans Christian Andersen’s affections. Basing “The Snow Queen” on Jenny Lind indicated that Andersen did not take her rejection well. 😂
The plot of a mermaid/water nymph turning human in order to seduce a mortal man to gain a soul, only for a woman to come between them and the protagonist to attempt to or successfully kill one or both of them and die afterwards is a centuries old storyline that Hans Cristian Andersen used as a basis for his story ( more specifically the 1811 German fairytale Undine served as loose inspiration for the Little Mermaid )
@@beethovensfidelio It seems like through the fairytales he wrote he threw tantrums when people said no to him. An incel centuries before the term existed.
Andersen also drew inspiration from the novella, Undine, by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque. Which is itself based on the legend of a Water Elemental spirit (called an Ondine) who marries a Knight, and he promises her loyalty and faithfulness, eventually giving the Ondine a soul and turning her human. But sadly, the Knight breaks his vow and becomes unfaithful (one of the reasons being the Ondine grew old and no longer beautiful in the Knight's eyes), and when she caught him with a younger woman, the Ondine curses his breath. This became known as Ondine's Curse, or Central Hypoventiliation Syndrome (CHS).
14:30 the version I read as a kid was the princess was traveling when she chanced upon the beached prince. the closest establishment to them was a monastery so she took him there for treatment and the prince assumed she was a nun. he was initially apprehensive in marrying the princess but upon realizing it was her agreed, mistaking her to be the savior that pulled him from the waters.
I remember loving the sylph bit at the end when I was small. I guess I thought being an air spirit sounded cooler than being either a mermaid or a princess.
I remember reading TLM for the first time in Kindergarten and the tongue removal and seafoam death ending destroying me. This was two years before the Disney movie. I was actually a little afraid to go see it, but see it for Christmas 1989 we did, and I'm so glad. What a time that was! Great review, as ever, Dom.
Minor thing that I always found an interesting difference between the story and the movie was that in Disney's version Triton forbids Ariel from going to surface while in the story going up is basically a rite of passage when a mermaid turns sixteen and after that you're free to go whenever. The little mermaid is kind of odd only because she keeps returning, for most lose interest after the novelty wears off. Also the sea king never really appears and instead the little mermaids grandmother is the parental figure in the fairy tale.
"Unbearably annoying to be around, but entirely unaware of it." So on the spectrum, then. Until they realize it, then it kicks their depressive tendencies up to 1000. I remember when I discovered how annoying I was. It was pretty world shattering.
Thanks for this presentation! I had both the Brothers Grimm and HCA volumes as a child. Yep, and the real-deal Greek, Roman and Norse mythologies. Never a dull moment, that’s the truth!
In the version I have the little mermaid saves the prince from drowning but the nun nurses him back to health, and it was not uncommon to have a noble lady sent to a nunery for education before marriage, that's why he didn't find strange when he saw her again.
I loved the story when I was growing up. Hans Anderson’s stories were my comfort reading and the mermaid was my favourite. I HATED what Disney did to it.
Why is Sebastian so horrified by humans eating sea creatures? Crabs are omnivores; they’ll eat ANYTHING! Crabs eat other crabs all the time. 😂 Fish are dumb, dumb, dumb; They chase anything that glimmers- Beginners! Oh! And here they come, come, come To the brightest thing that glitters. Ooh, fish dinners! I just love free food, And you look like seafood.
I’m so glad (not surprised since you’re always thorough) that you included Ariel being land obsessed and Eric being enchanted, but my dude you totally overlooked the part where Eric saves Max from the ship. I’d have married him on the spot with no additional information or motivation. “Daddy I love him” was completely valid after witnessing that.
Especially after Triton’s comment of all humans being “the same, spineless savage harpooning fish eaters incapable of any feeling”. Seeing Eric save his crew and dog is proof that Triton was wrong.
The disney sequel seems to have gone for a role reversal, as Ariel is now the one opposed to her daughter being part of the sea and goes so far as to build a wall that reaches the water. Also something something Ursula's crazy sister (their words, not mine)
I flipping love the sequel (Return to the Sea) it has such catchy songs. In the sequel Ariel is about to return to the sea at the baptism of Melody (her daughter) and they would have been part of both worlds. But then Morgana (Ursula's sister) turns up and threatens her life. Ariel builds a huge wall (not learning from her own upbringing) and doesn't tell Melody she's half mermaid - she also doesn't go back to the sea herself. Cue much sneaking out and eventually a contract with Morgana to turn Melody into a mermaid. I should say I saw 2 before 1 and had it taped from the Disney channel in the early 00s. So while I concede that the original film is much better, I have a huge soft spot for 2. Also it has Tip and Dash.
14:14 correction The Princess and the Nun were the same person, she was just studying at the monastery at the time she "rescued" the Prince and he assumed she was a nun and therefore unable to be married. And to the Prince´s credit he didn´t actually see the Little mermaid when he woke up, so his assumption that the Nun was his savior is not that unreasonable.
When I look back at some of these stories and think about how my parents used to read them to me as a kid, I realize I had no choice but to grow into the dark and macabre person I am today. Of course, when the other kids were learning to read with Dick & Jane, I was reading Edgar Allen Poe. Fantastic breakdown, Dom!
I saw the Japanese version that was closer to the story and yes, in that version she dies at the end (without the coda/epilogue where she becomes a carrier of dreams to earn her way into heaven.
They skipped her time with The Daughters of the Air and wanting a soul, so the narrator said, "And so the Little Mermaid's soul ascended to heaven." So, still made a bit more gentle. I do love that P.L. Travers, author of "Mary Poppins", called Anderson out for emotional blackmail regarding children making the Daughters of the Air cry.
Oh, strange! I remember reading a children's book when i was in second grade, and it wasnt until i was in high school i realized it was drawn after the Japanese anime. But i especially remember the last page, as the mermaid was explained how a child's behavior affects her lifespan to acquire a soul. Which gave me a bit of relief after such a sad ending for her
It should be noted that in the book the Witch wasn't really evil either. Her magic was a bit f*cked up. as you said, but she was otherwise on the level and had no desire to take over the kingdom or anything.
I don't know any Danish but I know enough Swedish to parse out that the version available on the Royal Danish Library's website (on the wayback machine) - stated to be the og 1837 version - does include the air spirits.
The little Mermaid was my favourite book as a girl. My (german) version did include the obsession with the human world before she met the prince, and the air spirits ending. I really really loved this story and when I realized i was aromantic/asexual as an adult i always wondered if there was a deeper reason why it always seemed to resonate with me. A girl who doesn't get the prince but finds a very different way of existing. I don't know, but it's nice to just have a story that doesn't go "boy meets girl, problems get solved, they kiss and/or marry".
I've been through this with friends when they haven't known the "happy" ending. A researched post called, "The Little Mermaid: A Question of Endings," on the blog, Writing in the Margins, goes into this. The 1837 publication of "The Little Mermaid" included the "Daughters of the Air" ending. Some critics disliked this as they wanted it to be a tragedy of unrequited love rather than a tale of spirituality, which may be why it has been removed for some publications. I can add that the redemptive ending is the one I knew from a 1974 television special adaptation I saw as a kid. There was also one about a giant in a garden who meets a boy who's basically Jesus (with nail scars, even). -Although I don't remember the title, it was another Andersen story.- Oops. This was an Oscar Wilde story, "The Selfish Giant." -I think- But I still think the religious ending for "The Little Mermaid" was important to Andersen, as he was a religious person. "The Snow Queen" doesn't end with the heroine failing to save Kai, so being saved seems like a theme (although I haven't read all of his work). One of the links on the blog is to another article, "In Defense of the Conclusion to 'The Little Mermaid' " on Artifice.
I haven't read the Danish version, but in English, the princess was being educated at the monastery, as highborn young ladies often were. She and her companions came across the prince after the little mermaid had taken him to shore, and princess was the first person he remembered clearly after opening his eyes.
17:42 Dunno where I found this, but in high school I read that the sad ending was the original, and the "be a good kid or the mermaid won't go to heaven" was used by parents until it became canon
Walt himself actually had plans of adapting the little mermaid and other Hans Christen Andersen stories himself in an biographic live action/animated hybrid movie, where the Andersen parts were the live action parts and the stories were animated, and the little mermaid in that would've followed the original story more including its very sad ending of her dying. This idea movie never got far and was scrapped early on but some concept art of the original idea including the little mermaid section exist if anyone is curious. Something that should be noted about the Sea witch in the original story, while she didn't have eel henchmen, she did have some Sea snakes pets that live with her that she would call them her little chickitees.
