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Ursula's contract
- During the climax… Why couldn't Triton just zap Ursula with the trident, rather than accept her blackmail? He can't destroy the contract itself, but since all the polyps are turned back into merpeople when Ursula finally dies, it seems killing Ursula would be a good way to reverse the contract's effects.
- Triton doesn't know whether or not the trident can reverse Ursula's Forced Transformation, and he has reason to doubt it, since he just saw proof that it couldn't break the contract directly. This is probably why Ursula twists Ariel's body into a mermaid/polyp hybrid, as a way of making clear to Triton what's going to happen if he's wrong. He probably just wasn't willing to take the risk.
- The last time Triton flew off the handle and used the trident to solve his problems is what landed them all in this mess in the first place. He was probably trying not to do something rash in case he messed things up for Ariel again.
- An important detail to remember is that Ursula's contract is "legal, binding, and completely unbreakable" even for the King. Even if he outright tries to kill Ursula, he himself would be the one breaking the law. Not her. This is why the contract was able to withstand his blast when he does try to destroy it. Ariel signed a legal document and has to adhere to the stipulations of it even if she doesn't get what she wants. This is the equivalent of asking why a person can't murder a car salesman for repossessing their car after that person failed to make a payment.
- The actual reason behind his hesitance is made clear in the first script of the movie, in which Ursula warns Triton with the following quote: "Kill me if you like! But I'll take this little minnow with me! She's mine now! We made a deal!". Of course, her threat turned out to be a bluff (otherwise Eric would have unknowingly killed Ariel), but Triton understandably didn't want to take his chances.
- Is Ursula always a Jackass Genie? In Ariel's case, her failing to fulfill the terms their contract was part of a larger Evil Plan, so she sent Flotsam and Jetsam to stop her from kissing Eric. But for "ordinary" clients, does she always deliberately arrange things so they get turned into polyps, or can she let them be if they pay her fair and square ? Think a minute before you answer the latter, because whereas Ariel could be used as an instrument for blackmailing Triton, this would not be the case for most clients, whom she would have no use for as polyps.
- Ursula is not a Jackass Genie at all. Ariel gets exactly what she asked for and knew she's be paying with her voice. Zero trickery or rules lawyering went on here. Ursula is merely a Sea Witch who can make deals. What she did to Ariel is almost definitely a special case since she could "hook" Triton on this deal. Given the size of her garden its safe to say that many of her customers are unable to fulfill their desires and she probably makes them punishingly difficult. On the other hand unless Flotsam and Jetsam hand pick every single one of her victims odds are she gives most people a sporting enough chance that some do succeed and even spread the word.
- A deleted scene shows Ursula tricking and transforming a merman who unwittingly accepted an Impossible Task from her: she sent him to find a plant that was out of season. Besides, the contracts she draws up have no protection against her interfering with the task directly, so it's safe to assume that Ursula doesn't care one bit about making things fair as long as she gets what she wants.
- Since everyone knows that King Triton is the sole ruler of the merpeople, it's quite hard to take his unability to destroy Ursula's (a member of an Unscaled Merfolk) "binding and completely unbreakable " contract seriously. As an absolute King, he's supposed to represent the law itself, and he has the power to judge whether a contract is legal or not. Now, considering Ariel was only 16 (that is, she still was too young to be legally responsible), why couldn't he destroy it? Which kind of (dark) power could be greater than his? Unless Ursula received her powers from from the Devil himself, I can't find any other logical explanation to this law-powered indestructibility.
- You are making a whole lot of assumptions about how the legal and magic systems of an alien culture work.
- Now Ursula wouldn't be very smart if she roped Triton's daughter into a contract he could easily destroy. But as far as I know, contract law states that said contract is binding if both parties are aware of the agreements and sign under their own free will. Triton probably could have found a loophole in that Ursula clearly meddled in Ariel and Eric's courtship. But Ursula's main raison d'etre is that she catches people in the heat of the moment and persuades them to make a rash decision - in this case giving Triton an opportunity to save his daughter from a Fate Worse than Death.
- First as stated above this requires an assumption about how Atlantean society functions. Ariel could very well be a legal adult at 16 or even younger. Triton in Classical Mythology is the son of Poseidon, God of the Sea. The contract would seem to be absolute proof that if not Poseidon himself there is certainly a higher power out there that even Triton is powerless to resist. In the movies at least it is never explicitly stated where the Trident itself came from, providing additional evidence of outside forces. While it is possible this is a dark power, the vast majority of fiction seems to presume that gods of law and justice are neutral to an almost infuriating degree, tending to favor the letter of the law over the spirit. This would be a fairly text book example of it. Even Ursula's interference may not strictly speaking be against the rules since it was never forbidden. See Aladdin: The Return of Jafar for what happens when you don't phrase you magical contracts precisely.
- Ursula is powerful enough to transform mermaids into humans and other such things. So she clearly has the power to magic up a contract that even the King of Atlantica can't overwrite.
- Being the sole ruler of the merpeople doesn't mean he has jurisdiction over magic, which affects everyone and everything, not just merfolk.
- Also if he changed the law because Ariel signed a deal with a sea witch that she KNEW was evil and not because he realised Ursula turned merpeople into polyps, I imagine there'd be a LOT of unhappy merpeople (parents, siblings, children, friends, aunts/uncles) that would be very disillusioned by the king, possibly leading to revolution.
- Why Ursula had to set Ariel to fail and also ransom her soul? This troper believes that ransoming her voice was more and enough, or, still waging her soul, letting her succeed could still get her Triton's powers. Let's consider two other possible scenarios:
- Ariel manages to win Eric over. She gets to keep her legs, (possibly) her voice (if we consider the "loan" part as a mortgage clause to enact only if Ariel failed her intented task), but she becomes unable to leave land again. Well, Triton had just order everyone in the kingdom to search for Ariel, being utterly distraught. If Ursula told him she was locked on the dry land with a bunch of humans, Triton would have gone ballistic and would have still accepted every pact needed to save her.
- Ariel fails, but Ursula doesn't claim her soul. Even if she still had the guts to return home, she would have been a pale shell of her former self: the young girl loving to sing, have fun and curious about the human world would have devolved into a mute, heartbroken girl unable to enjoy everything that used to matter in her life. And a father would do everything to get her daughter smile again.
- I think Ursula was just being careful and making sure she definitely would have Triton in her grasp. If Ariel succeeds and gets married to Eric, Triton probably would come around if he sees that Ariel is happy - which is exactly what happens. He regretted destroying her stuff immediately and was probably reconsidering his hatred of humans, especially if it's costing him his relationship with his beloved daughter. For the second one, Triton probably would have noticed Ursula's plan with a bit of thinking. With the way it happened in the film, Ursula caught Triton in the heat of the moment - and caused him to act rashly. He was faced with the sudden reality of Ariel being trapped in Ursula's clutches forever (as a result of something he was partially responsible for) and did what he had to do to save her. That's Ursula's main raison d'etre in the film; she catches people at a point where they're likely to make rash decisions. For example Ariel knew fully well that Ursula was bad news but was still reeling from the moment in the grotto. If she'd given it a couple of hours, she might have calmed down and be up to thinking things rationally. Ursula caught her while she was emotional and prone to make the deal.
- To give further credence to the above, Sebastian attempts to remind Ariel of how untrustworthy Ursula is, but she ignores him because it was his blabbing to Triton that got her grotto destroyed. This likely wasn't the first time Ariel was mad at her father, but it was the perfect opportunity for Ursula to make her move since she knew Ariel would be too pissed at Sebastian to listen to him.
- Ursula's contract says "I hereby grant to Ursula the Sea Witch One Voice". However by the time Triton confronts her about it, Ariel got her voice back! Even if it was by accident (an accident that wouldn't have happened had Ursula not used it to wed Ariel's lover) shouldn't this have somewhat made aspects of the contract null and void? Triton could have said "The contract says Ariel gave you her voice. But she's talking! With that said, this contract isn't valid!"
- The contract says she has to give Ursula her voice, and that's exactly what she did. As far as we know, there isn't anything there that says she can't get the voice back at a later date. (Likewise, apparently there's nothing in there that says Ursula can't deliberately sabotage Ariel by sending her eels to ruin her date with Eric.)
- I always wondered, if Ariel had originally succeeded and the deal had been played out honestly, would she have gotten her voice back? Or did that happen only because the seashell was smashed?
- I believe she wouldn't. The voice was a fee, not a pawn, if I remember correctly.
- You got it right. Ariel literally wriggled herself out of a seemingly hopeless contract. Cracked Magazine took a huge stab on that, likening to a Broken Aesop: if you're a good, and nice looking girl, you can just get yourself imperiled and wait for a random, rich dude to come at your rescue, while every other victim of Ursula's deals wasn't so fortunate.
- Except from the fact that they were all freed from her clutches at the end of the movie.
- Also, Ursula rigged and sabotaged the deal in her favor twice during the three days, to make it almost impossible for Ariel to fulfill her end of the bargain, and she did it for the purpose of conquering the entire ocean. That's hardly just a girl not liking a contract she signed and getting her boyfriend to murder the one who proposed it to her.
- We never saw the full text of the contract, so it's possible that her voice being returned was a clause. During "Kiss the Girl," Sebastian sings "And she won't say a word, until you kiss the girl!" The characters seem to be operating on the assumption that she'll get her voice back, at least.
- She wouldn't have gotten the voice back because Ursula said it was the payment. And if you think about it, say Ariel actually pulls the deal off. She's still without her voice, and that gives Ursula some leverage over Triton. Granted Ursula sabotaged the deal anyway but it's a possibility.
- I believe she wouldn't. The voice was a fee, not a pawn, if I remember correctly.
- Why didn't Ariel kiss Eric? Sure the rule is that HE has to kiss HER, but why not take a shot of jumpstarting his affections?
