Still more unpolished snippets from my work in progress.
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Teaser Fragments 8
Reflections: Into the Woods (1987 musical)
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Some themes, some quotations:
Is what you wish for what you want?
innocence and experience
“He’s a very nice prince” follows close on the heels of another statement about “nice,” but you might not think of that the first time you hear it.
“Wanting a ball isn’t wanting a prince.”
“You may know what you need, but to get what you want, better see that you keep what you have!”
People change in the woods; the changes might not always be good.
“You will never love someone else’s child the way you love your own,” says Cinderella’s stepmother, who will later take a knife to her own daughters.
“How do you know who you are if you don’t know what you want?”
“Children can only grow from something you love to something you lose.”
“No one is alone”—but in reality, to have others on your side takes a choice, from them.
Be careful the tale you tell: the effects of your parenting can last longer than you realize, whether you’ve told your daughter to be nice and good, abandoned your son, cursed your daughter if she breaks a rule, or made your son feel he’s not good enough.
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At the start of Into the Woods we’re introduced to a group of wishes: Jack wishes Milky White would give milk, Jack’s mother wishes her son were not a fool and for food and money to live, the baker and his wife wish to have a child, the witch wants to be young and beautiful again, and Cinderella wishes . . . to go to the festival.
Cinderella’s wish is trivial in the context of her life: she’s trapped in misery, an object of exploitation and of physical, mental, and emotional abuse (as a result of her father’s bad decisions, as it happens). She visits the grave of her mother, who sings, “Do you know what you wish? Are you certain what you wish is what you want?”
Despite that question, when given the choice for a wish, still Cinderella chooses to go to the festival.
There’s no sign she has thought of the festival as anything more than a brief diversion from her misery (and either way, she could’ve just asked for the new life directly). Why isn’t she asking to be taken away from her awful environment or wishing for some sort of lasting relief? Can she not imagine herself as anything more than other people’s tool? Has she been made to believe this is all she’s worth? Tragically, she seems to have no dream beyond looking in on someone else’s privileged life.
Later she asks how you know who you are if you don’t know what you want.
She doesn’t know what she wants, or can’t articulate it, and so she makes a stupid, small wish when she could’ve had much more.
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In Into the Woods, Jack is a central character, and we’re likely to think about his wishes, his desires, but in the prologue song his mother also voices wishes, and the first one is “I wish my son were not a fool.” This is the wish that gets granted, but at a very high price.
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The consequences of one person’s actions ripple out and out—and combine with ripples from other people’s actions in ways no one expected.
How are you to know what will come of what you do? How much responsibility do you bear for what you didn’t foresee, and will you accept it?
“You move just a finger / Say the slightest word / Something’s bound to linger / Be heard. / No one acts alone. / Careful! / No one is alone.”
No matter what you do, children won’t listen; be careful what you do, children will listen; be careful what you wish, wishes are children.
Teaser Fragments 7
Another trickle of uncorrected snippets from my work in progress.
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The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning (2008)
I hadn’t seen this prequel before, and I went in fully expecting it to be awful. I never would have watched it at all except that it’s on the blu-ray of Return to the Sea, which I knew I wanted. And yet, it’s actually a lot of fun.
Okay, I spent half the movie/special worrying it would end with Marina being transformed into Ursula, which would be wrong for three reasons: (1) her conflict with Triton ought to be far back in time, much longer ago than this story takes place; (2) if she had this kind of rivalry with Sebastian, she wouldn’t have been so blasé about him being in the cavern when Ariel signed the contract in Little Mermaid; (3) it’s better moviemaking to give the audience a new villain instead of danger always coming from the same place, and it’s weak moviemaking to think you need to cram everything from the original into the prequel.
I feel like I’ve seen the “he banned all music” trope just a few too many times. I love Sound of Music, but I don’t want to see that same device played out again and again in animated stories.
On the other hand, here that trope allows us to see the underground sing-easy, introduced in a magnificent scene.
Other good things:
The song from Ariel’s childhood is “Endless Sky,” something you can’t experience under the sea.
We know why Triton is so intense about Ariel staying away from the surface. It didn’t necessarily need more explanation, but Ariel’s Beginning deepens our understanding of his feelings.
Triton is just as impulsive and hyperreactive as he was in The Little Mermaid, but missing here is his regret and doubt immediately after. This is not a flaw in the script: he has not yet learned to question his own behavior.
Ariel’s sisters got short-changed in the original Little Mermaid. They help set up the concert problem, and she mentions them a single time when weighing whether or not to sign Ursula’s contract, and that’s pretty much all that’s done with them. Poking their heads out of the water at the end, they could just be random merfolk coming to watch the princess. Which is to say, you could write them out of the story and it wouldn’t change anything except that unrelated court singers would have to do the concert lead-in. We don’t see much evidence that Ariel is connected to them the way you would be if you grew up with sisters. Ariel’s Beginning remedies that, and so deepens the effect of Ariel’s decisions in the original film.
Benjamin is a fun character.
The songs are better here than in Return to the Sea.
Ariel’s “I Remember” number is right on target that songs help us remember feelings we had and stir up things we’d forgotten, and we value music for that very reason. It’s why Triton has banned music, and why Ariel now wants it back.
“—he was a BAD boy!”
“She really can’t dance.”
“. . . but high enough so they can’t see the disdain on my face.”
Watching Marina bask in her triumph is great fun. Watching her do just about anything in this movie is fun.
To my surprise, this movie/special avoids just about all the things that make a direct-to-video sequel rubbish.
I’ve decided that Flounder got his name from the guys at the Catfish Club, and it was affectionate but not a compliment.
Also see: The Little Mermaid The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea
The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (2000)
Overall, this is good.