2:35 That summation was depressingly relatable to me. Big oof. (Although I did improve as I got older and eventually found someone who wanted to marry me. But still, big oof.)
Okay, full disclosure as someone who has seen both the movie AND read the original book, in the original story, the woman who saved the prince wasn’t actually a nun, she was a priestess for a temple of an undisclosed religion who is later revealed to have actually been the very princess who he meets later. She was at the temple to basically do charity work for the people as part of her duties as the princess of her kingdom. The prince actually recognized her as the woman who found her in the beach and came to the conclusion she was solely responsible for his life being saved, hence why he fell in love with her and married her. And the poor little mermaid could only watch as the man she was one-sidedly in love with married someone else. Also the mermaid was not going to immediately drop dead if the prince failed to love her, else she would had done that already, she was going to die on the night of her true love’s wedding IF it was a marriage to someone else and not her. This is why her sisters had to rush to get the knife they traded their hair for to her that night because they knew time was of the essence.
Ursula has six tentacles but two arms so still has eight limbs like an octopus.
I can’t upvote this enough!!!!
Squids have tentacles, octopodes have arms, therefore Ursula has eight arms making her an octopus monster
@@wtfuntime ALSO TRUE!
@@wtfuntime well technically only 2 of a squids limbs are actually tentacles, the other 8 are still arms for a total of 10 noodles.
@@my_name_is_artichokeThe math is slightly different if you separate the peen from the math, I mean to recall. Feel free to correct me.
The mermaid just dying was the original ending. The sisters of the air was tacked on as a reprint because people complained the original ending was too sad, but Andersen himself added the ending. Its not like someone else changed it posthumously.
As a Dane i have never heard of the air spirits growing up.
As a fellow Dane I have heard of both. It depends on the version, original or reprint….
I heard it was a publisher that forced the air spirit ending.
That makes sense. I never liked that bit. Makes me wonder how many of the obsequiously religious elements in his tales were to keep others happy
Yeah this was my understanding as well. I’m old enough to have read it and seen other versions before the Disney one came out.
The princess was the girl from the convent. The prince had thought she was a nun, but it turned out she was only at the convent to be educated.
Thank you, I was also confused 😂
Pretty much yes. The Prince never sow even a faint glimpse of the Little Mermaid when she saved him in the book. She got startled when she heard the sound of bells ringing and then swam a away when the girls from the convent were nearing the beach. It was the princess that first found the prince and so its her that the prince sow when he woke up
That makes sense. A lot of women in that time were sent to nunneries to get the sense knocked back into them. Kind of like sending kids to military school.
Nice pfp
I came here to say this 👍
King Triton's complaint about humans being fish eaters is something that always ticked me off. Fish eat fish. They aren't all in the ocean noshing on kelp. They eat other fish, and occasionally land animals
'Fish are friends, not food!'
Those sharks are going to starve...
Also, what exactly do the merfolk eat if not fish? Are they vegetarians and only eat sea plants? That would line up well with the idea that some merfolk legends are inspired by sirenians (manatees, dugongs and sea cows).
Yeah, unless there’s an aquatic form of tofu, I’m guessing they need the protein
@@GallowglassVT The TV series had Ariel eat seaweed at one point.
And let's be honest. Triton didn't get that jacked eating seaweed.
quick correction, the little mermaid was the start of the Disney Renaissance, not the gold age. the golden age of American animation was before the Disney dark age.
@@dangreen3868 the golden age was in the begining with snowhite and all the shorts. The 90's is the Renaissance
"Instead of doubling his romantic options..." Well maybe he did, it's just that two times zero is still zero.
Epic burn.
Yeah.... I can relate
Some other differences are that in the original story, merpeople weren't forbidden from going to the surface. Once they turned 16, they were allowed to see the surface. Since the little mermaid was the youngest, she had to deal with constantly hearing her older sisters' and her grandmother's stories about the surface world and humans until she turned 16 and could see it herself. Another change is that the sea witch keeps trying to convince the little mermaid about what a bad deal she's getting herself into instead of trying to manipulate her into making the deal. Eventually, she tells her that she tried talking her out of it, but if she's so determined, then she'll make the spell for her.
Yeah, the sea witch in the original book is a SAINT compared to ursula!
The original sea witch actually conducted her business in a fair and square way, and explained all the risks and consequences before the deal.
Yeah, witches always getting a bad rap, but what are they supposed to do when foolish teenagers keep pestering them for reckless magic
@@alliew31I guess witches don’t have the right to refuse service. 😂
The nun princess that the prince marries was a princess the whole time. She was living at an abbey for her education and he mistook her for a nun initiate. She was basically offered in marriage to him for some royal union.
Small addition, if I remember correctly the princess had contributed to saving him. She didn't pull him from the sea like TLM, but she is the one who found him on the beach, gave first aid, and contributed to his care afterwards. The prince and princess were completely sincere about her being his savior, they were just unaware that there had been another party who got him to the beach rather than him washing ashore on his own.
In fact, if I remember correctly, the Prince had the choice to marry and said he probably wasn't going to marry this Princess as part of this deal and wanted to marry "Ariel". However, as soon as the Prince recognized the Princess who was the nun acolyte who found him and spent time nursing him back to health, he decided to marry her instead.
11:33 For Sebastian, it's less a change of heart and more " oh sweet posidon, it's either marry a human or slave to a sea witch, so I guess I'm playing wingman. "
There is a bit of a change of heart. While he's ranting about going back and demanding Ursula change Ariel into a mermaid again, he sees her sad puppy dog eyes and changes his mind.
Honestly it’s seems to be a bit of both.
I feel like it's a bit of a blend. Like at first he goes along with it because explaining to his boss THE KING that he *let his daughter lose this deal* was terrifying, but later in the film you do see how much Sebastian feels for her as she is clearly in love with Eric and enjoying herself
Wing crab!
I swear Dom is going to go through all of Disney's adaptations, and come out horrified at the end. Also I hope he talks about Great Mouse Detective soon.
That was a book????
@@YOSSARIAN313 yes
I hope he talks about Winnie the Pooh
@lasseehrenreich5502 Was the book Sherlock Holmes?
@@commandere2475 No. It's a series of 8 novels (5 when the movie was released) called _Basil of Baker Street_.
Ursula has six mollusc arms, two human arms, and no tentacles. Squid have eight arms and two tentacles. Since she has a total of eight limbs, I'd argue she's closer to an octopus than a squid, although she's clearly not either of those things. She's the offspring of C'thulhu and a very sassy cuttlefish.
Wait... What are the difference between arms and tentacles? 🤔
@@JennyBlaze253 They use the arms for swimming and the tentacles for hunting and grabbing. The tentacles are longer and only have the suckers near the end.
@@mooncalf191 gotcha. Thank you for the clarification.
Ok my headcanon is now that C’thulhu is the mommy, and the sassy cuttlefish was one of the smaller ones that pretends to be female while the bigger boys are fighting so as to mate while they’re distracted. Thank you!
I would like to add, that Ursula doesn't seem to cause any damage or harm with her extra limbs. Squids have like little claws on each sucker, getting a hug from one would be painful. Octopus don't have that, so that speaks for Octopus too. It also looks more Octopus like from the shape.
From my understanding, the original ending of the book was the one where the mermaid just dies at the end, only for Anderson to release a revised version a few years later that tacked on the slightly happier "earn your soul" ending. That would probably explain why it feels so abrupt.
However, every version I've ever read (including Routledge's academic edition) has the happy ending.
So *that's* all right. I suspect Dom's edition might have had other reasons for cutting the ending.
The earning your soul back is an important part of the story. It was in the original release.
The version I was given as a child was the died as seafoam one. Never watched the Disney movie as a result.
Yes, this! From my understanding, Anderson was kind of bullied into writing the happy ending by readers because the original was too sad.