- As you said, HE has to kiss her, so, her kissing him might go against the contract.
- And Ursula cheating wouldn't?
- What Ursula actually says is "That is, he's got to kiss you. Not just any kiss. The kiss of true love" - so Ariel had to make Eric fall in love with her and THEN the kiss would have meaning. And two possibilities for why Ariel doesn't kiss him sooner: a) she worried that she only had one shot at a kiss and if she initiated one too soon then that'd be it, b) she's sixteen, inexperienced with boys and shy about making the first move, as well as possibly worrying that coming on too strong might weird him out.
- As you said, HE has to kiss her, so, her kissing him might go against the contract.
- Ariel says that she doesn't have anything to pay Ursula with for the spell. Isn't she a princess? Isn't there some form of currency system in the underwater world even if they don't seem to use gold, jewels, and other surface world commodities? Granted, Ursula probably would've demanded her voice anyway, but it's odd that Ariel seems to be saying that she doesn't own anything that isn't on her person.
- Well look at what had just happened with Triton. Maybe Ariel felt she had been practically disowned by her father and felt she literally had nothing. And her grotto had just been destroyed, so she can't barter with any of the human objects in her collection.
- Her being a princess doesn't mean she has free access to Atlantica's royal treasury. Maybe she had some jewelry she could pawn off, but she could've been afraid that Triton wouldn't let her leave if she tried going back home to get it. (In reality, he probably would've made an attempt to apologize, but Ursula wouldn't have let things get that far anyway.)
- Ariel just had a huge fight with her dad, and she bolted off crying in despair. She's not going to stop and go "hey, I'll go to my room and get some money, in case I need to ask the sea-witch for something."
- I assume that when Ariel said she doesn't have anything, it only means that she came to Ursula's lair empty handed. She could go home to get some money or other of her belongings to trade with, but like an above trouper said, that would mean she risks running into her dad, and he would suspect Ariel was up to something.
- Regarding the contract, it's "Legal, binding, and unbreakable." Fine. Except, Ursula interfered with Ariel's execution of her contractual obligations on two separate occasions. First, by having Flotsam and Jetsam capsize the boat that Eric and Ariel were in, thus acting as mood killers, and then by showing up herself in disguise, casting a spell on Eric, and attempting to draw him to her to prevent Ariel from kissing him. By any reasonable legal standard, that should have rendered the contract null and void. I can't tell you that you have three days to complete a difficult task, then shoot you in the kneecaps and claim breech of contract when you fail to complete the task in the allotted time. What Ursula and her agents did is the very textbook definition of Tortious Interference.
- You're assuming that the legality of Ursula's contracts would be the same as the legality of 21st century human contracts. Chances are they're not. I'd imagine Ursula's contracts are based solely on the very basic premise of each side fulfilling the terms of their agreement: Ursula will give Ariel legs (which she does) and Ariel gets Eric to give her the kiss of true love within three days, or she forfeits herself to Ursula - basically leaving either herself or Ariel room to interfere and sway things to their advantage as much as they want (which they both do: Ursula with the aforementioned examples, and Ariel by enlisting the help of Sebastian et al). Since Ursula is the one who draws up the contract (and she clearly wants Ariel to fail), she's hardly going to include any clauses that might prevent her from playing dirty. Heck, even demanding Ariel's voice as payment could be considered a breach of contract by your logic, since she knows Eric's in love with whoever saved him and can only identify that girl by her voice.
- Ursula also doesn't give Ariel much of a chance to read the contract either, so presumably there was all that fine print in there that Ariel didn't read because Ursula rushed her into signing it.
- And let's face it - she's a teenager. Would you read a thing thoroughly like that at sixteen? She's probably thinking "yeah, hurry this up so I can get my legs" and Ursula is hurrying her along before she gets second thoughts.
- Unless the contract specifically states that there is to be no outside interference then Ursula is free to do whatever she wants. That's why contracts are so tricky, you can make assumptions but if they're not actually on the page then those assumptions mean nothing.
- If Ursula’s contract was such that it allowed her to interfere in Ariel’s courtship of Eric however she wanted, why would she even bother with turning her human in the first place? Actually giving Ariel the opportunity to succeed gains Ursula nothing; if she can give herself that much leeway, she probably could’ve just worded the contract so that she could lock Ariel in a cage immediately and then hold her for ransom.
- Because Ursula's making her ultimate take over the ocean plot. Doing so entails playing the "I'm your friend" game. Giving Ariel some time with Eric as promised keeps her villainous plan subtle until it's more eminent that Ariel could win Eric over.
- Ursula has also been watching Ariel, and knows that she already wants to be human. That's Ariel's real priority, and Eric just tipped the scales in that direction. Ursula also needs to offer something that Ariel would be willing to make a deal for; Ariel was already planning to swim up to the castle and talk with him on her own, so she had no problem with confidence in speaking to her crush or finding his location again. Ursula however offers her the one thing that she can't get herself.
- And she has to put Ariel in a position where Triton would have no choice but to take her place. If she just locks Ariel in a cage, he can just show up and blast it open with the trident. If Ariel is turned into something else - either a human or one of the polyps in a way that only Ursula's magic can reverse - it'll force Triton's hand to get her back. Especially if she makes Ariel sign a contract that protects her from Triton's magic.
The Under the Sea Number
- Wait a minute. If Ariel left in the middle of the "Under the Sea" music number, and Sebastian not only finished the song, but also went back to the castle and accidentally spilled the beans about Ariel, then how did both him and Triton get to the grotto at roughly the same time as Ariel?
- Off-screen Dramatic Teleportation. It's not just for monsters and killers.
- Ariel probably didn't get to the grotto nearly as quickly as we're imagining. She is highly distractable and Flounder was having to coax her on for most of the way because he just kept saying "it's a surprise"
- We have no idea how close the grotto is to the "Under the Sea" location. It could have been right next to the castle, and her grotto many leagues away.
- Except it isn't, in one of the establishing shots, Ariel looks towards her grotto from the castle, which looks to be a short swim away.
- Off-screen Dramatic Teleportation. It's not just for monsters and killers.
- In "Under the Sea", they say "The seaweed is always greener/in somebody else's lake". How could they know what a lake is? Lakes are freshwater and all the singing creatures live in salt water, they couldn't even know about lakes.
- Just because you live in one place, doesn't mean you know nothing of other areas. It's possible they learned about lakes from birds or other animals who can get away from water.
- Or they've had conversations with salmon and freshwater eels, which spend part of their lives in river systems and part of them in the ocean. Those would know all about lakes.
- Also, does seaweed grow in lakes?
- We don't know anything about mermaid physiology. Maybe they can and do live in lakes. They wouldn't be the only animals that can survive both fresh and salt water.
- It usually has to grow in salt water, but there are a couple of salty lakes.
- Actually, algae is sometimes called Seaweed; but it's not Kelp.
- Translation Convention. Mer-language has a word for "discrete three-dimensional underwater region bounded by natural features" that translates best to English as "lake".
- Speaking up that musical number, why is Sebastian's primary argument against going to the surface that people eat fish? Ariel is probably the least likely sea creature a human would ever want for food. I'd also mention that fish are already plenty preyed on under the sea anyway, but... ah, whatever.
- Ariel and the other mermaids can talk to fish. They see the fish as sentient beings. So another sentient being (humans) eating a fish would be really horrible to them.
- Actually they shouldn't... fish eat each other all the time. Everything seems to indicate the shark doesn't speak, and probably isn't considered a "friend" by the rest of the sea folks, but still, many animals including seagulls and crabs (both friends to Ariel) eat fish. To merfolks, this should be seen as normal and a natural fact of life, although I agree that dinner time would probably be very akward...
- Despite being a foreign universe reference, Geoff Johns touched the subject in its Aquaman's run. Being able to "talk with fishes" doesn't mean that every fish is "smart" enough to carry a conversation with a sentient being. Sharks doesn't speak, and there are several fishes that don't speak. Thus, while a mermaid would consider eating a sentient lobster/crab/whatever an act of blatant murder, she can still enjoy a nice plate of "non-sentient" fish.
- I always thought Sebastian's rationale was "The people on land eat fish, so if you try to go up there, they might eat YOU!"
- Could be that fish-eating is condoned within underwater society, but taboo when done by outsiders. Many groups allow offensive behavior between members (insults, arguments, fights), but get very hostile toward outsiders doing the same thing. At least if a fish eats a fish, it's staying within the underwater society.
- Well, Ursula is somehow aware of the Caspian Sea. How can she know about that?
- She's specifically invoking the Winds of the Caspian Sea, like summoning a god or demon by name. Could be common cause; the winds may be self-aware with their own name that they have communicated to both humans and magic-users like Ursula.
- Ursula is able to enchant Flotsam and Jetsam to spy for her so that she sees whatever they see. Maybe they're not the first animals she's done that to, and used it on birds to learn more about the surface world.
- Just because you live in one place, doesn't mean you know nothing of other areas. It's possible they learned about lakes from birds or other animals who can get away from water.
Eric's Boots
- Why are Eric's boots gone when Ariel brings him ashore (after rescuing him from drowning)? Boots are very difficult to slip off, and would be even more difficult to slide off in water.
- Maybe Ariel took them off? Boots are also quite heavy when soaked with water and she probably thought it would be easier to carry him without them.
- How did Ariel get them off, and keep Eric's head above the surface at the same time?
- How she got them off is pretty irrelevant. We see him with them on after he passes out, they came off before getting him to shore. Ariel almost assuredly did take them off, since boots just don't fall off, and probably because they were weighing his legs down and making carrying him awkward. I mean, if he's awkward to carry and may drown because of it, then it's better to risk him drowning by taking his boots off than to keep him half drowning the whole way to shore. The specifics aren't exactly important.
