Movie Mike’s Top 10 Most Influential Disney Films of His Childhood + Movie Review: The Little Mermaid + Trailer Park: Killers of the Flower Moon

00:00:00
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to movie Mike's movie podcast. I am your host Movie Mike, and today I want to share with you my top ten most influential Disney films of my childhood, the movies that left the biggest impression on me change my life altogether. And that's because in the movie review we'll be talking about The Little Mermaid, which is a remake of the animated classic but live action. And if you listen to this podcast, you know how I feel about Disney Live Action right now.

00:00:23
Speaker 2: And then in the.

00:00:23
Speaker 1: Trailer park the first look at Killers of the Flower Moon, which is already being described as Leonardo DiCaprio's best movie ever and I cannot wait. So thank you for being subscribed, thank you for listening every single week. Shout out to the Monday Morning Movie crew. And now let's talk movies.

00:00:39
Speaker 3: In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast. A man with so much movie knowledge, he's basically like a walking IMDb with glasses. From the Nashville Podcast Network. This is Movie Mike Movie Podcast.

00:01:03
Speaker 1: My goal today is to take you on a trip down memory lane by way of all the Disney movies.

00:01:10
Speaker 2: That shaped and influenced my childhood.

00:01:12
Speaker 1: I was born in nineteen ninety one, so I'll be looking at every movie release before then and up to two thousand and four, So everything from when I was a baby to when I was thirteen years old is up for consideration. That's just the cutoff day I decided to give myself, so anohing after two thousand and four will be on my list.

00:01:29
Speaker 2: So before I get into my.

00:01:30
Speaker 1: Top ten, let's just talk about the history of Disney, which dates all the way back to the nineteen twenties. They have these different eras, so much like Taylor Swift right now is making a big deal about eras, Disney has had eras when it comes to their animated movies. Although my list will have both live action and animated movies. So it goes back all the way to nineteen twenty eight, which is known as the Golden Age from twenty eight to nineteen forty two. This is what started at all Mickey Mouse in his infant stage at Steamboat Willie in nineteen twenty eight. It also includes the first Disney princess ever, snow White, and the seven Doors, which came out in nineteen thirty seven. It was the first full length animated movie ever from Disney. And then, of course you have Fantasia in nineteen forty, so this is really where Disney became Disney. After that, you had the Package Film's era from nineteen forty three to nineteen forty nine. A lot of these movies were impacted by World War II, so nothing really significant or noteworthy came out in this era. That was followed up by the Silver Age from the nineteen fifties to the early nineteen sixties. This is where you got movies like Cinderella in nineteen fifty, Sleeping Beauty in nineteen fifty nine, and the one hundred and one Dalmations from nineteen sixty one. This is really where they started to become known not just for their animation but for their storytelling, and they were really starting to push the envelope on what hand drawn animation could be. But after that Silver Age, you got hit with the Dark Age, which is also known as the xerox era, where they got a little bit lazy with their animation, so you would start to notice a lot of reused characters, reuse background, and this era is always credited as Disney trying to recapture their earlier era in falling Flat, but.

00:03:06
Speaker 2: You still had some bangers in this dark age.

00:03:08
Speaker 1: You had The Aristocrats, The Fox and the Hound from nineteen eighty one, and one of my top ten most influential movies came out of this era, so I don't think this era was terrible, but it was followed by the greatest era of all time, so it often just gets forgotten because after this, from nineteen eighty nine to nineteen ninety nine, you have the Renaissance era, which I also called the Golden Age of Disney, with movies like The Little Mermaid in nineteen eighty nine, Beauty and the Beast in nineteen ninety one, The Lion King in ninety four, and the last big hit of this era was.

00:03:38
Speaker 2: Mulan in nineteen ninety eight.