When I was a child we had a record with the fairy take and it was the sad ending. The record was from the 70's and we listen to it in the early 90's all in german with all of the other tales from Hans Cristian Andersen.
me at the 1:30 mark "hes gonna tell the dickens story please tell the dickens story please t-" thank you for telling the dickens story.
anderson truly is an actual irl bisexual disaster
In my fairytales in literature class we (including me) had some fun laughing about how dramatic he was.
I to am a bisexual disaster and it kinda helped me laugh and see the silliness in some of my more dramatic behaviors.
For example my best friends from college live kinda far away from me so I often feel kinda sad and alone because I miss not being able to hang out with them as much as before and I am still struggling to make new friends a little closer to my house.
However I have the bad habit of waiting for them to reach out to me first to talk.
So I’m there sitting in my bed sad watching videos ON MY CELLULAR DEVICE/metaphorically crying on the front lawn thinking “I miss my friends so much. I wish I could talk to them more often. It feels like life is drifting us apart. 😢”
@@Korihor666 A truly skakesperean life.
He drove the Dickens family NUTS!
Okay, I've been a little mermaid enthusiast since I was a kid. Confusion clearing: The princess and nun were thr same person. The princess was at the convent for her education, saw the prince on the beach, and prince saw her upon waking up. It was all a coincidence that she was also the princess the prince becomes engaged with, which makes it more tragic.
Efit: Ursula is an octopus, her arms count as limbs too.
Edit 2: The air spirit ending for the book was added later, as the tragic end went to print first.
Source for all of this: I took a class in college where we specifically studied fairy tales! Majoring in English was fun! But I did extensive research about the little mermaid for 2 of my papers, so it's forever stuck in my brain.
Hello Dane here.
I was wondering if your research was based on English translations only or if you also looked at the Danish version. Cause this video / comment section is the first time I have ever heard of a version where the ending didn't include the air-spirits. Is it possible that it is the first printing of the English translation that for some reason omitted the air-spirits and that later version chose to include them?
@Empress1989 It was 10 years ago, but what I remember from my research is that the air spirits were added by Andersen after he'd already finished the story and it was to be printed. I wish I had my computer in front of me right now, but from what I remember reading was that Andersen had a change of heart about the ending and it was affected by something in his actual life, so he decided to add a less tragic end - this also explains why the writing for the air spirit ending is different than the rest of the story, as it was written later. From what I remember the writing style was said to have an abrupt shift once it reached the air spirit ending in his native language, but it was edited or something by translators once it made it to the English version. I only speak English and broken French, so I would need to find the paper for my old citations.
It was just such a key part that I found in my research and intrigued me, that the book ending was added, and it stuck with me all this time.
@@Empress1989I've not read the original in Danish, but I do know that the HCA ride in Tivoli in Copenhagen, at least in the English version, does not mention the spirits. I don't know if the Danish commentary is the same as the English one (my understanding of Danish wasn't good enough until after fairytale age), but it would be strange to me if that particular ride told a different version of the same story in each language.
A bit of a roundabout way to show potential counter-evidence I know, but at least it was a retelling done in Denmark that was primarily created for a Danish audience that just so happened to also have an English translation to choose to listen to while riding!
The theory of the ending being a later addition is actually disproven by the original manuscript. It shows his working progress and the ending wasn’t added, it was actually shortened a bit. The title have also had some changes according to letters he wrote and the manuscript itself, from “daughters of the air” to “daughters of the water” to “the mermaid” to “the little mermaid”
@Chilietriller See, I'd never heard of the letters before. Is there a place I could read the English translations of them?
In Denmark at HCA's lifetime blue (and by also grey and greenish) eyes would have been quite abundant, while dark brown was rare and mysterious. He probably thought of him as someone from the Mediterranean.
Edit: Btw, the Disney movie doesn't really explain why Ariel has to give her voice. Mermaids are sirens, who lure sailors to rocky shores with their otherworldly and all enchanting singing and make their ships capsize and the sailors drown. In 1824 Heinrich Heine published "Die Lorelei" which was made into a song in 1837. This was already seen as an allogory for unrequited love and most likely heavily inspired The Little Mermaid. The Germanic sirens are not evil and do not intentionally drown sailors (unlike their Greek counterparts, I think). So Ursula taking Ariel's voice was a necessity to have Ariel and Eric meet and be together. She, as a mermaid will lure the sailor into his death with her voice, although she doesn't want it, because it's in her nature.
A mermaid falling in love with a sailor is the ultimate forbidden fruit, they are not meant to be together, they are opposing forces, their meeting will always end with the death of one them -
that's why in the original their love story ends tragically. In the context of gay love in the 19th century that's an important aspect to be mentioned.
very interesting context, thanks.
A lot of 19th century British literature is obsessed with 'dark, sparkling eyes,' as well. Mysterious Dark Eyes FTW!
@@ambds1975 The hot Mediterranean lover has been a trope in North European literature for quite some time (Don Juan, Casanova)
It should be noted in original Greek mythology sirens were not mermaids but birds with old hag heads. Though there is a manfish named King Triton in Greek mythology as well, he’s a son of Poseidon and his official heir.
@@sarielle85 Yes! The Allure of the Far Away and Exotic. or something
4:25 aside, we should all miss René Auberjonois. I saw him speak at a Star Trek convention when I was maybe ten or eleven, and it's still burned in my brain what a good natured human being he was. He sang a little bit of Little Mermaid for everyone, because of course he did.
Yes, Rene Auberjonois is definitely missed. Especially loved him as Odo in Star Trek Deep Space Nine. I think his 3 most famous characters, the ones he'll be remembered forever for, are Clayton from Benson, Odo from DS9, and Chef Louis from The Little Mermaid.
@@rachelnesser9223 "Les Poisson" is a big lipped alligator moment!
@@rachelnesser9223he was also Mr. House in Fallout: New Vegas
I've been rewatching the 80's sitcom Benson. He's pretty much the best part of it.
Given the actually out loud LOL it triggered, "like the world's saddest alkaselzer," may be my favourite Lost in Adaptation phrase since Aslan was described as Jesus's fursona. Keep up the good work, you beautiful bean.
Not an episode I expected to see given how very "In Name Only" this feels like as an adaptation.
Side note, the Japanese (who have quite the love of mermaids) actually made an anime movie on the story before the Disney version came out and it's a lot closer adaptation wise to the original story.
Whats the name of the japanese adaptation?
@@MarceloZ2
Also just "The Little Mermaid" from 1975. The movie is free to watch on TH-cam, just search for it.
@@MarceloZ2 The international version is quite literally “Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid (1975)” or as they’d say in Japan, when written in romanji “Anderson Douwa: Ningyo-hime” or “Anderson fairy tales: Mermaid princess”. Simply typing 1975 with the basic title will always get you the search.
@@MarceloZ2アンデルセン童話 にんぎょ姫, literally Andersons fairy tale princess mermaid
@ADTillion thanks, appreciate it
i am the person who requested you to cover The Little Mermaid on Patreon - I'm so happy for you to do it, sorry for emotional pain, I didn't realize the story was so dark - it was interesting to learn of how Anderson was such a bisexual social oblivious - your video did not disappoint, I could not be happier
Always cool when you see the actual patreon in the comments
I never read it as him being a jackass, more just being a socially oblivious drama-inducing bisexual ROMANTIC with BIG FEELINGS he NEEDED to let the WORLD KNOW ABOUT *GOSHDARNIT*. A lot of the stuff he ended up doing seems more like him not really having an internal filter for what other people might dislike.
Calling him a jackass would imply he's being difficult on purpose, which - as a fellow Dane - is a VERY un-Danish thing to do.
@@wildste thank you that was sweet
@@CrimsonCat87 i never really believed in national values of any kind but jackass probably wasn't the right choice of words more like social oblivious
@@CrimsonCat87So... Basically Hans Christian Anderson was Autistic. As an autistic person myself who's been not exactly treated the fairest because of my social ineptitude, I more or less understood what he was going through.
14:07
Yeah, you did miss somethig here, which isn't suprising, it's only explained in like...two sentences, if I recall corectly? xD
When visiting the Princesses country (becouse yes, the prince went to HER, not the other way around, which also explains why the wedding party is on the ship: to get home), they have to wait on the Princess for quiet some time becouse she hasn't arrived yet. As it turns out, the Princess was beeing raised in a monestary, to learn how to be a real princess (I asume maners, and humbleness and stuff). When the Princess finally arives, the Prince imidiately calls out "It's you!", cluing the reader in that the Nun he had fallen in love with, was actually the Princess who simply lived at the monestary.