- There is an idea on the fridge page that Ariel took them off out of curiosity. As we see later when she gains a pair of her own, she finds toes fascinating. A bit creepy perhaps, but she is a rebellious, hormonal and human-obsessed sixteen-year-old nursing her crush, so its not that unlikely that she might go for a little peek.
- At least one of them probably got blown off in the explosion, given that his foot was caught in the crumbling deck of the ship before the powder caught fire. Actually, I've just checked, and he has them on. However, his pants are also intact. By the time he's on the beach (Neptune knows how she dragged him a solid 10 feet onto the beach) not only is he barefoot but the bottoms of his pantlegs are completely shredded. Clearly something happened on the way. Perhaps sharp rocks or curious small sharks.
Red Hair
- The Prequel. Both of Ariel's parents are/were redheads. Ariel is the only one of her siblings with red hair. Red hair is a recessive gene, meaning you need to inherit the gene from both parents. Meaning, red hair is the only hair color the child of two redheads can have. Either merpeople's genes for hair color work completely differently from humans', or Ariel's mother has been less than faithful...
- Sounds like you've never heard of step-parents.
- Hollywood Genetics?
- In the stage musical, the daughters are also sometimes different races, and in the Broadway production, Triton was black.
- Maybe they really aren't all his, or all hers? Considering that fish reproduction is a lot less intimate than the human kind, mer-folk probably wouldn't consider Triton or his wife unfaithful if either of them had been passing unfertilized eggs around to and from friends who came up a bit short for eggs of their own or had too many to use for themselves. Waste not, want not! Ariel being their only child with each other and all the others being half-sisters from either one or the other of her parents might also explain Triton's slight favoritism for Ariel and why she's a bit spoiled: in a way, it would mean she's an only child.
- This digs into the scale of serious/not-serious mermaid talk. Since if they have breasts to wear sea shell bras over and swim up and down, those are all hallmarks to being an aquatic mammal and not fish at all. The only fish part seems to be the tail and it's not exactly uncommon for whales, dolphins, seals, etc to occasionally get things stuck to tails that would make them look more scaly. Of course alot of this seems silly to talk about this on what is believed pure fiction, but most people don't think of it as anymore than that, so the wrong assumption is more wide spread. "half-man half fish" just sounds better than what a more accurate assumption would be.
- My sister assumed something like that - although she didn't exactly think of consorts (which could also have happened; with Ariel's mother being Triton's favourite or the only one he was willing to call his wife), she had a more innocent theory - that the others were adopted, and Triton's favouritism towards Ariel was because they couldn't have kids naturally and Ariel was sort of a "Miracle child" that way.
- This all depends on mermaid genetics, which could wildly vary. A goldfish has 94 chromosomes, compared to humans' 46.
- ^^ This is what I was thinking. We know that red hair and other fair colors are recessive in humans because of deductive reasoning based off massive amounts of data. We don't know enough about merpeople genetics to know what allele combinations control hair/skin/tail color, what's dominant, codominant, and recessive.
- Maybe some of Ariel's family dye their hair?
- Triton's hair looked more like a reddish brown to me, and even if it was truly a recessive red, it's still technically possible (albeit rare) for two red-headed parents to have children of different hair colors. If Triton or Athena carried defective dominant alleles and were simultaneously recessive carriers, then the dominants would fail to activate and they would instead express the recessive trait. They would retain the ability to pass their dominant traits unto their children, however, and the same thing could be achieved if they had silencer alleles in different parts of their genotype that prevented the dominant traits from being activated, but did not pass those silencer alleles to their daughters. If both Triton and Athena were recessive red carriers, with one having a defective dark-haired gene and the other a defective not-red gene, then their children could have any of the three colors.
Series vs Movie
- What happened to the trident's power in the canon TV series? In the movie it showed almost unlimited power, but in the series it couldn't even take on the villain of the week most of the time. Plus in the series it is revealed that Triton is the only one who knows how to use all of the trident's power. So, um, if Ursula could do all those badass things she did with it in the movie with only part of its power, couldn't 90% of the series plots have been resolved by Triton pointing the trident at whatever villain was around that week and telling it, "You have 30 seconds to get out before I vaporize you, starting now".
- The film and the series take place in slightly divergent universes. Alternately, they left it out in the yard on a cold night and killed the batteries, so it won't fully recharge.
- The TV series takes place prior to the film when Ariel's a teenager, thus the trident's had time to build up power.
- Ursula is a rather skilled witch, it's not that surprising that she manages to do so much with it, even with it at limited power as it's boosting her already impressive power.
- Triton signed Ursula's contract, meaning he forfeited his power over the trident. Ursula could have written the contract so that she got the trident's powers so when Triton signed it (with the trident I might add), all the power legally(?) belonged to her.
- To the part about the whole "You have 30 seconds to get out before I vaporize you, starting now" issue in the series (or lack thereof), one episode DID have King Triton resorting to such a method. To put it simply, it was the episode where Sebastian had to act as a negotiator between the Sharkanians and the Atlantican Merpeople, nearing the ending of the episode, the Sharkanians attempt a trojan horse method involving a treasure chest to sneak into the palace and attack King Triton, only he was prepared for them. Long Story short, they seemed to meet their maker as implied by the immediate cut to the outside of the palace.
- If I recall correctly, we saw the Sharkanians who were in the palace fleeing with smoke trails (smoke underwater? How does that work?!) indicating that they were fried pretty badly, but not killed.
- Triton does resolve a lot of conflicts in the TV series with the trident, it's just that he's often absent, deliberately staying out of a conflict, causing trouble for Ariel with his restrictive parenting rather than helping, or has lost the trident to one thief or another. There's also the point that using the trident's full power seems to be a Dangerous Forbidden Technique. Note that when Ursula used its full power, she fried herself with her own lightning when Eric's ship-ramming made her lose concentration. Triton probably views it as a nuclear option to only be invoked in emergencies, lest he destroy the whole city or something.
- The film and the series take place in slightly divergent universes. Alternately, they left it out in the yard on a cold night and killed the batteries, so it won't fully recharge.
Naming Scheme
- All of the princesses' names begin with one and the same letter (A) so in the DTV prequel what's the point of marking their possessions if nothing makes a difference. It's just redundant. And it's not like anyone but them are using them. The smart thing to do was to put their initials with a different color, like the color of their tails. You know:
- Aquata — A; Andrina — A; Arista — A; Attina — A; Adella — A; Alana — A; Ariel — A
What happened to her dress?
- When Ursula drags Ariel underwater after the sun goes down, she's clearly seen still wearing her dress. But in the scene IMMEDIATELY after that, the dress has suddenly vanished and she's wearing her clamshell bra. Even her big ass bow is gone!
- This was done for the sake of not-looking-stupid. It happens. How silly it'll be to have Ariel underwater as a mermaid dressed as a human. The scenes after Ursula takes her underwater work best with Ariel wearing only her purple seashell bra. If she was still wearing those human clothes, the underwater scenes before the final battle could lose their credibility.
- Ursula probably ripped Ariel's clothes off off-screen just to intimidate and humiliate her. It's in character.
- I think in a more complex commentary on magic, once Ariel transforms back into a mermaid, anything from the human world she possesses will vanish as soon as she returns to the sea. That dress either magical dissolved or turned back into her seashell top.
- I had always assumed it was part of the magic of Ursula's enchantment, it just hadn't finished taking effect until Ariel hit the water. Like how Cinderella's torn-up dress became her silver ballgown and her headband bow became her earmuff things, Ariel's human clothes disappeared and became her tail and seashell bra. Note that Ariel gets on the boat and has shoes, but when she's sitting on the deck of the ship with her mermaid tail, there are no shoes on the ground, nor are there undergarments Ariel should have been wearing. Because they were what was on her legs and feet, they became her tail. Because the dress actually sits on her torso, and the skirt just hangs from it, they became her seashells. As for the bow, it fell off, not unreasonable considering how Ursula manhandled her. However it doesn't work the other way around, so her tail and seashells can't become clothing.
- Funnily enough, the same thing happens in the musical version. Flotsam and Jetsam drag Ariel off stage when the sun sets... and immediately drag her back on stage, tail, bra already there.
Unfortunate Implications are perhaps they, two eels, undressed the poor 16 year old girl in that short interval of 20 seconds. - Or the magic just hadn't finished when Ursula dragged Ariel off the boat. Perhaps the dress would have turned back into the Seashell Bra?
- Ariel's clothes never change with her at any other part of the movie: the seashell bra stays the same when she becomes human, and the dress didn't disappear when she gained a tail. The simple answer is that she never took the seashells off except maybe to bathe, and the dress she put on as a human slipped off when Ursula took her underwater.
- What became of Ariel's seashell bra after the beach scene after becoming human? Did she remove it before Scuttle put that old sail on her? Or did she have it on underneath? If so, did she remove it after she got to the castle, and had that bath? What was done with it afterward?
- The maids either took it, discarded and replaced it with a cloth bra, (or just an undergarment, depending on when this movie takes place), or she got to keep her seashell bra because they figured it's hers and she's weird that way.
- She's still wearing it when she and Ursula go back underwater, so she either kept the original or made herself a new one.
- I like to think Ariel continues wearing it simply because it is a reminder of where she comes from. So, when the maidens were giving her new clothes off screen, I imagine Ariel refusing to give up the seashell bra, which is why she was still wearing it on the third day. We also see in the sequel that she still wears twelve years later. That article of clothing clearly means a lot to Ariel....
- May actually be brilliant. It seems that this movie was set in the neighborhood of the late 1890's, which was just a few years before the Brassiere was split off from the Corset. So Ariel's choices would have been between her seashell bra and a steel-boned corset, which she probably would have found a good deal less comfortable. For all we know, she might have even been dressed properly by the women after her bath and switched back to the seashell bra of her own accord.
