The Little Mermaid

Rob Marshall cast Halle Bailey after seeing her perform at the 61st Grammy Awards; the announcement became the target of a racist online campaign. The underwater half was shot dry, in front of blue screen, not in water. Manual rigs by special effects supervisor Steve Warner picked the performer up from the hips onto a pivoting arm, puppeteers moved the body, and the actor drove head and shoulders. Visual effects supervisor Tim Burke says only faces and hands were kept from the plate; everything from the clavicle down, hair included, was made in the computer. What you judge underwater is an animated character wearing a live actor’s face. Alan Menken and Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote three new numbers for the film; a fourth, Impossible Child for Triton, was left out. Menken said Kiss the Girl was changed to soften the sense that Eric forces himself on Ariel, and that lines in Poor Unfortunate Souls were revised because they might make young girls feel they should not speak out of turn. Comparing with the 1989 film, those are exactly where the text moved. A good fit if you are content to read the performance in a face and two hands, knowing the rest is drawn. Not for a viewer who wants the 1989 lyrics untouched; two numbers were rewritten.