Also just to add because it seemed he was confused about this too. I don't think the Prince ever saw the little mermaid like in the movie. He woke up on the beach and the princess as the nun was there so he considered her his rescuer.
Thanks, I wanted to clear that up, but I see you safed me some time there =)
Good to know that there are other readers in the audience, though considering the topic that's not surprising I guess.
@Spagettigeist haha, yeah, I gues it's not too suprising! ^^
The Anderson Fairy Tales are some of my favorites!
Princesses we're educated in convents. Christ: They learned to ready and write (which a Lot of men in the middle ages couldn't as it was thought of as "weak"). They were trained in several languages, they were also taught foreign politics, Family dynamics, some Math, History, econmics etc. Queens in Former Times were Not eye Candy. They we're the second head of state.
@katinkaraab1964 didn’t know they got that edication from convents. I always just asumed they had private tutors at their home estate.
So sad you didnt mention my favourite hans christian anderson story.
He once reportedly turned up to the house of Jakob Grimm (of those brothers grimm) and basically tried to invite himself in for dinner and was completely outraged when Grimm didnt recognise him immediately upon seeing him
I don't know why but I pictured it in my head as I was reading your comment ... 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Poor Hans...At least he had managed to befriend Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Victor Hugo and Alexander Dumas. Though, if I recall correctly, the Dickens incident seemed to have been troubled due to culture/language barriers (Andersen was said to struggle with English) along with Dickens having other problems at the time (I think it was marital issues but I'm not sure...).
I like the idea that Ariel's voice actually had power because the mermaids are in fact sirens and that was why Ursula wanted it. Despite full on staring at her on the beach the only thing Eric remembers is her voice and later Ursula seemingly uses it to entrance him.
I think the live-action Disney remake plays around with that idea!
Except it's a very weird thing that everybody conflates sirens and mermaids.
In greek mythology, where sirens originate from, they were bird people.
@@lorelord2418 yeah. But they've been mermaids since the middle ages so it's not a new thing. No idea how that happened since if bird had an antonym, it'd be fish lol
You forgot to talk about TLM's grandmother, the Sea king's mother. She was the person who drop knowledge about the human world and human soul. Disney gave her part to Scuttle the seagull.
Regarding Andersen's awkward social life, I cannot begin to imagine how awful it would be to be neurodivergent in 19th century Europe, it must've been HELL. Being neurodivergent myself, I've always felt a lot of sympathy for H. C. (the story about his stay with the Dickens family always makes me cringe) having to go through life without any of support systems I benefitted from all my life and still rely on to this day.
It wasn't just he was clearly socially awkward.
But also what makes him a unique author of his time is that he WASN'T from the higher class.
he grew up very poor and in the lower class, and that was just not a thing that a writer could be at any lower class at the time.
Which also makes Dickens vs Andersens works interesting to me as Dickens kind of romanticises poverty, really showing he never had to live it. While Andersen doesn't, he shows the brutality uncompromising nature of it because... that was his childhood and youth.
But yeah... basically Andersen was an intruder of the upper class, he wasn't raised like them and didn't know how to behave among them.
And the upper class didn't know what to do with him as he was a giant celebrity so they HAD to put up with him.
But it also makes stories such as "Princess on the pea." really funny as you realize it's such a big f finger to the upper class as he outright satirises them and their cozy comfort ways XD
Not to mention, Hans always had a fear of becoming mentally ill like his paternal grandfather was. Didn't help that Hans was a hypochondriac who was terrified of being buried alive and even brought rope during travels in case of a house fire. On the plus side, that didn't stop him from traveling. He went to a volcano.
Here's the way I always interpreted The Prince and the princess.
The mermaid drag the prince onto the beach unconscious then disappeared once she saw another human coming to help him. And that was the girl from the monastery who was the person the prince saw when he woke up he never even saw the mermaid at all. We know that the princess is the girl from the monastery because he mentions the girl who saved him and then the princess confirmed that she was at the monastery there for study when and saved him so the prince isn't an idiot, she just doesn't know anything the mermaid did for him. He fell in love with the girl he thought rescued him who was the girl who did find him unconscious on the beach.
@@lahlybird895 I’ll give credit that unlike the Disney version, Andersen doesn’t make the princess the villain who tries to steal the prince away from the little mermaid.
As you said, the princess didn’t know that the little mermaid had feelings for him.
The princess does her best to treat the mermaid with kindness.
@beethovensfidelio that too.
I was just specifically addressing the idea that the prince mistook this princess for the mermaid, when I think it's more likely he just didn't know about the mermaid at all.
But also yes The Prince and the princess neither of them did anything wrong, such a tragedy in the first place.
The way I personally interpret the Disney adaptation of this story is that a large part of it was Howard Ashman recognising as a Queer Subtext Story and using it to express his own hopes for a happy ending for the queer community and really all kids who don’t fit in with their birth homes and birth families (I think this hope is also present in “Beauty and the Beast” and the “Once Upon a Time in New York City” sequence in “Oliver and Company”). Yes, these stories are textually about M/F cis relationships, but they can still be read as stories connected to the queer experience in so many different ways.
So basically, the adaptation process on this is basically a story of two different queer men processing their hopes and fears and dreams through the same story.
Same here. We cannot know for sure, but we know he was an integral part for not just the music of the films of the Disney Renaissance. I believe he had been diagnosed with HIV/AIDS during the production of The Little Mermaid, and worked on Beauty and the Beast while he was undergoing treatment. (Sadly he passed away before the movie was completed.)
There is something beautiful about seeing this queer tragedy and making it have a happy ending, despite real life tragedies.
Huh, never knew these details! The little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast were by far the two movies that most influenced me as a kid and I resonated with them wholeheartedly. They are still some of my all time faves now that I'm an adult ♥
@@alphaxneo “Beauty and the Beast” is such a perfect little masterpiece, is it not?
Considering this movie was made during the AIDs crisis, man oh man, was Ashman putting all his hopes into this movie.
@@CykeMonkey let's keep in mind Ashman eventually died of AIDs.
I really liked the original story when I first heard it. She had the choice to kill the prince and save herself but she chose to take responsibility for her choices.
It’s a tragedy but acknowledges that he did not owe her his affections and it would not be fair to punish him for not reciprocating her feelings.
I disagree that in the original story the little mermaid wasn’t obsessed with the human world before seeing the prince. A large portion of the beginning of the story is dedicated to how much she loves the stories about the land, and longs to be old enough to visit for herself. To me her obsession with the prince just feels like an extension of that longing.
"I cant believe disney would change a beloved character like this! NOT HISTORICALLY ACCURATE!!!!"
I would find this funny except that I keep asking having an argument with my stepfather because he keeps whining about people trying to change the Little mermaid even though the Little mermaid he's referring to is Disney's Little mermaid so he doesn't even seem to care that Disney's Little mermaid is an adaptation that's completely different from its original fairy tale. And that in and of itself would be fine except for the reason he's complaining about people adopting it because to quote him "if you're going to change things like that then you shouldn't call it the original and just use a different name because if you change things like that it's not the same story you're telling your own story so you shouldn't do it at all". Basically he hates all fairy tail adaptations thinks adapting fairy tales is a bad genre except he can't acknowledge the fact that Disney did that with the little mermaid. So pretty much his entire criteria for whether or not it's good is whether or not he likes it which is fine except that he's trying to apply it to all people ever.
so the live action is a bad adaptation of The Little mermaid because it's two different from Disney's original animated Little mermaid but he won't acknowledge the fact that the animated Little mermaid is way different from the original fairy tale.
@@lahlybird895 The only main difference from the original book was the hair color and the way Anderson had merfolk in design. Otherwise, pretty accurate.
I'd still have preferred to see a mermaid story that is all about those of the African continent, because it opens up for a lot of leeway. Not a re-telling of a book and movie already told. And blackwashed.
Meanwhile my dad, in his 70s, got taught today (we were talking about pantomimes as one of the trivia shows we watch had some special guests in who were dressed up in their panto costumes) that Frozen is based on The Snow Queen.