Interested in what Daddy Hates
- What was Triton worried about with Ariel being in love with Eric? She took precautions to avoid being seen (or at least being identified as a mermaid) with her first interaction with him, and given how surprised she was with the idea, becoming human herself never crossed her mind until Ursula mentioned it. (And Ariel was a little apprehensive about leaving her family too) This clearly means she was only gonna visit Eric watching from a distance (and possibly enticed him with her singing). Why would Triton be worried about her for doing that solely because Eric is stereotyped as an enemy?
- Because he doesn't want Ariel to get the idea into her head that going to the surface at all is safe. If he sets rules for her not to go there and she disobeys him, there's no saying she wouldn't get the idea to do so again if he were to tell her "OK, but just don't get too close." Especially when she shouts, "Daddy, I love him!" She's acting way too much like a headstrong, immature teenager in that scene, and the thing to do isn't give her a bit of leeway.
- Because Fantastic Racism that's why. Replace Ariel with a sheltered white human girl with a conservative father and Eric with a black man and it's basically the same thing. Triton believes 'they' are dangerous and should be avoided, and he thinks he's protecting Ariel by warning her away.
- The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning gave us two explanations each for this. 1) Ariel takes after her mommy, Athena, who also enjoyed the surface, and, 2), Athena's death is what kicked off his hatred of humans. That said, while Athena never chased after any human dudes (that we know of), it wouldn't be implausible that Ariel, with her love of the surface, would want to chase after a human dude.
Communication
- In the original, why doesn't Ariel simply write down the things she wants to say to Eric? For a few moments I was thinking, "Oh, well she's probably illiterate, at least in human languages." But she did sign her name in English on that contract. Just because you can't speak doesn't mean you can't communicate, and she does do some nonverbal communication such as facial expression and charades, but never once does she attempt to write anything down. (It'd probably be a short movie if she did, right?)
- And she seems able to read human books and knows human words. It's possible that she was just flipping through / looking at the pictures and that she heard some sailors use the words, but it does imply that she can read. Of course, she might not be able to write, but still.
- Animator Tom Sito said the filmmakers eventually realized they overlooked this plothole in the movie, and they just hoped the audience would overlook it.
- The contract was Translation Convention? It was really written in Mer-language and just appeared in English for the convenience of the audience. That could be why the middle part of the contract looked like gibberish; it wasn't translated.
- Multiple things - first, some powerful curses prevent people from talking or even writing about it - watch Howl's Moving Castle sometime. Second, everybody considered her a little unusual when she arrived, but put that down to shock from being in a shipwreck. Imagine if she'd started writing down things like "I'm a mermaid and I made a deal with a sea-witch to become human by trading my voice!" And third, telling him she's under a spell and only him falling in love with her can lift it? Well, it's actually quite hard to make somebody love you when they think that there's an ulterior motive (like not becoming a polyop). No matter the reason, Ariel tried to tell Eric what happened. He wasn't any good at charades.
- And even if she could write something down, it likely wouldn't be in English (that was just for us), it would have been in her language, of which Eric would not have been able to read and understand it.
- She could have drawn pictures
- Actually, Ariel was able to write her name in English when she signed Ursula's contract.
- The name "Ariel" is not English — it is a proper noun and same in every language. Just because the Merpeople use Latin alphabet doesn't mean that they write in language recognisable to humans.
- I'm just gonna say that bad handwriting is a side effect of her transformation into human. Since Ursula HAD Ariel write her name down, the fact that she deliberately applied this side effect to solidify Ariels failure isn't much of a stretch. We're not shown everything that happened in those 72 hours (90 minute film, we can't) so can assume she DID try to communicate with Eric in writing, but it came out to wiggly for ANYONE to make out.
- In the first episode of the TV series, we get a close look at a decree written by King Triton. It's clearly written in a fictional language. So we could say that the contract in the movie was just Translation Convention and Ariel doesn't know English...but then again, she obviously understands Eric. (So, what, she knows spoken English but not written English? I guess...)
- And even if she could write something down, it likely wouldn't be in English (that was just for us), it would have been in her language, of which Eric would not have been able to read and understand it.
- I like the "magical prevention of writing it" theory. I mean, when Ariel gets her voice back she speaks in English - Eric can obviously understand her.
- There is an elaborate theory here
. - Because the kiss had to be motivated by love, not gratitude. Eric is just as naïve as Ariel and he thinks what he feels for his rescuer is genuine love when in reality it was mere attraction and gratitude. That's why Ariel spends her whole time on land bonding with Eric rather than telling him who she is. Besides, even if writing down the explanation was an option, what was Ariel supposed to write that wouldn't make Eric think she's crazy? "Hi! I'm a mermaid princess from an underwater kingdom that the human world is unaware of. I saved you from drowning and made a deal with a sea witch to turn me human so I can be with you but we must share a true love's kiss within three days or I'll be turned into a polyp?"
- There is an elaborate theory here
- Eric can understand Sebastian once and only once: to hear Ariel's name. How?
- It's the only time Sebastian speaks directly to him.
- In this universe humans can apparently understand sea creatures.
- The sequel confirms that only someone who descends from merfolk can innately speak to animals, as Melody is mocked by her peers for speaking to Sebastian when he crashes her birthday party. It's possible that since Eric was spending so much time around a mermaid, even starting to fall in love with one, he was beginning to tap into that "aura" that allows him to understand them, albeit to a much lower extent.
- The implication of the "Kiss the Girl" scene is that Eric can understand Sebastian and the other animals, but only on a subconscious level. Even though the two of them are alone on a boat, Eric never wonders where that singing's coming from or who said the name "Ariel". It seems like humans can hear the animals words, and those words can influence them, but they aren't consciously aware of it.
The Villain Song
- "If you want to cross a bridge, my sweet, you've got to pay the toll." Ariel and Ursula both live underwater and Ariel forgets what streets are called. Even assuming Ursula is more knowledgeable about land-dwelling culture, why would she assume Ariel knew what a bridge was?
- I'm sorry...Whut??? You're questioning the logic of musical numbers??
- Also, why would she care what Ariel knew and what she didn't? No big deal if someone won't get a metaphor. The main idea is still clear: if you want something you have to pay, that is all Ariel have to know.
- While it's probably just musical nonsense with no good answer bridges (generally) do go over water. It's easy to think that Merfolk know perfectly well what those things are that let land critters walk over water rather than swimming across. Considering the number of fairy tales that involve critters that live under bridges and many of them are likely semi if not fully aquatic bridges might even hold a special meaning to Atlanteans.
- Ursula knows how much Ariel loves and has learned about the human world; she's not using the phrase metaphorically, she's literally offering Ariel the ability to cross bridges for a price. It's part of her temptation!
- Not every marine creature swims; many crustaceans only walk along the seabed. Possibly the merfolk build bridges across undersea chasms to help their crab and lobster friends get around more easily.
Eric's Parents
- If Eric's parents are actually dead, why is he not a king? And if they're not dead, you'd think the least they could do is show up at Eric's wedding.
- It's possible he was deemed too young to be king. If his parents are dead and Eric is too young to inherit the throne, they may have a council or adviser running things until Eric is old enough. Alternatively, if they are dead, there could be some law that he couldn't officially be king until he got married.
- He seems to have enough time on his hands to roam the seas with his ship, date adorkable strangers and stuff. Thus, there may be a council running things for him, with Grimsby tasked to safeguard him until he came out of age.
- In the official book that I used to read, Grimsby is Eric's guardian. (My first encounter with the word, that's why I remember!
- Or maybe "Prince" is the title of the ruler in his land.
- Another variant: Eric is the brother of the king or even some distant relative, who's got the title but no real chance to become a king.
- That or just to make thing even. Ariel is the princess of the Mermaids, Eric is the prince of...wherever he came from. Princesses still hold onto their title even when their parents are dead and by hereditary rule, they would have already been queens.
- I'm trying to remember whether anyone refers to him as a king in the sequel, 12 years later. Morgana still calls him "Prince Eric", but she probably wouldn't be up to date on surface-world politics.
- Eric could have siblings that are currently king or queen during the of the movies.
The musicals
- So, wait, let me get this straight... at the start of the first movie they're staging a big musical show for the king and his kingdom... and NOBODY bothered to take a roll call of the performers?? NOBODY noticed that Ariel hadn't shown up that day? They start the show without checking that Ariel had arrived for the show, nevermind that she was in her place on stage. Seriously that's one ***ed up theater.
- Perhaps she slipped away between a rehearsal and the performance? It's not uncommon for performers to have one final rehearsal before the actual show, so no one may have thought to take roll call because they assumed no one would leave.
- Can't be. Ariel missed the concert because she forgot it was that day, not that she took off on purpose before it.
- A deleted scene shows Sebastian and Ariel's sisters know she's missing, and he tells the sisters to find her while he stalls things. The fact they start the song without her says (to me at least) Sebastian thought they'd actually found her before the reveal. Nasty sisters? Not unheard of in a Disney movie... Or a classic fairy tale.
- Well the way the film starts seems to imply that Sebastian just showed up to conduct, at the same time as Triton. Presumably the daughters were all told to be in their positions on stage at whatever time. Each sister just assumed that someone else had told Ariel.
- If underwater theatre is run the same way as human theatre, then the performers don't normally focus on whether or not the other people are in their positions. That's the stage manager's job. They're the ones who keep track of everyone going on stage when they're supposed to. And I've been in a show where there was no stage manager and during the first performance, people did forget that they were meant to be on stage at a certain point. So maybe their stage manager was ill or they didn't have one, so no one thought to check that Ariel was up to date.
- And Ariel was supposed to enter the show by popping out of a clam shell. The shell was closed and the sisters assumed Ariel was already inside.
- Perhaps she slipped away between a rehearsal and the performance? It's not uncommon for performers to have one final rehearsal before the actual show, so no one may have thought to take roll call because they assumed no one would leave.
