Fairy tales and cartoons have always been an integral part of everyone’s childhood. We’re all too familiar with the Disney princesses and their adventure stories and finding the prince of their dreams.
The Little Mermaid was produced by Disney in both animated (1989) and live-action (2023).
In particular, Disney’s 1989 animated version of The Little Mermaid is a big hit with the main character being a young princess Ariel, whose dream is to explore life on land. After overcoming many hardships, Ariel finally triumphed over evil and lived happily ever after with Prince Eric.
However, in the original story of The Little Mermaid, written in 1837 by Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, Ariel and the prince have a completely opposite ending to the cartoon, creating a love story. full of sadness and cruelty.
Disney’s Little Mermaid Has a “Happy Ever After” End
The story also opens with a creature called a mermaid named Ariel who saves the life of Prince Eric after an accident and falls in love with him. In order to be with the one she loves, she turns to the sea witch Ursula to make a deal to exchange her voice for her feet.
The condition for Ariel to be forever human is that she must win the kiss of true love and the heart of the prince before being married by this person. If it fails, Ariel will never be allowed to return to the sea to become a mermaid that she has to accept at the cost of her own life.
The cartoon does not depict Ariel’s pain when she first walked on human legs
After gaining human legs, Ariel can walk on the ground, but every step she takes is like being stabbed by sharp knives and can’t tell anyone about her identity. As for the prince, even though the person who saved his life was Ariel, he fell in love and decided to marry the girl he mistook for the benefactor who saved his life and then abandoned Ariel.
Due to the pain, Ariel received another contract with the witch to kill the prince if she wanted to return to being a mermaid and return to the sea. However, because she could not kill her beloved, the mermaid chose to throw herself into the ocean and her body gradually turned into sponge.
Christian Andersen’s story has a sad ending
Andersen’s story also mentions that after breaking into foam, the mermaid was adopted as the daughter of the god, she entered hell and worked hard for 300 years before getting it. the human soul she had dreamed of.
Due to the dark and sad ending of the story, the filmmakers at Disney changed almost the entire second half of the story and turned it into an animated movie about good overcoming evil, bringing joy. , laughter and upbeat messages to the young audience.
Source: En Vols