Which is from like 1840's.
He's never heard of it until today.
How??? I know he didn't have the internet growing up but he knows HCA.
@@BrokensoulRiderAriel didn't risk being turned into seafoam if her love was unrequited and there was nothing about immortality or how mermaids are soulless
Answers to Dom’s questions:
The Prince never saw the little mermaid at all, the girl who saved him that he remembered was the princess who just ‘found him’ on the beach and he saw that as her being the one who saved him. The princess wasn’t a nun but had just been sent to the convent for schooling.
The happy ending was a revised edition because people didn’t like the sad end and he was basically bullied into doing it.
Also shocked Dom didn’t mention the fact the prince made the little mermaid sleep on the floor at his bed like a puppy!
So wait you’re telling me Hans Christian Andersen was in fact a neurodivergent bisexual fumbler whom anyone who knew him could immediately tell wasn’t straight?
Guy just went from some dude who wrote fairy tales to the most relatable king in my eyes
One hates to diagnose historical figures, but if Andersen wasn't autistic I'd be *very* surprised. RIP to Dickens not knowing how to clearly communicate 'you need to go home now' I guess
He's also very famous (in Denmark) for being so afraid of being buried alive, that he would always leave a note saying "not dead, just sleeping!" by his bedside.
@@kabla7472 Didn't Edgar Allan Poe have the same fear?
The idea with the spilled popcorn meaning Part of Your World should be cut was that Katzenberg thought it indicated that the kid was bored with the scene, like if the popcorn was distracting him, he wasn't being entertained.
19:25 I wonder if filmmakers wished they had included Ariel feeling isolated and alone on land in the original because the added song "For The First Time" in the live-action actually focuses on how lonely and isolated Ariel feels after she realizes everything she traded to be with Eric who she can't even talk to.
The 2nd reprise of Part of your World is a TEARJERKER!
Ariel swims around with the exteriors of her dead subjects on her baubles. So bit weird that her dad is against eating them.
Your dry observations are often more entertaining than the source material.
Thanks, Dominic.
The important thing about Ariel that so many people miss is that her motivation is SO MUCH FUCKING MORE than "but daddy I love him". Not only does she sing a whole love song about the human world and only a reprise for her love interest, falling for Eric isn't even the inciting incident for her leaving home and making the deal with Ursula. Her dad destroying her collection is. She leaves home because she's got a controlling father who doesn't understand her and destroyed all her priced processions in a fit of rage. That's a pretty good fucking reason to leave home.
And before anyone gets on Ariel's case for saying she loves Eric before really meeting him, not only is this a fairy tale about mermaids, but she literally saw the man jump onto a flaming ship to save his dog. Like, can you really blame her?
Exactly. Triton is abusive as a father and he uses the literal symbols of his royal power to abuse his daughter.
Exactly!
If her father hadn't destroyed her collection she never would have gone to Ursula. She was even planning on going to visit Eric as a mermaid until all that happened. Ariel was just a nerd for human stuff at the start.
As an anime figure collector, I would also leave home if my dad destroys my collections 😂
Yes to ALL of this! All my sentiments exactly!
Love being the only motivation was from the original story…not the movie. I think Dom was making that point.
Ariel is also Hercules' second cousin. Triton is the son of Poseidon, Poseidon is the Brother of Zeus, Zeus is the father of Hercules, thus the SECOND cousin to Ariel, since Triton would be Hercules' cousin.
If they are related what year does the movie take place
Ariel and Hades chatting at a family reunion would be interesting (James Woods being an asshole aside).
Multiverse.
@@sebastianevangelista4921 In the real myths, Hades is just an emo god.
I always figured that King Triton was just named after the real Triton. Like how so many kings are named after Apostles.
Ohh I'm so happy you cover this! I was obsessed with the tale as a kid. The sad ending, the way it was written as she turns into seafoam and the other mermaid spirits welcome her...was so eery and sad. But I also listened very often to my cassette of that movie, great times!
So, I love fairy tales and love to collect different variations of them and have since I was a teenager. That being said, I was aware of the HCA ending of the little mermaid, however, my younger sister, whose favorite princess is Ariel, at the age of 17 had only known the Disney version with the happy ending. I remember breaking the news to her, it was before Christmas we were looking at lights the city puts up in the park as a family and all of us had been discussing differences between Disney and the fairy tales. I realized my sister didn't know the Little mermaid had a fairy tale and warned her she didn't want to know and to just keep the Disney version as her only version but she insisted and CRIED and cried when she found out. Oh I felt so bad
Old person here who is a bit of a fairy tale nerd. The "air spirit" ending is the original Andersen one. Andersen frequently included Christian themes in his stories, and while many of them have "happy" endings where the suffering soul ends up in Heaven is a not infrequent one. Also keep in mind, this is the Victorian times when Andersen was writing.
As an extra aside, many original translations of Andersen weren't entirely accurate, and frequently eliminated what humor the author included.
Hope this helps.
I came to the same conclusion. The Royal Danish Library website has a transcription of the 1837 version, which I'm pretty sure is the first published edition. With a bit of help from automated translation, it's clear that the Daughters of the Air, 300 years of service, and the sentence reduction/increase policy are in there.
Also, I found a passage allegedly from a letter he wrote in 1837 discussing the story: "I have not, like de la Motte Fouqué in _Undine_, allowed the mermaid's acquiring of an immortal soul to depend upon an alien creature, upon the love of a human being. I'm sure that's wrong! It would depend rather much on chance, wouldn't it? I won't accept that sort of thing in this world. I have permitted my mermaid to follow a more natural, more divine path." (I can't confirm this letter or its translation myself, though, because the sources for this English quote are physical books that would be time consuming to access.)
it's a type of reoccurring theme/plot in folklore, apparently. Herr Manneling is the first thing that came to mind that's kinda similar, and wikipedia says it's no. 5050 in Christiansen classification, "fairies' hope for christian salvation"
It could be fun to track down the original translation that left out the air spirit ending.
@Niels_Larsen You mean the "first" translation to cut off the air spirit ending. Certainly it matters in scholarly terms. Andersen's stories have repeatedly suffered through translations where editors made choices for the stories, sometimes eliminating much of the flavour and background Andersen brought to his writing. Denmark is very protective and proud of him. By the way, World Reading Day, a move to get more kids interested in books, was originally set for Andersen's birthday.
Toei’s 1975 adaptation of the Little Mermaid called Hans Christian Andersen’s the Little Mermaid predates Disney’s 1989 version by 14 years.
Also the Soviet animated adaptation.
I came here to mention this, I grew up watching this version as a child of the 80's. It is also more true to the original story and you can see many similarities that 'inspired' Disney's version, ie a talking dolphin BFF ('Flounder')
These versions need their own episodes!
@ I agree.
I grew up with the Toei version! It would be a great comparison piece to the Disney one (which I was sure had HCA rolling in his grave after I saw it)
I have the Toei version on DVD because I was obsessed with it as a kid. I also downloaded the Rifftrax for it as well.
I loved them both. I read it a while ago and definitely was heartbroken over the ending, but loved the moral and heroism in not taking their lives. The fact she accepted this made me appreciate her and showed me just because someone loves you doesn’t mean you have to love them back.
Too bad the Disney film botched up that moral by having the animals crash Vanessa and Eric’s wedding and by having Eric marry Ariel in the end.
One thing I've learned recently that just enhanced my love for many Disney films and the company's history, is that many times films get worked on for years off and on by different teams before finally making it to the screen. I highly recommend the book "The Queens of Animation" as it goes into detail about the many women that have worked at the studio since the beginning, who often go overlooked by many documentaries. Two of those women were Sylvia Holland and Ethel Kulsar, who worked on treatments for The Little Mermaid in the 40s, around the same time the studio was working on Bambi and Fantasia. Sylvia's concept art paintings served as inspiration for the writers and animators that picked up the project in the 80s, and her story is really inspiring.
I always like the idea the bras usually seen on mermaids in media aren’t dead but living on them as some sort of symbiosis
The whole air spirits were added for a second edition. The original ending was her turning into foam and dying, which is so, so sad and the one reason why I forgive the happy Disney ending.
Once i read the original story at age 6-8, i was so sad that end up not allow anyone read it.
Aaah! Thanks for explaining! I was confused there for a minute since I could not, for the life of me, remember that ending.
Yeah, I don't mind the happy ending either.
@@ghostrouxinol6169 I was about 5. I HATED Andersen after that because... Nope. Sorry. I kinda got a bit over it when I learned his backstory but still, heartbreak doesn't give you the right to traumatize generations of children!
I've heard the second ending was added because a bunch of children wrote to HCA and/or his publisher to complain about the original ending.
@@kalinka5333 I heard that it was added due to religious insistence? But I can't find the source for that. What I do know is that the spirits of the air ending was not known in Japan until the 70's, because previous anime adaptations don't include it!
Clarification on the nun/visiting princess thing...
My understanding was that the prince assumed it was one if the nuns that found him on the beach (after TLM saved him) but it was actually the visiting princess that found him because she was staying at the nunnery at the time. 🤷♀️
If Dom covered The Snow Queen and Frozen.... "Well, there's a snow queen. That's all the story and the movie have in common... ding roll credit"
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing..."Well, there's a queen...and there's snow. The End."😊
I'm pretty sure the air spirit stuff was a later addition in order to give the little mermaid a happy ending. The original version just had her dying and that's that
Fun fact: Between the time the Soviet Union's version of The Little Mermaid and Disney's that came out in 1989, there was an anime adaptation and one for Shelly Duvall's Fairytale Theater in which Pam Dauber played the part of the mermaid (she played Mindy in Mork And Mindy). These two adaptations rarely get mentioned.
Ironically, the Japanese anime came out a year before the 1976 full length adaptation produced by the Soviet Union.
@beethovensfidelio And like the Fairytale Theater adaptation, it stayed true to Hans Christian Anderson's original tale.
You dare defy him?
12:42 Despite having haven't seen them either, I can tell you Disney did not break them up. One of them is a prequel, and the other is about Ariel and Eric's daughter basically taking the opposite deal to become a mermaid through (and I kid you not) Ursula's Crazy Sister Morgana.
The discussion about how Andersen and Dickens got along was very interesting to me because I'm a huge fan of an interactive fiction (text adventure) series of games based on the Little Match Girl. At the end of her first adventure, she was rescued and adopted by the well-known philanthropist, Ebenezer Scrooge, and he named her Ebenezabeth Scrooge. She also met Poseidon during this adventure, and he ordered his two mermaid daughters, Eunoia and Eirene, to henceforth treat her as their very own sister, which they have done ever since. Elements of other stories by both Andersen and others have been woven into the series, making for an expansive epic tapestry.
Losing your voice literally means having your tongue cut out in the original story! So there was no way she was getting her voice back!
Yeah i can see why the dinsey version change it to tongue removal to just removing the voice because that would be a little too gorey
Technically, you don't "lose your voice" when your tongue is cut out.
@@starmaker75 It's a kids movie after all. They could get away with Ursula getting stabbed with a ships mast but not tongues being cut out.
@@robertawalsh2995 can one speak without one's tongue ?
@lasseehrenreich5502 This is a real thing after glossectomy (surgical removal of the tongue). After it, people can still make sounds, so in that sense still have 'a voice', but shaping it into words is the problem.
I think a thing that stuck out to me in the book was the prince had the mermaid sleep on a bed outside his door. He treated her the way you would a cherished pet. I don't think he ever had romantic feelings for her.
The princess who found him on the beach and being the right status for his wife was definitely an extra kick to the heart.
I remember reading somewhere that the death ending was written and published first, and the "air spirits" was a revision that came later but Andersen himself much preferred it and claimed he had always planned to include it, but just didn't for whatever reason
So in no specific order:
• The Prince in the book is described as "Black haired" and "Black-Eyed", so Eric is 50% accurate to the source material.
• The Mermaid in the book did actually have an interest in the surface world before meeting the Prince, that was the reason her flower garden was full of red flowers with a red willow-like tree in the middle forming the shape of the sun.
• The Mermaid in the manuscript of the story actually gets a more detailed description: She had "Grass-Green Hair" and a Silver Fishtail in addition to her deep blue eyes. If you ever read that she should be entirely green because in the danish text she is described having a "Rosenblad" (literally "Rose-leaf") complexion are mistranslating the word, "Rosenblad" more accurately translates to as "Rose Petal". So Pinkish.
From the Manuscript:
Der nede boe Havfolkene, og de see ud foroven ganske ligesom Mennesker kun at deres Øine ere saa forunderige blaae og deres lange Haar er græsgrønt, men hele Nederdelen, derfra hvor Benene skulle begynde er en lang Fiskhale. der er saa smidig at den kunne bøie[s den] bag op over deres Ryg og deres.
Down in these depths lies the home of the merpeople, who from the waist up look just like people, save for their eyes, which are so marvelously blue, and their long grass-green hair, while the whole waist, from where the legs should begin, is a long fish-tail, so flexible that it could be bent up over their backs and head.
• While the "Daughters/ Spirits of the Air" weren't foreshadowed properly in the final version of the story, they were foreshadowed in the original manuscript. A lot more allusions are made to how humans are to the Little Mermaid as angels are to humans, along with a lot more allusions to the world "above the earth". Far from what some people might tell you that the whole ending was tacked on by HC Andersen, the ending where she becomes a "Daughter of the Air" was part of the plan from the very beginning, with the original title for "The Little Mermaid" being outright "The Daughters of the Air". Furthermore, in said manuscript, the daughters were referred to as "Sylphs" before Andersen changed to the more indirect name they have in the final one.
• Funny thing, Disney actually got the setting for the story correct! People tend to think that The Little Mermaid is set in Denmark due to where HC Andersen lived, but if one pays attention to the description of the land the Mermaid travels to, it more directly resembles Southern Italy, which is what Disney based the animated setting on.
• WE WERE ROBBED!!! In the final version of the story, it mentions how The Mermaid went on a hunting trip with the Prince and a retinue. However, this gets expanded on in the Manuscript, it mentions how a FREAKING TIGER came out to attack the Prince, and it was the Mermaid herself who saves the Prince from being Tiger Lunch... though considering how the book ends perhaps it would've been better if he indeed became kitty food.
A Qoute with Translation from the Manuscript:
"følge med ham naar han reed paa Jagt eller besteeg høie Bjerge. Ingen var ham ikke mere tro, end hun, hans lille Hittebarn. Hvilken Glæde følte hun ikke, da hun første Gang paa den en stolt hvid Hest Jog med Prindsen gjennem den tætte duftende Skov, hvor de rede gjennem de.…"
"friske Blade. Hun svingede sit Spyd saa godt som de andre Jægere, og da den glubende Tiger, som de gjorte Jagt paa styrte Pri ind mod Prindsen sprang han modig imod den, jog sit Spyd ind i Tigeren Varme Gab. Hun klattrede…"
"follow him when he went hunting or climbed high mountains. No one was more faithful to him than she, his little foundling. What joy she felt when she first rode with the prince on a proud white horse through the dense fragrant forest, where they nestled through the fresh leaves."
"fresh leaves. She swung her spear as well as the other hunters, and when the ravenous tiger they were hunting rushed towards the Prince, she sprang boldly towards it, thrusting her spear into the tiger's hot jaws. She..."
• The original planned ending for the Little Mermaid was, in fact, somewhat happier than the final version! Andersen had cut out a final paragraph following the Daughters of the Air explaining how she can shave off time from that 300 Year wait, where she expresses optimism and determination to do exactly that and reunite with everyone in Heaven. Still a sad ending in that the Mermaid dies, but hearing the Mermaid get the last words and express that she's game for the challenge helps take away the sting.
From the Manuscript:
„Self vil jeg stræbe efter at vinde en udødelig Sjæl“ sagde den lille Havfrue, „da skal jeg i hiin Verden samles med Prindsen og alle ham, som jeg gav min hele Kjærlighed. Til Rige og Fattiges Huus vil jeg flyve, svæve usynlig gjennem Stuen hvor Børnene sidde, de gode jeg møder ville forkorte min Prøvetid!“
"I myself will strive to win an immortal soul," said the little mermaid, "then I shall gather with the Prince and all those to whom I have given all my love in this world. To the houses of the rich and poor I will fly, floating invisibly through the rooms where the children sit; and the good ones I meet will shorten my trials!"