Going up the surface
- How does Ariel not get the bends swimming up from the ocean floor to the surface in less time than it takes to black out from lack of oxygen?
- Our mermaids are different.
- She wasn't a mermaid at the time of question. Writers did not do the research.
- Call it one last bit of mermaid biology hanging on, or a side-effect of Ursula's spell. Ursula doesn't want Ariel to suffocate and die on the sea floor — better if she gets a taste of the life she wants, and then have it ripped away.
- That and Disney probably didn't want to traumatize children by making them watch our heroine come dangerously close to drowning onscreen.
- Which brings up another point. Given how much she was flailing after her transformation, it's clear that Ariel can't swim for anything without her tail. Bends or no bends, if Sebastian and Flounder hadn't been there, she probably wouldn't have made it to the surface and drowned. Bye, bye, new garden addition and potential blackmail material against Triton.
- Another thing: Ariel was mostly naked the whole time (except for her Seashell Bra). That water had to have been extremely cold on her now-human body.
- It was pretty sunny out and Ariel had been in the water all day/life. She'd be used to the temperature.
- Ariel shows an unusual level of strength for a girl of her size when she's on land (and so does Melody, in the sequel), so her body probably retained a level of hardiness that mermaids have but humans don't, and they're probably able to withstand greater oceanic pressure and surface quickly than humans. Alternatively, she did get the bends, but not enough to seriously hurt her. (She did seem pretty exhausted and weak, right after surfacing.) The third option is that Ursula's home is just fairly close to the surface, and in warm waters.
- And let's not forget that Ariel regularly goes up to the surface. So she at least is familiar with the changing temperature between sea and air.
- Because it's not true that "swimming up from a deep part of the ocean to the surface = 100% chance of the bends" There's actually an equation related to the depth of the water vs. the time you spent there = your chance of the bends. This is why some scuba dives require a safety stop and others don't; it all depends on how long you were swimming at the deepest point. (In theory it's possible to go down to 40m, stay there for 10 minutes and come up with no chance of the bends, although this troper has never met a diver willing to test it!) Getting back to the main point, Ariel turns into a human and immediately goes straight up to the surface. Total amount of time spent at the depths of Ursula's lair: about 5 seconds. Unless it was insanely deep - in which case the water pressure would probably kill her outright - Ariel wasn't down there nearly long enough for the bends to become an issue.
- And Ursula's lair clearly isn't that far down, since it's a skeleton that's on a rock and things are still pretty light.
- The bends mostly result from breathing compressed oxygen, not actually being deep underwater. Ariel wasn't breathing any oxygen, so regardless of her depth, so long as it wasn't deep enough for the water pressure to kill her, she wouldn't suffer decompression sickness.
- This troper's noticed a lot of people commenting on Ariel's reaction to breathing air the first time after being turned into a human. Thing is, she just came up from probably a good few dozen feet below sea level, propelled by two small sea creatures and what little movement she could do with her legs (having been used to fins her whole life). She was probably was under for a few minutes at least. Now think of how you would feel if you had held your breath for that long, if you hadn't passed out beforehand.
- Wait, I'm confused.What exactly are you implying?
- Ariel's a magical creature, and may have superhuman durability that allows her to hold her breath for a long period of time. This also works both ways, as Ariel can be out of water for long periods of time as a mermaid, as revealed when she sits for a while on Eric's ship.
Seeing Eric vs Turning Human
- If Ariel wanted to see Eric again so badly that she ended up trading her freedom and voice for it, why didn't she just swim to the beach and wait for him to show up, maybe lure him into coming by singing? It's shown he visits the beach with Max, especially after being rescued by her. Sure, after 16 years of being told to avoid humans, she must be wary to come into contact with one, but she didn't seem to mind that Eric was waking up and would notice she's a mermaid, and was only spooked away by his servant. Or, now that I think, why didn't she nick Triton's trident, go to the surface and make herself human? After all, the trident's magic seemed to work with the person's intent: Both Ursula and her father used it to destroy things when they wanted so - Triton to destroy her treasures and Ursula trying to kill Eric - but it was also capable of conjuring rainbows when he was happy and turning merpeople into humans because he wanted so. One could always argue that you have to know magic in order to use it, but by being Triton's daughter she must've either inherited his powers or learned some, given that she was a princess...why wouldn't they teach her magic to use it since it passes on in their family?
- Ariel was planning to do something like that when Triton showed up and destroyed her collection. After that she was too devastated to think clearly and made a deal with Ursula instead. Also, Ursula has powerful magic of her own, it's not surprising she'd know how to use the trident since obtaining it was her goal the whole time.
- Fridge Brilliance: All of Ursula's contracts work like that. Compare the wimpy merman and the fat mermaid; they already wanted each other to begin with, they didn't need Ursula's input. Ariel didn't need it either, but Ursula (through Flotsam and Jetsam) waited until she felt insecure and overpowered to offer help.
- Ariel wanted to be a human even without Eric being part of the equation—that's what "Part of Your World" is all about, really. Also, Triton made it clear to her by destroying her things that he was going to keep interfering with her fascination with humans and with Eric in particular, so the only real way she could get out from under his thumb was by becoming human. Besides that, she wants to go all the way with Eric, and is probably well aware of The Mermaid Problem, especially since Triton pointedly reminded her of it by shouting "You're a mermaid, he's a human!" in her face. She probably would steal the trident and use it to transform herself if she knew about it, but she's the youngest and thus probably the last in line to the throne and would have received the least training in it, would be wary of blasting herself to bits if she did it wrong, and she seemed very surprised when Triton did finally use it to make her human. That the trident could switch species is probably the last thing that the human-hating Triton would reveal to the daughter who's so fascinated with humans.
- Ariel isn't thinking clearly when she agrees to the deal with Ursula. She's been caught off guard directly after a traumatising situation. If the thought did cross her mind, she probably dismissed it, because it would involve seeing her father again. The process of events is 1) Triton goes ballistic and destroys the grotto, 2) Floatsam and Jetsam persuade Ariel to see Ursula, 3) Ursula offers the deal. There's no time for her to consider anything else.
- I always figured that the trident is bound to Triton personally, and no one can use its magic without his permission. After all, Ursula makes no attempt to steal it. Instead, she takes Ariel hostage and convinces Triton to give her the trident as ransom. He even signs a magical contract. So it may be that Ariel can't use the trident herself unless Triton officially agrees to it, and she had no reason to think he would ever do that, so she made a deal with Ursula instead.
- The sequel does say that no one could lift the trident from the throne unless it was one of Triton's descendants, so that's likely a possibility. Morgana is able to use the trident when Melody gives it to her, so maybe one of Triton's descendants physically handing it to her gives her the ability to use its magic. But then again it's not considered canon.
- Ariel was planning to do something like that when Triton showed up and destroyed her collection. After that she was too devastated to think clearly and made a deal with Ursula instead. Also, Ursula has powerful magic of her own, it's not surprising she'd know how to use the trident since obtaining it was her goal the whole time.
- In "Part of Your World", Ariel sings "I don't know when, I don't know how, but I know something's starting right now". Doesn't the "right now" part imply that she does, in fact, know when?
- It's moreso she doesn't know when or how she'll become human, but she knows she's going to figure things out after the song (hence the "right now"). Of course, it didn't go as smoothly as she intended...
What do the Atlanteans eat?
- Why are the underwater denizens disgusted by humans eating fish when almost everything under the sea eats fish?
- There are fish and there are fish. You could argue that there are higher, sentient fish and lower, non-sentient fish. Eating the higher kind is cannibalism and eating the lower kind is okay. But since this is a kid's movie, I'm going to go with "the creators were hoping you wouldn't notice."
- What are the exact words about humans eating fish? I just remember the song, where the only implication is that if you (one of the fish listening) were on the surface, YOU would be eaten.
- Triton says it when he's scolding Ariel. "Do you think I want to see my youngest daughter snared on some fish-eater's hook?"
- It's possible Triton and the underwater citizens see fish-on-fish violence as an acceptable part of the life cycle. In contrast, humans eating fish are outsiders intruding on undersea culture and taking resources that bigger fish need to live. So the same action is viewed as good or bad based on who's doing it.
- Or maybe it's not the eating fish that Triton was outraged by, so much as the use of hooks to catch fish. Most marine predators play fair and use the weapons Nature provides them with to seize their prey, killing as quickly and cleanly as possible; they don't lure the unsuspecting in with nasty barbed things that snag them by the lip and painfully haul them up, alive and terrified, into the cruel desiccating air.
- The TV series shows Ariel eating various plants and seaweed etc. Perhaps that's what they live off?
- Crabcakes are mentioned in the series, though I don't think we ever see any of the good guys eating them, or anything that looks remotely like fish or meat...not even the killer whales or dolphins, who only eat fish and meat. Everyone 'nice' in the TV series, if shown eating anything, usually have seaweed or kelp in the form of a salad, or similar to a pasta dish.
- There does seem to be a hierarchy of sentient/non-sentient fish species, though, such as the seahorses in "Stormy", who are clearly more animal-like and do not speak, and are kept to be ridden in a stable. Stormy displays quite a bit of intelligence and empathy, but never speaks, much like Spot the Orca in "Whale of a Tale". Eating the non-sentient fish, particularly if it is done by another only semi-sentient or non-sentient species such as the orcas or dolphins, probably isn't seen as murder, but the merpeople themselves seem to stick to seaweed and artificially made dishes like sweets, pastries and other things that don't require meat of any kind.
- A related problem: what did Ariel eat after she had permanently become a human? And how did she manage to come to terms with the fact that humans (so, presumably, Eric as well) regularly eat seafood - which, from her perspective, basically amounts to hunting and killing other sapient species for food?