00:03:40
Speaker 1: This was it, This was Disney. Without this era, it would be nothing like we know today. And some would say they are still trying to recreate this Renaissance era because after that you had the post Renaissance era from two thousand to two thousand and eight. You had movies like The Emperor's New Groove, Leelo and Stitch, The Princess and the Frog, which was the last hand drawn two D animated movie were released in theaters by Disney. So it was almost like the end of my childhood whenever they stopped doing two D animated movies. I just loved the warmth of two D animation. I love the fact that you had artists hand drawing every single frame and every single movement. That is the magic of filmmaking to me. When it comes to Disney, I think it would be so incredibly impactful if they put away all their animation tools for a second and made a film that went back to the basics of hand drawing everything.

00:04:28
Speaker 2: I think that would be a really noteworthy film to be made.

00:04:30
Speaker 1: In the twenty twenties, after the post Renaissance era, you had the Revival era, which kicked off in two thousand and nine. This is where you had a bunch of big ones like Frozen in twenty thirteen, Mwana in twenty sixteen, z Utopia in twenty sixteen. It was the first time we really had memorable Disney movies since that Golden age. I would say we are in the remake era of Disney now because everything from the Renaissance era and previous of that is being remade now, and it's also a lot of retellings of other stories throughout Disney, So I feel like we are very much in that remake era, and I'm not the biggest fan of it, but we'll get into that more later.

00:05:07
Speaker 2: When talking about The Little Mermaid.

00:05:09
Speaker 1: So now I want to kick off this list my top ten most influential films of my childhood. These are the movies that shape me, that influence my imagination, my love of Disney, my humor, or just had some kind of an impact on my life. So kicking off the list at number ten is The Hunchback of Notre Dame from nineteen ninety six. It's the story of Quasimoto. He's trying to assert his independence from this vicious government minister while trying to help out his friend and love interest as Morelda. The influence that The Hunchback had on me as a kid, it was the first film to expose me to what the friend zone is, because Quasimoto does not end up with als Morelda as much as he fights for her and gets her out of a bad situation and becomes the hero of this movie, one of the most unlikely heroes in all of Disney, because of the perception of him, because of the way that he looks, because where he lives, because his friends are gargoyles, and he is seen as a ghoul, as this person who should not see the light of day. That is how I felt as a kid, and that is how I felt in my young adult life trying to get girls to like me, and seeing this movie made me realize that the hero, the good guy, doesn't always end up with the girl. And this was also a heavier plot for a kid's movie adapted from the old school story of Quasimoti, which is a lot darker, a lot more people die in the original story. But it also showed me that Disney has come a long way as far as the subject matter. Disney movies used to get really dark. It used to be a lot about death and despair and about evil villains that really were just sick and awful for no reason. And I feel like they've gotten away from that a little bit. I feel like Disney movies now are just so focused on making you feel good by the time you leave, But I feel like they used to deal with a lot of real issues that used to matter to kids and even if we didn't understand them at the time, we actually learned lessons from them that we use later in life. So I feel like we need to test people a little bit more in Disney movies and not just be big, bright and shiny things that just make you feel good, because that is life. Life is not always going to end happily every time. This movie was also highly influential on my childhood because I remember wanting to collect all of the toys from Burger King, and that was such a big deal back in the day, whether it be Burger King or whether it be McDonald's. Whenever an animated movie came out, I had to have the fast food toys, and as a kid, I was a Burger King kid over a McDonald's kid. I feel like they had the better toys over McDonald's because their movie tie ins were so much better. And I remember wanting to collect specifically all of the Hunchback of Notre Dame toys because I loved Quasimoto. So that's why I put this movie at number ten. Moving on to number nine, I have blank Check from Nighteeen ninety four. This story is about Preston Waters, who is a twelve year old kid who ends up getting a check worth a million dollars and then does what you would imagine any twelve year old with that much money would do with it. Buys a bunch of crazy stuff, gets a house, gets every toy you can imagine, buys a big old trash can full of ice cream, and goes on every fun adventure that you can imagine if you had the same amount of money when you were twelve years old. Why this movie was influential to me is because it taught me at an early age then a million dollars really isn't that much money, because Preston goes through this cash fairly quickly, and you see what it's like to be rich, but not only that, you see what it's like to have that all taken away from you, because that's what happens to Preston, And like me and everybody else who watched this movie back in the nineties, Preston portrayed the average kid. Doesn't have a whole lot of friends, has an older brother who doesn't really let him do anything fun. His dad is not the warmest guy, so he just wants to change his life, and after getting a million dollars, he is able to do that, but what he finds is money doesn't really buy you happiness. There's a scene in this movie specifically that resonates with me that I feel now deeply as an adult. He's sitting there in this play boxing green with these big old boxing gloves, and he's so sad because he really has no one to experience this with. So this movie teaches you a lot about money and also how the people around you change when there is money involved. How everybody wants to be his friend when they think he's a millionaire or at least working for a millionaire, which is what he plays it off to be. But as soon as that money dries up, everybody leaves. So maybe this movie at an early age instills this kind of anxiety when it comes to money with me and feeling that in a mere second we could all be broke again. So what a lesson that teaches as kids. But also this movie could not be made today because his love interest is the secret FBI agent who is well into twenties, maybe even thirties, and they have a kiss. He straight up kisses this agent on the lips. That is a felony. I didn't realize it at the time in the nineties as a kid watching this how weird that was, but still on Disney. Plus they still have the kissing scene in there, so that's a little bit sus But still at number nine is blank Check from nineteen ninety four. At number eight from nineteen eighty eight, I have Oliver in Company, which is a reimagination of Oliver Twist, but instead of a kid, you have an orphaned cat who ends up being taken in by a gang of thieving dogs in New York City. This movie was influential on me because it was the first movie I watched that made it feel like New York City would be a dream that if I ever made it to New York City, I truly made it in life. And once I finally got to go to New York City in my twenties, I remember it vividly walking onto Times Square for the first time, and I remember having this feeling like somebody took fish hooks and put them on either side of my mouth and just pulled it because this big smile just went across my face and would not leave because I was so excited to be in New York City. And Oliver and Company was the first movie that made me feel like that was the destination for me to go.

00:11:14
Speaker 2: It also made me love cats.

00:11:16
Speaker 1: I've always been a cat person ever since I was a kid, because growing up in a trailer park, I would always befriend all of the stray cats that came around our trailer and I learned, once you take care of one stray cat in a trailer park, you are now taking care of every stray cat in that trailer park.

00:11:33
Speaker 2: I remember a.

00:11:34
Speaker 1: Rotation of at least five or six straight cats would always come over to our lot, and I would feed them, I would play with them. I have old polaroid pictures of me would just random cats all the time. And I credit that to the opening of Oliver and Company, where you have all these cats getting adopted one by one. You see them all taken out of this cardboard box. But there left at the very end is Oliver all sat and alone, crying with no one else to play with. And then the rain comes and the cardboard box just gets demolished and soaked and dissipates into the sewer, and poor Oliver is just looking for a family. And I thought to myself, I am never gonna let a cat have that life, so I took in every cat I saw in that trailer park, and then eventually, once we moved out of the trailer park into a house, we adopted two cats, Dedee and Pepper, and they were my best friends all throughout high school.

00:12:29
Speaker 2: But not only that.

00:12:30
Speaker 1: Even though this movie came out in the Xerox era, which was viewed as not being such a great era, I still find that this animation style is so enticing to me. The movie had a stellar soundtrack, with Billy Joel not only being the voice of Dodger, who is the main dog in this movie, but also doing a lot of the songs. And there are so many jams in Oliver and Company like why would I will ray? Why would I kt like? Just so many good songs. Probably doesn't even need to go this hard on this soundtrack, but it does.

00:13:01
Speaker 2: And the movie is also only an hour and fourteen minutes.