I'll add more when I rewatch the episode to catch anything else I forgot to comment on... which is probably a lot. In case anyone is wondering, my sources come from a very old book that was only ever printed twice called "Den Lille Havfrue: Facsimile og Tekst" or "The Little Mermaid: Facsimile and Text", which contains the original danish manuscript for the Little Mermaid and a record of what was left out or changed in the story.
On the tiger attack comment that reminds me of the 1974 toei version of the little mermaid and while the mermaid has spent some time as human on land she gets attack by a bunch wolves who was then rescued by the prince, not sure if that was an intentional nod to that tiger part or just a similar enough coincidence but its interesting to think on it.
@@brandonlyon730 I'm suspecting its a similar coincidence since knowledge of the manuscript and its contents are SURPRISINGLY sparse. The book with this information was printed twice: first in the 1950s, and then a reprint in the 1970s... making the book rather rare. If said knowledge of the manuscript is rare now, imagine how hard it would have been to come across for Toei back when the '74 movie was released.
THAT BEING SAID. I absolutely love Ningyo Hime. Disney's version may be nostalgic, but I dearly love the anime one.
New Note: To Answer Dom's confusion about "multiple endings", the short version is that because of the Public Domain nature of the Little Mermaid, some releases of the Little Mermaid (such as ones from the 1973 all the way to the 90s) were released that remove the intended ending with the "Daughters of the Air". This stems from critics believing the intended ending of the story was basically a “compassionate lie” and that it added "unnecessary mysticism" to the ending. In other words, these critics felt it was basically a cop out and the equivalent of today's crowd of people who complain about endings being too happy.
So if you ever picked up a version of The Little Mermaid that leaves out the Daughters of the Air and just has her die at the end, you got ripped off. As mentioned above, the intended ending of The Little Mermaid always was that she would become a Sylph at the end.
A funny addendum: Ariel's name in the movie comes from a "Spirit of the Air" that works with Prospero in Shakespear's "The Tempest", making her own name a subtle reference to her original fate.
Expect more notes on the way.
@@brandonlyon730 I'm suspecting its a similar coincidence since knowledge of the manuscript and its contents are SURPRISINGLY sparse. The book with this information was printed twice: first in the 1950s, and then a reprint in the 1970s... making the book rather rare. If said knowledge of the manuscript is rare now, imagine how hard it would have been to come across for Toei back when the '74 movie was released.
THAT BEING SAID. I absolutely love Ningyo Hime. Disney's version may be nostalgic, but I dearly love the anime one.
@@caelumis3630Thanks for sharing.
I suspected that the shorter version would be due to editors cutting for various reasons…including trying to save on paper and printing costs. But I had no evidence for it.
Thinking about the story you tell of Anderson writing himself as the mermaid, I wonder if there's a connection between the 'spirits of the air' and authorship. A way to live on and gain immortality, separate from everything that came before it.
Saw a French anime-ish adaptation in my hometown movie theatre in the very early 80s. It was the Saturday kids matinee where the theatre played whatever kids appropriate movie they could get their hands on. Usually stopping after the first reel to draw a prize to one lucky kid (I won a spiderman bank and Wayne Gretzky posters). This was the darkest movie they ever played. She was destined to either kill her human love or turn into sea foam. One scene has her holding a dagger over her sleeping human love. The next… sea foam on the sea. We walked out as quiet as can be.
hans' modus operandi being "you don't get it babe, i'm a good christian bisexual who would walk on knives to be with you" is crazy
Love it when people talk about the bisexual disaster icon that was Anderson. The Dickenson story is always a fave of mine.
Great vid as always!
When you said Edward Collin at around 13minutes I thought for a second you said "if Edward Cullen was really as disinterested in..." and my brain immediately went "what is sparkles doing in this video?!"
I guess he pronounced Edvard’s name as Ed-WARD instead of Ed-VARD. 😂
Funny that you mention the soviet movie. There's also a soviet animated short film adaptation that sticks to the tragic ending and even shows the little mermaid statue in Copenhagen
The beautiful animation!!!
I love that animation! And the mermaid's singing 💕 that song has been stuck with me since i heard it
Hans Christian Anderson was the king of overcomplicating his fairy tales and adding multiple fine print stuff. One of my favourites, the Snow Queen, is ... wow
The cannibalistic bandits were definitely a choice.🤣
snow queen is the next one i want to recommend him about
I guess authors that put overcomplicated lore that might make for good discussion but overall it just pointless to the story is a older concept then I thought
I love the Snow Queen
Toei animation did a beautiful animated movie in 1975 and i recommend it - her name was Marina and she had a dolphin sidekick named Fritz
Walt himself had wanted for years to adapt both "The Little Mermaid" and "The Snow Queen." Efforts to do so were off and on at Disney but, of course, never came to fruition until long after Walt passed.
OK listen, Dickens was a jerk, so Hans overstaying and pissing him off is hilarious!
I am swedish and my mum used to read HC Andersens little mermaid to me as a child. It is not sadder nor weirder than any other Scandinavian fairytale really. I remember an other one about a troll child getting switched with a normal child and the mother protects the troll child even if the husband tries to kill the troll child in various ways. An other was about a boy competing with a giant eating porridge and it ends up with the giant slicing up his stomach. With that said, I can understand from a different cultural lens it can seem weird. They are mainly tales with a moral ending really.
3:00 So the original story was just Andersen turning his being rejected into a fanfic?
Yes pretty much
I mean, the red shoes was much the same 🤷🏼♀️
@@Xehanort10 The same can be said for “The Nightingale” and “The Snow Queen”, which were the results of Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind rejecting Hans Christian Andersen’s affections.
Basing “The Snow Queen” on Jenny Lind indicated that Andersen did not take her rejection well. 😂
The plot of a mermaid/water nymph turning human in order to seduce a mortal man to gain a soul, only for a woman to come between them and the protagonist to attempt to or successfully kill one or both of them and die afterwards is a centuries old storyline that Hans Cristian Andersen used as a basis for his story ( more specifically the 1811 German fairytale Undine served as loose inspiration for the Little Mermaid )
@@beethovensfidelio It seems like through the fairytales he wrote he threw tantrums when people said no to him. An incel centuries before the term existed.
Andersen also drew inspiration from the novella, Undine, by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque.
Which is itself based on the legend of a Water Elemental spirit (called an Ondine) who marries a Knight, and he promises her loyalty and faithfulness, eventually giving the Ondine a soul and turning her human. But sadly, the Knight breaks his vow and becomes unfaithful (one of the reasons being the Ondine grew old and no longer beautiful in the Knight's eyes), and when she caught him with a younger woman, the Ondine curses his breath. This became known as Ondine's Curse, or Central Hypoventiliation Syndrome (CHS).
14:30 the version I read as a kid was the princess was traveling when she chanced upon the beached prince. the closest establishment to them was a monastery so she took him there for treatment and the prince assumed she was a nun. he was initially apprehensive in marrying the princess but upon realizing it was her agreed, mistaking her to be the savior that pulled him from the waters.
I remember loving the sylph bit at the end when I was small. I guess I thought being an air spirit sounded cooler than being either a mermaid or a princess.
I remember reading TLM for the first time in Kindergarten and the tongue removal and seafoam death ending destroying me. This was two years before the Disney movie. I was actually a little afraid to go see it, but see it for Christmas 1989 we did, and I'm so glad. What a time that was! Great review, as ever, Dom.
Minor thing that I always found an interesting difference between the story and the movie was that in Disney's version Triton forbids Ariel from going to surface while in the story going up is basically a rite of passage when a mermaid turns sixteen and after that you're free to go whenever. The little mermaid is kind of odd only because she keeps returning, for most lose interest after the novelty wears off.
Also the sea king never really appears and instead the little mermaids grandmother is the parental figure in the fairy tale.
When I say I have never been happier about a lost in adaptation episode
I was the person Who request it
"Unbearably annoying to be around, but entirely unaware of it."
So on the spectrum, then. Until they realize it, then it kicks their depressive tendencies up to 1000. I remember when I discovered how annoying I was. It was pretty world shattering.
Thanks for this presentation!