- Option 1: Ariel remains vegetarian, but doesn't judge other humans for eating meat, as long as it isn't someone she knows. Option 2: Ariel mistakenly thinks that humans have to eat meat to survive as a human, and does it out of necessity. Option 3: There are non-sapient sea creatures and Ariel doesn't see anything wrong with eating those in particular, so the only change is that Eric and his men release any fish they catch who ask not to be eaten. Option 4: Ariel gleefully becomes a meat-eater as part of her enthusiasm for human culture.
The Vanessa Subplot
- If Ursula/Vanessa had actually managed to marry Eric, what was she going to do next?
- Eat him (Just kidding.) Turn back into Ursula. Get Ariel's soul. Use it to ransom the king and get his trident. Essentially pretty much the same plan.
- And now she has the ruler of a land kingdom wrapped around her little finger as well.
- Thank goodness for divorce!
- Divorce? From a sea witch with magical powers that he isn't even aware of? Unlikely. If Ursula wanted to keep Eric's kingdom, she wouldn't have let things like laws and free will get in the way. And given Eric's heroic nature, I can see her tempting him with all sorts of things in order to rescue or reunite with Ariel, all printed on a nice unbreakable contract.
- Like Iago told Jafar in Aladdin, "You marry the princess and then you become sultan. And then we throw the princess and the fat old man off the balcony". So Ursula could've done something similar with Eric.
- Or more simply since she turned into Vanessa at the end of the second day, her plan was entirely to stop Eric from kissing Ariel. She could have even left Eric at the altar if the sun set before they were officially married.
- I know you were just kidding, but I honestly like the theory that she was planning on eating him.
- One of the stories in the A Twisted Tale series showed that Ursula manipulated Eric into invading neighboring kingdoms and ruling over the surface world as an empire.
- During the climax, we see Scuttle trying to pull Vanessa's necklace away from her. But why is he focusing on the necklace? He wasn't there when Ursula sealed Ariel's voice inside it, nor could he have been, and it would've been weird if Flounder or Sebastian had shared such a minute detail with him when they'd explained everything, wouldn't it?
- While it might be strange to expect such intelligence of Scuttle, recall that in the scene where he caught Vanessa singing to her mirror, she was of course wearing the shell. I'll have to look again but I think she might have held or caressed it at some point. Even if she didn't, it was the only thing out-of-place and connected to the sea, so he could have concluded it was the source of Ariel's voice.
- Scuttle isn't as intelligently impaired as we think. He says it himself "Have I ever been wrong? I mean when its important!" Differentiating between a fork and a hair comb is a rather trivial matter compared to a dilemma when one of your closest friends (and the fate of the ocean for that matter) is at stake.
- And even if Scuttle never saw the shell before, he's heard enough about Ursula to know she's bad news. He could have assumed that it was the source of her magic, making the whole scenario a case of Dumbass Has a Point.
- Ursulas reputation DOES seem to get around. And Scuttle DID recognize her instantly by seeing her in the mirror. SO the fact that one of her talismans is a Nautulis shell necklace being in those stories isn't much of a stretch.
- All the other magic in the movies relies on some sort of physical object, whether potions like Ursula uses to transform Ariel, or physical talismans like the trident. Scuttle recognized Ursula's reflection as "the sea-witch!" and the necklace is the only thing that she wears in both forms. He put two and two together.
- And the necklace is a very unusual thing for a human princess to wear. Scuttle has clearly seen a lot of humans in his time - even if he doesn't quite get their culture - and he also would see human women wearing necklaces with jewels on them. A woman of rank high enough to marry a prince would most certainly not wear a sea shell around her neck at her wedding. If he's seen what human women wear at weddings, then the necklace is bound to look extra unusual.
- And since she's using Ariel's voice, he may have guessed that it was the necklace because it was worn so close to her throat.
- Also, weren't Flounder and Sebastian there when Ursula took Ariel's voice? They saw Ursula holding a shell to trap the voice in. They could have told him to look out for a shell offscreen.
- While it might be strange to expect such intelligence of Scuttle, recall that in the scene where he caught Vanessa singing to her mirror, she was of course wearing the shell. I'll have to look again but I think she might have held or caressed it at some point. Even if she didn't, it was the only thing out-of-place and connected to the sea, so he could have concluded it was the source of Ariel's voice.
- It's the morning of her third day on land when Ariel sees Eric announcing his proposal to Vanessa, but the wedding boat doesn't depart until sunset. What did she spend her whole day doing? Just moping? She didn't try to do what most teenage girls would think to do and go and see her father for help?
- You're forgetting that Triton is a merman who lives at the bottom of the sea, while Ariel is up on land without her ability to breathe underwater. Even if, by some chance, Sebastian and/or Flounder head back to Triton, there's little chance he would be able to help.
Setting
- Prince Eric's kingdom seems very European (many people say Denmark, was this ever Word of God?). If the villain's lair in the sequel was around Antarctica, then how did Melody travel between the North and South poles so quickly?
- Denmark is the country the original author of The Little Mermaid was from, so naturally many assume Eric's kingdom would be in modern-day Denmark or actually be Denmark. In the sequel, we encounter both penguins and a walrus in the same area. Penguins, as you already mentioned, live at or relatively near the south pole. Walruses are native to northern latitudes so either the penguins or the walrus is in the wrong place. My suggestion: don't think about it too hard unless you're writing a fanfic.
- They could be in Australia or New Zealand, both of which are near Antarctica and have European ties even to this modern day. This would explain why Daxter... I mean Tip, and his race are found here. It's possible that Dash's ancestors immigrated to Antarctica for food...
- Wouldn't work. Other wildlife would be horribly wrong for Australia and New Zealand, not to mention the complete lack of anything truly royal of the European variety in either country. Australia only really started getting colonized when it was used as a penal colony and newcomers built on what these involuntary colonists started.
- Given that we only see one walrus amongst dozens of penguins, I'm more willing to believe that Morgana's lair is in Anarctica. If Eric's kingdom were in Denmark, though, then it could just be that it took longer for Melody to cross between them than you're suggesting - it was long enough to her to fall asleep during the trip, after all, and it would explain why she needed a map to get to Atlantica.
- Maybe the "penguins" were a hidden colony of Not So Extinct great auks. They were arctic birds that looked like penguins, that died out in Real Life not long before the general time-period when the film is set, and that were originally called "penguins" before the southern-hemisphere Sphenisciformes taxon took over the name.
- It's more than likely located in Greece or Italy,
- Word of God confirmed that they used Southern Mediterranean European Countries such as Italy and Greece for the setting. Also in the original fairytale the story takes place somewhere on a European cost of the Mediterranean Sea (perhaps Greece). I based this off of several hints from the original story and the movie. For example in the book:
- The prince is described as having coal black eyes and raven hair (this obviously doesn’t settle anything, but a Mediterranean/Arabic prince is much more likely to be so dark than a central or northern European one)
- The beaches are described as having fine, white sand with lofty palm trees, naranja trees, and citron trees (all three of which can only easily be grown in tropical to sub-tropical climates such as in the Mediterranean)
- The rolling green hills have uva vines on them (this at least rules out Denmark- see grape- growing regions of europa below)
- The convent is specifically described as being built of white material (immediately putting one in mind of Mediterranean architecture) and the palace of yellow stone with long flights of marble steps, gilded cupolas, pillars, and marble statues (reminiscent of Greek and Italian architecture)
- The little mermaid was dado robes of silk and muslin and wore silk and oro to the wedding (perhaps doesn’t mean much but that’s two of her outfits that include silk and silk was most widely popular in the Mediterranean where it was directly imported and later manufactured)
- The prince had female slaves who wore silk and oro and danced (that doesn’t sound European at all, that’s much more likely Middle Eastern)
- In the movie:
- The chef is French and Ariel and Eric buy baguettes in the village (French influence)
- The castillo architecture (see below) looks very similar to “Mediterranean architecture homes” (see below)
- The beach on which Ariel sings to Eric has a look that's reminiscent of the Grecian coastline.
- Grapes shown in the village
- Palm trees shown in the village and palace
- Onion dome shown in village (possibly Middle Eastern influence)
- Arabic-style windows shown in the village (Middle Eastern influence)
- Sebastian originally was supposed to have an English accent instead of a Jamaican one. He was changed mostly to create a more specific musical style.
- In conclusion, the best place in which you can find Middle Eastern, French, Greek, and Italian influences with a tropical climate is in the Mediterranean or more specifically Greece. In other words Eric's kingdom is more than likely an island (Or several) off the coast of Greece.
- Lending some support to this, Melody's birthday is on January 14. The sea temperature near Denmark at that time of year are way too cold for her to have been comfortably swimming around out there. They aren't exactly warm off the coast of Greece either, but it's not as implausible for her to have gone swimming there.
- Denmark is the country the original author of The Little Mermaid was from, so naturally many assume Eric's kingdom would be in modern-day Denmark or actually be Denmark. In the sequel, we encounter both penguins and a walrus in the same area. Penguins, as you already mentioned, live at or relatively near the south pole. Walruses are native to northern latitudes so either the penguins or the walrus is in the wrong place. My suggestion: don't think about it too hard unless you're writing a fanfic.
The Grotto
- Eric's statue somehow ends up in Ariel's grotto. How?????? It's unlikely Flounder could have moved it from where it had landed on the ocean floor, so we have to conclude it floated down from the shipwreck to land in the grotto - but the hole in the roof is way too small. Even Ariel could hardly have fit through it, let alone a huge stone statue.
- Perhaps Flounder got some help to move it?
- There was a Disney Adventures comic about this, though it's technically non-canon. Long story short, Flounder eventually got a whale to move it for him.
- It was a giant squid, actually. But still...
- He got some kid with a dolphin tail, a sea turtle with a dog's head, and an octo-duck to help him do it.
- During Part of Your World, we can see a painting in Ariel's grotto. How is it possible the paint didn't go off underwater?