00:13:04
Speaker 1: Which is also probably due to the fact that it was made in the Xerox era and they were trying to make movies on the cheaper side.

00:13:11
Speaker 2: That didn't affect me. I love this movie.

00:13:13
Speaker 1: So at number eight is Oliver and Company at number seven from nineteen ninety four. I have Angels in the Outfield a story about a kid named Roger played by Joseph Gordon Levitt, who really just wants his dad in his life and just wants to be a family, but his deadbeat dad says, well, we can be a family again when the Angels win the Pennant, thinking that the Angels would never win the Pennant, but then real life Angels get assigned to the California Angels baseball team and changes their season, takes a laughingstock team all the way to the top. And this movie just embodies the nineties where sports fantasies ran rampant. You had air buds flying out of every corner, so the genre was.

00:13:55
Speaker 2: All the rage.

00:13:56
Speaker 1: But also baseball movies in the nineties were so great. But I still think that Angels in the Outfield is the best to do it. This movie was influential on me because, growing up as a kid who didn't have a whole lot, I identified a lot with Roger and JP from when this movie first started and they're hiding out in this tree to be able to watch a baseball game for free. But it also taught me at an early age that not everybody comes from the same background when it comes to family. It taught me about the foster care system. You have these two kids living with their foster mom, Maggie, and this was the first time I really got a glimpse into what that kind of life was like. So then every time I encountered someone else in my life who was in or had been in foster care, it wasn't foreign to me. So at number seven is Angels in the Outfield. At number six I Have A Bugs Life from nineteen ninety eight. It is the story of a misfit aunt who goes out on a mission to find some warriors to stop the greedy grasshoppers. What this movie taught me as a kid is that it's okay to be different those some people who are different are going to be.

00:15:01
Speaker 2: The ones to go on and change the.

00:15:03
Speaker 1: World, because that is what Flick experiences in A Bugs Life. He is trying to adapt and use technology to make their life better, and he doesn't have it down completely right, but it's his innovation and want to make their lives better and more advanced that leads to them being successful, That leads to them being able to take out the grasshoppers, and leads to them being able to provide for themselves. And I think this is a movie we could even learn from today, with you know, AI becoming a thing that everybody's talking about and everybody being afraid about. While yes, there are some dangers that seem to come with AI, but I think if you used correctly, much like it did for Flick, it could change our lives for the better.

00:15:46
Speaker 2: We just got to know how to.

00:15:47
Speaker 1: Use it and not be so afraid about everything all the time when it changes how we normally do things. So I just want to go on the record, I, for one, welcome AI when they completely take over all of our lives and you just have a robot doing this podcast for you. But at number six, I have a bugs life getting into.

00:16:04
Speaker 2: My top five. I have at number five.

00:16:07
Speaker 1: Heavyweights from nineteen ninety five, a lot of fives in that. But this movie is about overweight kids who go to a camp with the promise of losing weight, and it's viewed as a positive thing. It's run by this really great couple who takes in these kids and does what's best for them, so tries to make it fun without the emphasis being on just them there to lose weight. That quickly changes when they are no longer the owners of the camp, and instead it's this Tony Perkins who wants to make this camp a total living nightmare for them in order to be able to sell an infomercial. And why this movie was influential on me is because, for the first time, in a Disney movie, or really any other movie, I saw kids that looked like me.

00:16:52
Speaker 2: Growing up my entire.