I had both the Brothers Grimm and HCA volumes as a child. Yep, and the real-deal Greek, Roman and Norse mythologies. Never a dull moment, that’s the truth!
You got most of European mythology there😂
In the version I have the little mermaid saves the prince from drowning but the nun nurses him back to health, and it was not uncommon to have a noble lady sent to a nunery for education before marriage, that's why he didn't find strange when he saw her again.
I loved the story when I was growing up. Hans Anderson’s stories were my comfort reading and the mermaid was my favourite. I HATED what Disney did to it.
Why is Sebastian so horrified by humans eating sea creatures? Crabs are omnivores; they’ll eat ANYTHING! Crabs eat other crabs all the time. 😂
Fish are dumb, dumb, dumb;
They chase anything that glimmers-
Beginners! Oh!
And here they come, come, come
To the brightest thing that glitters.
Ooh, fish dinners!
I just love free food,
And you look like seafood.
Ha! Love this! Especially since, at the very end of Moana (2016), Tamatoa mentions Sebastian.😄🦀
I’m so glad (not surprised since you’re always thorough) that you included Ariel being land obsessed and Eric being enchanted, but my dude you totally overlooked the part where Eric saves Max from the ship. I’d have married him on the spot with no additional information or motivation. “Daddy I love him” was completely valid after witnessing that.
And he trated the crew as equals. Such husband material
Especially after Triton’s comment of all humans being “the same, spineless savage harpooning fish eaters incapable of any feeling”. Seeing Eric save his crew and dog is proof that Triton was wrong.
The disney sequel seems to have gone for a role reversal, as Ariel is now the one opposed to her daughter being part of the sea and goes so far as to build a wall that reaches the water.
Also something something Ursula's crazy sister (their words, not mine)
She is one of the worst villains ever
I flipping love the sequel (Return to the Sea) it has such catchy songs.
In the sequel Ariel is about to return to the sea at the baptism of Melody (her daughter) and they would have been part of both worlds. But then Morgana (Ursula's sister) turns up and threatens her life.
Ariel builds a huge wall (not learning from her own upbringing) and doesn't tell Melody she's half mermaid - she also doesn't go back to the sea herself.
Cue much sneaking out and eventually a contract with Morgana to turn Melody into a mermaid.
I should say I saw 2 before 1 and had it taped from the Disney channel in the early 00s. So while I concede that the original film is much better, I have a huge soft spot for 2. Also it has Tip and Dash.
3:29-3:31 and that's why '[Basil] The Great Mouse Detective' will always be Disney's true magnum opus. At least for me.
Preach!!!❤❤❤
14:14 correction
The Princess and the Nun were the same person, she was just studying at the monastery at the time she "rescued" the Prince and he assumed she was a nun and therefore unable to be married.
And to the Prince´s credit he didn´t actually see the Little mermaid when he woke up, so his assumption that the Nun was his savior is not that unreasonable.
When I look back at some of these stories and think about how my parents used to read them to me as a kid, I realize I had no choice but to grow into the dark and macabre person I am today. Of course, when the other kids were learning to read with Dick & Jane, I was reading Edgar Allen Poe. Fantastic breakdown, Dom!
I heard the death was the canonical ending, and the ending where she has a chance to gain an immortal soul was added later.
I saw the Japanese version that was closer to the story and yes, in that version she dies at the end (without the coda/epilogue where she becomes a carrier of dreams to earn her way into heaven.
They skipped her time with The Daughters of the Air and wanting a soul, so the narrator said, "And so the Little Mermaid's soul ascended to heaven."
So, still made a bit more gentle. I do love that P.L. Travers, author of "Mary Poppins", called Anderson out for emotional blackmail regarding children making the Daughters of the Air cry.
Oh, strange! I remember reading a children's book when i was in second grade, and it wasnt until i was in high school i realized it was drawn after the Japanese anime. But i especially remember the last page, as the mermaid was explained how a child's behavior affects her lifespan to acquire a soul. Which gave me a bit of relief after such a sad ending for her
I always remember the air spirits ending as like a 'now be good kids' vibes because if you weren't the mermaid would suffer.
13:15
Watching Dom use "push pull" flirting techniques on himself made my day xD
It should be noted that in the book the Witch wasn't really evil either. Her magic was a bit f*cked up. as you said, but she was otherwise on the level and had no desire to take over the kingdom or anything.
I don't know any Danish but I know enough Swedish to parse out that the version available on the Royal Danish Library's website (on the wayback machine) - stated to be the og 1837 version - does include the air spirits.
The little Mermaid was my favourite book as a girl. My (german) version did include the obsession with the human world before she met the prince, and the air spirits ending.
I really really loved this story and when I realized i was aromantic/asexual as an adult i always wondered if there was a deeper reason why it always seemed to resonate with me. A girl who doesn't get the prince but finds a very different way of existing. I don't know, but it's nice to just have a story that doesn't go "boy meets girl, problems get solved, they kiss and/or marry".
I've been through this with friends when they haven't known the "happy" ending. A researched post called, "The Little Mermaid: A Question of Endings," on the blog, Writing in the Margins, goes into this. The 1837 publication of "The Little Mermaid" included the "Daughters of the Air" ending. Some critics disliked this as they wanted it to be a tragedy of unrequited love rather than a tale of spirituality, which may be why it has been removed for some publications.
I can add that the redemptive ending is the one I knew from a 1974 television special adaptation I saw as a kid. There was also one about a giant in a garden who meets a boy who's basically Jesus (with nail scars, even). -Although I don't remember the title, it was another Andersen story.- Oops. This was an Oscar Wilde story, "The Selfish Giant." -I think- But I still think the religious ending for "The Little Mermaid" was important to Andersen, as he was a religious person. "The Snow Queen" doesn't end with the heroine failing to save Kai, so being saved seems like a theme (although I haven't read all of his work).
One of the links on the blog is to another article, "In Defense of the Conclusion to 'The Little Mermaid' " on Artifice.
The prince didn't string her along, he didn't know she was the girl who saved him.
I haven't read the Danish version, but in English, the princess was being educated at the monastery, as highborn young ladies often were. She and her companions came across the prince after the little mermaid had taken him to shore, and princess was the first person he remembered clearly after opening his eyes.
17:42
Dunno where I found this, but in high school I read that the sad ending was the original, and the "be a good kid or the mermaid won't go to heaven" was used by parents until it became canon
21:34 the statue regularly gets decapitated by vandals.
So much capacity for silly dad jokes: She doesn’t have a soul?
a) Of course not, she doesn’t have feet!
b) Maybe she should try the flounder instead.
The entire biography of HCA at the beginning makes my past as an autistic teenager feel called out x'D
I never thought about it before but mermaids being half dolphin instead of half-fish makes more sense that it probably should
Walt himself actually had plans of adapting the little mermaid and other Hans Christen Andersen stories himself in an biographic live action/animated hybrid movie, where the Andersen parts were the live action parts and the stories were animated, and the little mermaid in that would've followed the original story more including its very sad ending of her dying. This idea movie never got far and was scrapped early on but some concept art of the original idea including the little mermaid section exist if anyone is curious.
Something that should be noted about the Sea witch in the original story, while she didn't have eel henchmen, she did have some Sea snakes pets that live with her that she would call them her little chickitees.
2:35 That summation was depressingly relatable to me. Big oof. (Although I did improve as I got older and eventually found someone who wanted to marry me. But still, big oof.)
Okay, full disclosure as someone who has seen both the movie AND read the original book, in the original story, the woman who saved the prince wasn’t actually a nun, she was a priestess for a temple of an undisclosed religion who is later revealed to have actually been the very princess who he meets later. She was at the temple to basically do charity work for the people as part of her duties as the princess of her kingdom. The prince actually recognized her as the woman who found her in the beach and came to the conclusion she was solely responsible for his life being saved, hence why he fell in love with her and married her. And the poor little mermaid could only watch as the man she was one-sidedly in love with married someone else.
Also the mermaid was not going to immediately drop dead if the prince failed to love her, else she would had done that already, she was going to die on the night of her true love’s wedding IF it was a marriage to someone else and not her. This is why her sisters had to rush to get the knife they traded their hair for to her that night because they knew time was of the essence.
I also love the bit where she throws the knife into the sea and the waters boil up blood red where it fell, before she jumps in after it.