- Oil paint. Taking a watercolor painting aboard a ship would be kind of dumb, and all of her treasures are flotsam.
- Judging from their existence in her collection, Ariel has never seen a knife, fork, or spoon before, and presumably has no idea what they're for (considering she takes Scuttle's word that a fork is a hair-styling tool called a dinglehopper). So... do these supposedly cultured and advanced merfolk just eat with their hands? How do they craft their clothes, their instruments, their furniture, if something as simple as a blade is foreign to Ariel (and thus, one would assume, to merfolk in general)?
- The cultured and civilized people of the Roman Empire mostly ate with their hands. As for the knife in that set of tableware, it was a butter knife. The merfolk might well have some bladed weapons or tools just as the Romans did, but never thought to use them at the table, especially if they don't necessarily eat at tables.
- Even in medieval Europe, even royalty and nobility would eat with their hands, with the aid of a knife. And not a butter knife either.
- Or they do have tableware of some sort, but it's sufficiently different from humans' that Ariel didn't recognize it out-of-context. (By the time she did see it in context, she'd been told what it was by an "expert", so didn't speculate about it further.)
- How does Ariel have books in good condition, still readable, with flippable pages, underwater?
- There's a patent from 1902 covering a method of "improving" the waterproofing of paper. Now, since the books she has are presumably from coastal regions and sailors who would invest in having books that water wouldn't significantly damage if they're going to invest in books at all, they likely used whatever techniques were available to prevent water damage. We can't say exactly what time-period the movie takes place in, but there were obviously methods of protecting paper from water, Ariel's books being the evidence. Her books were in exceptionally good condition, and waterproofing doesn't typically make something completely immune to water, but they could be very recent additions to her collection, too.
- Maybe the merfolk have invented their own kind of paper which is completely waterproof. And maybe Ariel just hand-copied some human books onto that paper.
Punishing Ariel
- How come King Triton never decided to just punish Ariel for her misbehavior in the prequel and second movie if he was tired of Ariel disobeying him?
- Because he's all bark and no bite. Apart from blasting the statue of Eric (in which case he feared for her life), he's a real softie.
- Punish her how? She already ignoring LAWS he's setting down, sending her to her room just isn't going to work, she'll be gone the second he's not looking.
- Well isn't that why he gets Sebastian to follow her? If he can't discipline her, he's hoping that someone keeping an eye on her will work instead.
- Triton has a soft spot for Ariel, since she's the most like her mother (whom, as we know, died many years ago). Triton couldn't possibly bear to do anything seriously harmful to her, as Queen Athena was his biggest weakness. Punishing her in a serious manner could bring up bad memories.
Getting Stuck
- In the shipwreck and the shark scene, how could Ariel pass through the window hole without problems while Flounder got seriously stuck in it? He's smaller than Ariel! It should have been easier for him to pass through it!
- Well, if you look closely, Ariel did have to pull herself through the second time (when they were escaping from Glut) and maybe Flounder is a bit pudgier than Ariel?
- Flounder doesn't have arms.
- Presumably she either had to grab him by the body and pull him through, or grab his fins and pull him through. Either way, she wasn't leaving him behind.
- Her hips should have gotten stuck, if not her shoulders - perhaps merpeople, like rats, have somewhat collapsible skeletal structures?
You look familiar...
- When Eric finds Ariel, he assumes she's not the girl who saved him because she can't speak. Isn't that jumping to conclusions? For all he knew, Ariel could've had laryngitis or some other ailment that causes a temporary loss of voice. At the very least, shouldn't Eric have asked Ariel if she was sick or a similar question?
- He said "you can't speak?" and she shook her head, which he took to assume she couldn't talk at all. From the time period it's set in, I don't think Eric would know about laryngitis or illnesses that would render someone mute. And if he did, isn't this only one or two days after the storm? He'd hardly be delusional enough to believe his mysterious girl with a perfect singing voice somehow developed a disease that rendered her mute within a couple of days.
- Laryngitis isn't some obscure medical condition you need a CAT scan to diagnose; it's something that most human beings experience at least once in their life. Every culture and time period would know about it.
- Eric spent the entire movie being prone at jumping to conclusions: it's not an idle though thinking that the same guy believing (despite everyone telling him how impossible that was) that a beautiful girl with a perfect singing voice came to his rescue professing her love to him decided that Ariel's gestures implied a permanent loss of voice and consider her a mute instead of his saviour with laryngitis.
- Furthermore, someone ill with laryingitis can, in the vast majority of cases, squeeze out some sounds (at least squeeks and raspy attempts to vocalize) from her addled voice box: Ariel was utterly unable to vocalize and, after answering the "you can't speak?" question with a shake of her head, she started flapping her mouth open frantically pointing her throat. We know what she was trying to say because we had just saw the scenes she was pantomiming in full detail: however, hadn't we know, and after seeing a mute girl denying she's able to speak and then pointing her throat and lips with embarassed urgency, we'd be inclined more inclining to think she's a mute and she's feeling really embarassed about bringing up her condition than to think that she's a mystically transformed mermaid with a marvelous singing voice.
- Even further, in a little contrast with the source material, where the little mermaid is labeled as a "poor little foundling, who happens to be a mute", Eric briefly considers the idea of Ariel being a shipwrecked noblewoman from some distant kingdom. The notion of a girl utterly losing her voice for a great shock is a trope Older Than Television.
Ursula's Death
- Why is Ursula's demise so damn bizarre??? Yeah, I know it's a reference to the climax of The Call of Cthulhu. You see, right after being impaled by Eric's shipwreck in the stomach, she gets electrocuted. This can be justified by the trident's magic backfiring on her, dealing her an awful lot of massive damage. However, the truly weird part is, when she has her last breaths, her already demonic voice suddenly goes slow-motion and "shuts down" as if it was a robot's or a computer's voice. Isn't Ursula a living mythical creature and not some kind of construct?
- Dramatic effect?
- Yep. According to Word of God, Ursula's death scene was significantly more mild (the original can be seen on the DVD). The current "turning into a giant sea monster and exploding" was done to press to the audience how monstrous she was and that "she had to die". Her voice being all slowed and demonic is actually Truth in Television as beings larger than us would actually sound differently.
- How come King Triton couldn't just kill Ursula like Eric ended up doing? Sure, she used the contract to block it that one instance, but why didn't he try again? When Eric killed her, everyone was released from their servitude and their contracts seemingly broken, so why was Triton incapable of this?
- Remember that at this point, Ursula's pretty much got Ariel ready to become part of her "garden." She could always threaten Ariel's life further, and Triton wouldn't risk attempting to kill Ursula a second time if it meant Ariel dying as well.
- Triton blasted the contract, while Eric killed Ursula herself. Maybe the king just is reluctant to commit outright murder. As noted above, the last time he flew off the handle and got trigger happy with the trident, Ursula was able to sucker Ariel in. He may also have been considering what would happen if he did kill Ursula and the spell was still intact - and he's just killed the only person who knows how to reverse it.
- Or more mundanely Ursula used her magic to buff and protect herself from Triton using the trident on her. But she failed to consider someone else using a more mundane way to kill her.
- Someone else suggested that the main reason Ursula died was because the trident's power overloaded her - and the ship's prow just acted as a conductor for the lightning. So in that case she unleashed too much power and paid the price.
The Mermaid Problem
- Did anyone ever fill Ariel in on how human sex works before her wedding night with Prince Eric? Because that's got to be a helluva surprise if you're not expecting it. "Hey, how come my eggs aren't coming out? I swear this never happens to me. Hey, what's that dangly thing?"
- Nothing says mermaids reproduce like fish. They may well reproduce like whales.
- Possibly, although their tails are noticeably scaled like a fish.
- You don't need scales to be a fish. For instance, the pangolin is a scaled mammal, and birds have scales on their legs. Of note is also that merpeople have their tails orientated horizontally like whales rather than vertically like fish.
- Well since they have a daughter in the sequel, we can assume is that yes someone did give Ariel the details at some point.
- Don't forget, people have been figuring out how to get it on since people have existed, and they usually didn't get a class on it beforehand. No matter how smart an animal is, their species figures out mating. Ariel may not naturally be a human, but Prince Eric is, so he probably at least has a clue. Sex is awesome, it's not like Ariel would deny her human urges just because she didn't have them when she was a mermaid. The way it probably went was after the wedding, Ariel asks what Eric's intentions are, he explains to her what sex is, she's excited to try it because being human is so rad. This isn't at all shocking.
- ...Getting a bit too much into it, aren't you? I think we can just assume, especially since she had a daughter eventually, that Eric or someone else did explain it to her and teach her about her new lower half, if she really needed it.
- Who says she needs explanation at all? There's a scene in the TV series where she watches a mammal give birth and clearly understands what she's seeing, mermaids and mermen have navels that suggest live birth, and real-world dolphins reproduce in the same manner as humans. Probably the only surprise would be that human men keep their genitals on the outside.
Ursula's Plans
- What exactly is Ursula's motivation for screwing over merpeople and turning them into polyps? Does she just get her jollies over building up some "souls of the damned" collection?
- Yeppity.
- Well as part of whatever spells she casts, Ursula also charges a fee for the merman or mermaid in question. She took Ariel's voice, which she then used in another spell. So in capturing these people, she gets something that enhances her power.
- It depends from source to source, but most usually say that she was simply doing it For the Evulz. The Broadway Musical, for example, showed that she was power-hungry from the beginning, and her mistreating her subjects was what got her banished in the first place. She's just simply following up on old habits, but doing so in a way that's far more pleasing to her.
- Ursula's entire plan would've been all screwed over if Ariel had drowned before making it to the surface after her transformation. We see her friends helping her to escape, but all Ursula does is sit there laughing evilly. What would she have done if Ariel hadn't managed to breach the surface in time?
- Triton's got six more daughters she can burn through. Granted, they might not be as naive as Ariel, but Ursula will find a way to make things work.
- Have Flotsam and Jetsam get her to the surface. She just didn't need to use them because Sebastian and Flounder were there.
- Sebastian and Flounder swam over straight away to help Ariel, so Ursula didn't need to act because she saw Ariel had help already.
- So Ursula's plan is nearly complete: Ariel's in the process of becoming a polyp, and Triton's at her mercy. So why, then, didn't she transform both of them into polyps? Even without another contract, she could easily do so with the trident's magic, and she'd get two for the price of one.
- I don't think turning people into polyps necessarily helps to make Ursula stronger. Also, she was about to do something to Ariel with the trident, but Eric shot a harpoon through her arm before she could go through with it.
- Triton signed the contract and took Ariel's place, a contract is a contract, if she violated the agreement it would break. Just as Triton couldn't use his magic to break Ariel's contract Ursula couldn't screw the contract with her powers either without consequences.
- It all happened too fast. Once Triton was turned into one, Ariel attacks Ursula, then Eric intervenes and Ariel likewise tricks Ursula into killing Floatsam and Jetsam. Ursula is so furious that she goes One-Winged Angel to get revenge.
Sebastian at the Wedding
- What was Sebastian doing atop the cake at Ariel's wedding? Surely, he knows how dangerous it is for him there, and every subject of King Triton's kingdom is there, too. Why not join them in the water, or at least, the edge of the boat?
- Maybe he got a better view from the cake?
- All of the merpeople and such were there openly, to attend Ariel's wedding. Sebastian wouldn't have reason to think a human would attack a sea creature under those circumstances; he just wasn't expecting the chef would still have a beef with him.
The Polyps
- Do the polyps in Ursula's garden continue to age? Because if they do, then the situation is even more horrible than it seems.
- Well we don't see any particularly old looking merpeople when they transform at the end, so we can assume no.
- In the original story, merpeople live for hundreds of years. So if they do age then it's probably a drop in the bucket compared to humans.
- So, Ursula has obviously transformed quite a number of merfolk into polyps by the film's events, to the point of practically having a garden of them. How come nothing was ever done about it until Ariel fell into Ursula's grasp? Did none of those previous merfolk have family members or friends who'd wondered why they'd suddenly vanished? Ursula is clearly a well-known figure under the sea, and given the sheer amount of merfolk she's ensnared, you'd think King Triton would've done something about it.
- Remember how Triton tried to rescue Ariel from Ursula, but couldn't because of the legally binding contract? The same principle applies to the others - it wasn't as though Ursula abducted them and turned them into polyps, they all made deals with her that they weren't able to follow through on. As a result, and as unfortunate as it is, Triton has no power over their situation. The most anyone can do is spread the word about Ursula and dissuade as many people as possible from going to see her for favors.
- People seem to know that Ursula is bad news, as Ariel refuses to see her at first and Sebastian says "she's a demon!" - so there were definitely rumors of what she was doing. But as said above, she's not legally doing anything wrong. Ursula keeps to herself, where she was exiled in the first place, and the merpeople go to see her of their own free will. They also willingly make deals with her, sign contracts and accept the consequences of what happens if they can't follow through. So all Triton can do is warn people not to go near her.
- This might also be a leftover from when Ursula was Ariel's aunt in the earlier drafts. Triton would be reluctant to do away with his own sister.
- Even if he didn't have it in him to kill her, he could imprison her if he had the authority to.
- In the prequel film, which takes place about a year before the first film, we see Ariel and Flounder meet, supposedly for the first time. But an episode in the TV series showed that they had known each other for much longer.
Staying in one piece
- Just curious though, is Sebastian just being dramatic about "I'll stay in one piece" or is his fear for real?
- Triton does have a temper, as demonstrated when he destroys Ariel's grotto. Sebastian has clearly seen it in action, which means he's worried about it being directed at him.
- It's a part of Sebastian's Character Development. Early on in the film he only thinks of himself and how the situation will affect him. And after this caused things to go worse for Ariel, he finally started thinking of someone besides himself.
Time frame
- Upon a rewatching with friends this troper remembered Ariel's age, 16. At the end of the film she gets married. At least in the sequel we don't know how old she is when she had her daughter.
- It could be worse. In some parts of the USA people can marry as young as 14. In some Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, girls can legally be married off as young as nine and in a few places such as Pakistan, there is no minimum age for marriage in the law. Yeah, think about that for a minute...
- Note: in the U.S. where marriages below 18 are allowed parental consent is required for those that are not legal adults. Anyways, concerning Ariel's age, people used to grow up much faster than they do now, the concept of 'teenager' as we know it being a relatively recent thing. If it bugs you enough, feel free to imagine a bit of a time skip between Ariel's second transformation into a human and the wedding.
- Please remember this also takes place in the 1600-1700's; so, it's Values Dissonance.
- In fact, one of the curiosities of this movie is that Ariel's whole personality would be a lot less typical of a 16-year-old girl back in the 17th or 18th century than nowadays. Might the writers be secretly hinting that Triton's underwater kingdom is actually a few centuries ahead of Eric's in development of its social norms?
- While girls and women of the 17th and 18th centuries might not have been "liberated" in the modern sense, that didn't stop a good many of them from being a bit rebellious and wild. Ariel would hardly have been the first spoiled 16-year-old upper-class girl from those times to go eloping with a handsome guy that her family despised. Think of Romeo and Juliet, or (for one of the more well-documented Real Life examples) Ferdinand and Isabella. Romance was still considered something of a luxury in those times, but some of the nobility and royalty could afford it.
- It could be worse. In some parts of the USA people can marry as young as 14. In some Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, girls can legally be married off as young as nine and in a few places such as Pakistan, there is no minimum age for marriage in the law. Yeah, think about that for a minute...
The Use of words and Scuttle
- Scuttle gets the uses of a fork and a comb mixed up. Given that he's he's fairly unfamiliar with both, that's fair enough, but where does he come up with the name dinglehopper?
- Ass Pull on Scuttle's part. He doesn't actually know what any of the human objects are called (or what they are for), but he still wants to look smart. So he just makes up a name.
- Ariel signed the contract with Ursula, right? Then why didn't she think of writing a message for Eric?
- We still don't know if Atlanticans use the same written alphabet of Danish people: in a different medium this tropers remembers a piece in Aquaman where Vulko, the resident sage, mentions that the Atlantean's alphabet is a complex system with vocals, consonants and alcerips (basically a third kind of letter used for diphthongs). At least two thirds of Ariel's attempts could have ended in random squiggles.
- Yes, we do. She signs her name on Ursula's contract (in appropriately-princesslike calligraphy, even!)
- She might be able to write but just forgot about it in the excitement of the moment. After all, Eric took a liking to her on the beach and at dinner. Hell, her attraction was working without her voice.
- Being able to sign her name doesn't necessarily mean Ariel is actually literate. As with much of medieval royalty, signing her name might have been the only skill in writing Triton deemed necessary for her to learn, with the rest of the task of reading and writing messages delegated to court scribes. Beyond that, the royal tutors might well have tried to teach Ariel more, but it's fairly well established in the film that she's a bit spoiled and something of a slacker.
- Also, would writing have even helped her? Remember, Ariel had to get True Love's kiss, not just any kiss. Wriitng Eric a note that said "Hey, I'm a mermaid princess who sold my voice to an octo-witch and you need to kiss me, like, NOW" may have even made Eric think she was crazy. Maybe Ariel could write but that doesn't solve much.
- A theory I've been running with is that speaking also translates to her writing as well (for several that are mute, writing is their voice) or that Ariel only knows how to write in "merpeople language", which, while it shares much the of the same alphabet, they prolly wouldn't be able to understand it anyhow.
- OOOHHH! I wish I could find the picture, but someone actually thought of that and made a short comic with it. Basically, she does write things, asking for a kiss basically and we can see it... but from Eric's point of view, it's completely different language that he can't possibly understand! I wish the film had done that to get that plot hole closed.
- We still don't know if Atlanticans use the same written alphabet of Danish people: in a different medium this tropers remembers a piece in Aquaman where Vulko, the resident sage, mentions that the Atlantean's alphabet is a complex system with vocals, consonants and alcerips (basically a third kind of letter used for diphthongs). At least two thirds of Ariel's attempts could have ended in random squiggles.
The Caspian Sea
- During the spell she casts, Ursula invokes the winds of the Caspian Sea. But the Caspian Sea is landlocked and at the bottom of an endorheic basin, and separated from the closest possible point in the Black Sea where this could be taking place by hundreds of miles of pretty arid terrain. The last time there was any kind of connection between the Caspian and Black Seas was tens of thousands of years ago. For all intents and purposes it might as well be on the moon. So how in Poseidon’s name does Ursula know about it?
- It's the WINDS of the Caspian Sea, which must be evil spirits or other mystical forces to help cast the spell. (Actual winds can't be underwater) Ursula knows sorcery, but let's not assume she knows every specific detail on what's mentioned in an incantation.
- Ursula is able to go up to the surface with no problem, as we see when she returns to her natural form at Eric's wedding. Perhaps she made regular trips to the surface (Triton certainly won't find her there) and learned more about other locations from birds who'd been there.
Hercules
- If Ariel is the daughter of Triton, does that mean she and Disney's Hercules are cousins?
- Assuming that this Triton is THE Triton, son of Poseidon and Amphitrite, then Hercules would be Ariel's once-removed cousin (Hercules' and Triton's fathers are brothers, thus they are "first" cousins).
- Probably no. Triton actually shows up in Hercules: The Animated Series and instead of being a young merman, he's an Abe Sapien-looking being that looks nothing like Ariel's father. Since there's no evidence Hercules' Triton will become a bearded half man half fish king of the sea and in Ariel's own show or other media there's no evidence that Triton looked like that, Hercules and The Little Mermaid are set in different universes.