First, they made a smart decision to take the story further in time and focus on Ariel’s daughter, not create a new situation all about Ariel. They do work in Ariel turning back into a mermaid, but they give her a darn good reason to do it. And to the extent that this plot rehashes the first—daughter longs for other life, rebels against family, bargains with sea witch—it’s done in reverse, showing the opposite side of the coin, and places Ariel to some extent in the role of Triton, making overprotective mistakes even if she’s gentler about it. As a bonus, Melody’s age nearly matches how much actual time passed for the audience between release of the original movie (1989) and release of the sequel (2000). Plus it’s just really enjoyable to see how Ariel’s life developed after the end of the first movie.
Second, they got back most of the original voice cast. Sometimes people are genuinely unavailable (even deceased), but too many sequels either don’t want to pay the original voice actors or don’t have scripts good enough to interest them. But audiences definitely want the real character voices.
Third, on the whole the story makes sense and holds together. The emotional arc rings true and provides a reason for the movie/special to be here. There are no gaping plot holes, glaring inconsistencies, or wild coincidences to keep the action moving or provide resolution.
That’s not to say there aren’t problems.
One, we have to overlook the implausibly long lives of some characters. Others (like Max the dog), if not dead, would be too old to be as active as they’re portrayed. Surely Grimsby would at least be retired.
Two, it’s a bit of a stretch that nobody can find Morgana for twelve years. Possibly the ice cavern is the top of an island/iceberg that floats around, not a stationary target, which would help. And of course Triton isn’t going to be intently searching the entire time—and maybe we’re supposed to think he stopped looking altogether after the wall was put up.
Third, the wall itself is dubious. Is Ariel’s reaction really going to be to wall off the sea entirely? This is hardly the only solution. And even if she did choose the wall, why does that entail cutting off all ties with Triton and keeping her daughter completely ignorant of her heritage? The decision to build a wall can kind of be explained but doesn’t feel convincing.
Worse than any story shortcomings, however, the songs fall short. At one point I wanted to say they would’ve been better off leaving out songs entirely; but music was such an essential part of The Little Mermaid that everyone expects it to have a role in the sequel, and the girl is named Melody! You’ve got to have the characters singing songs. We know Jodi Benson can sing, so I don’t understand why the songs featuring Ariel are so lifeless.
“For One Moment” ought to be the emotional highlight—the moviemakers doubtless meant for it to be, but it doesn’t fully rise to the occasion. It’s like the ingredients are all there but aren’t coming together right, a cake that was mixed poorly or underbaked. Did they need a bigger orchestra holding up the vocals? Did a musical director not spend enough time pulling the best performances out of the two leads? Were people involved, at whatever level, not given enough time to make it right? It isn’t bad, it’s just isn’t great, and suffers inevitably by comparison with everything in the original film. It’s not fair to expect everyone to be on the level of Menken and Ashman, and Disney is hardly going to go out and hire, say, Steven Sondheim for this production, but this one song at least needed extra magic it didn’t get. It frustrates me because I think the song could’ve gotten there, and almost did.
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Triton knows exactly what to do to torment that big, bad bully shark.
The appearance of the wall in the time-passing moment is quite effective. The wall is ominous.
There are truths that children need to know about themselves, and when you conceal those truths, disaster results. It’s easy to say “they’re too young, we’ll explain later, when they’re older,” but life shows us that parents tend to be extraordinarily unwilling to ever admit the time has come, and inevitably the child feels cheated or resentful when the truth finally comes out.
Morgana knows where Melody is, and we might wonder why she hasn’t done anything to the girl in all this time. But Morgana hasn’t spent twelve years plotting to destroy Melody, she’s spent twelve years plotting to get the trident. Melody was never more than a tool on the way to that goal, and the wall is apparently enough to keep her looking for different tools (at least until Melody touching the magic pendant draws Morgana’s attention back to her). So to that extent the wall did work.
If this sea witch wants the same object as the last one did, she is explicitly trying to outdo her sister, so there’s a reason for the repetition. Note that the actual motivation is different—Ursula had a personal score to settle on top of wanting power. (Morgana does too, but it’s not with Triton.) Is Morgana not as scary or as competent as Ursula? Well, the story makes clear Morgana was always considered second-best.
Most of what Morgana tells Melody in the seduction sequence is quite true. “Triton stole my trident” is obviously baloney, but “Your mother kept this from you” and “You’re not just some human” are spot-on, and even the part about the mermaid transformation being temporary turns out to be accurate.
With some reflection, Melody might ask herself, “If Morgana can’t get the trident back by herself what makes me think I can get it?” Melody might be old enough to ask this, but the answer is that the thief knows Morgana and guards will be on the alert for her, but no one will be suspicious of innocent young mermaid Melody.
Sharks grow new teeth constantly. Knocking out Undertow’s teeth isn’t a long-term solution, although we can hope that without Morgana he won’t be chasing down Triton’s family to cause them more trouble. He’ll probably remain a bully, but maybe he’s practical enough to decide that being big again is good enough and he’s better off keeping clear of the Sea King instead of trying to settle the score by himself.
I am going to assume that Melody goes and stays with her grandfather underwater for a month or two every summer, and he makes her a mermaid for that time, and whether she wants to live as human or merfolk in the end is something she can decide when she’s older. For now she can experience both lives and learn who she really is.
Maybe Melody is the ancestor of the type of mermaid seen in Splash, able to have legs on land and a tail in the sea, because Triton someday magically changes her to be that way and she happens to pass this trait on to her children. (Did you know Splash was the first movie produced by Disney’s live-action studio Touchstone Pictures?)
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In this story I truly appreciate the idea of claiming your uniqueness and taking hold of what makes you different from everyone else. You don’t need to give away what makes you special and become something ordinary.
Also see: The Little Mermaid The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning