Before last weekend, we only had a very meager teaser for the live-action reimagining of the animated classic, The Little Mermaid. Disney finally dropped a full-length trailer for us this Sunday, and in it we not only get more time with Halle Bailey’s delightful rendition of Ariel, but also our first glimpses of Javier Bardem’s King Triton and Melissa McCarthy’s Ursula. Oh yeah, and Prince Eric too.
The trailer gives us quite a lot of Prince Eric, actually, including the pivotal scene where Ariel saves him from drowning. (Jonah Hauer-King’s portrayal of him looks great, for the record—I’m just not a big Prince Eric fan in general. You can do better, Ariel!) We also get glimpses of her animated friends, including Sebastian the too-real-looking crab (voiced by Daveed Diggs) and Awkwafina as the seagull, Scuttle.
We also see more of Bailey singing, which is great, as well as a recreation of the memorable scene where she pushes off that rock as waves crash around her. The glimpses of the underwater scenes are an uncanny valley of colors, and I hope everything looks better (particularly the undulating hair around Bardem’s face) when it hits the big screen. Ursula’s octopus legs look impressive, at least, and I’m still interested to see how they portray the whole story and what they change (and I do hope they change some things, particularly the Ariel-Prince Eric “romance.”)
The Little Mermaid is directed by Rob Marshall and, in addition to the folks mentioned above, also stars Jacob Tremblay as the voice of Flounder, Noma Dumezweni as Queen Selina, and Art Malik as Sir Grimsby.
The movie premieres in theaters on May 26, 2023. Here’s a poster to get you prepared for it:
