The Real Reasons ‘The Little Mermaid’ 2023 is Terrible

No, race has nothing to do with it

Jordan Fraser
5 min readJun 12, 2023

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Photo: Disney 2023

There are a lot of people out there turning their nose up at The Little Mermaid’ 2023 edition, and there are a lot of great reasons to do so. From the lacklustre visuals to the uninspired music, the embarrassing acting and the strangely horrible CGI; there’s a lot on offer that’s worthy of disdain.

Unfortunately though, race is an issue when it comes to this film, and because of that, it has become incredibly difficult and risky to enter into a good natured conversation about this movie without risking sounding like a bigot.

The hateful few who despise the movie simply because Ariel is black have ruined hating the movie for the rest of us, even those who have perfectly valid and non-insane reasons for doing so. But while Ariel being black isn’t a reason to hate the movie at all, the movie still deserves hate, but for sane reasons.

Looking at the Film

In a post-Avatar world, it has become harder and harder to watch outdated CGI, especially when it’s depicted underwater.

Avatar 2 set a new benchmark for how incredible underwater CGI can look, and with James Cameron and the Avatar franchise firmly in Mickey Mouse’s pocket, it’s very strange that Disney didn’t…

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