00:16:53
Speaker 1: Life, I was overweight as a kid. My earliest memories are just me being overweight and not looking like all the other kids, and all of the struggles that come along with that, from trying to find clothes that fit as a kid, from being teased at in school, from not wanting to eat certain foods that other kids are enjoying because I feel like everybody is looking at me while I eat them. And it was just my biggest insecurity and living inside that body for so many years, I just never really felt comfortable in my own skin. But then you have this movie Heavyweights that completely flips the script and suddenly all the overweight kids like me are the cool kids because they are all amongst themselves and nobody feels insecure. And in an era in the nineties where I felt like it was only good looking kids that could also be in movies like this, and this was the first time where I just thought, hey, I could be in a Disney movie someday. But this movie was also highly influential on my humor because if you actually look at the script for Heavyweights, it is really well written. There some really great jokes in there, some that probably went over my head as a kid. So even rewatching this movie as an adult, I can still enjoy it and still laugh at it. So at number five, I have Heavyweights. At number four, I have the og Pixar movie from nineteen ninety five, Toy Story. This movie was probably the biggest influence on my imagination and it came at my height of love of toys. And I know I'm biased in saying this because I was born in the nineties grew up in the nineties, but nineties toys were the best. And as I was saying earlier, I always loved the toys that came from a movie tie in, and now you had a movie that was about toys. So I feel like Toy Story also had the best toys, and it was my dream as a kid to have my very own buzz light Year I never got it because I couldn't afford it, but man, how badly I wanted a buzz light Year. I think maybe I had the fast food version of buzz light Year, but I just wanted that big, true, de sized buzz light Year that Andy had in this movie. And the other influence that this movie had early on was it became the first animated movie that was beloved by everybody. So it feels like all the other Disney movies were always just made directly for kids, but now with Toy Story, you had a movie that kids loved, but it could also be enjoyed by adults, because I remember my entire family loved this movie. My brother and sister are seven to nine years older than me. They love Toy Story when it came out in the nineties. But also my mom, who probably hated all the animated movies I watch, she also loved and still loves Toy Story. And I feel like this was the start of Pixar, but also the start of animated franchises, which we had never really seen before in Disney because they rarely made sequels, and when they did make sequels, they were always straight to video sequels, So you know, Aladdin, like the second part was just straight VHS Lion King. They had a part two, but it was straight VHS now with Toy Story. The sequels were also major film releases. So for that reason, I have Toy Story at number four. At number three from two thousand and two, I have Lelo and Stitch. This came at a point in my life where I needed a story about a misfit like Stitch. In two thousand and two, I was eleven years old and much like Experiment six to six aka Stitch, I felt like an alien. And what Leelo and Stitch brought to the table was the story about this lovable, mischievous creature who was so misunderstood, didn't have a family or home to call his own, and ends up on earth in Hawaii, and through all the craziness that is going on in his brain that only comes out through emotions of rage and destruction, he is able to find a friend in Leelo, who adopts him, takes him in, and much like him, is also a misfit herself. She doesn't have any friends at school, her parents are no longer alive, and she is living with their sister, who now has to be a mother figure, and that has been a strain on their relationship. They can't just be sisters anymore because she has to be now her mom. So coming from similar backgrounds, they are able to come together and be friends even though it's rough, and that is what I love about Leelo and Stitch. It highlights, yes, the importance of love, but also understanding and forgiveness, family acceptance, and finding one's.

00:21:22
Speaker 2: Place in the world.

00:21:23
Speaker 1: It also showed me as a kid that family doesn't have to look a specific way. Not everybody's family is going to be mom, dad, brothers and sisters. It doesn't have to look textbook like it does in every other Disney movie, and that point is best represented in this movie where Stitch has his most emotional moment out of the entire film.

00:21:43
Speaker 4: This is my family. I've found its all on my own. It's little on Brooks, but still goods. Yeah, still goods.

00:21:55
Speaker 1: I've also seen the movie so much that I am now able to do that impression. So it's influenced my life and someday I would love to get into voice acting. So at number three is Leelo and Stitch. At number two, I have The Lion King from nineteen ninety four, the movie that emotionally wrecked me as a kid. This movie was highly influential on all of our lives, teaching us about death.

00:22:21
Speaker 2: But the way that it was.

00:22:22
Speaker 1: Handled in The Lion King was probably the best that Disney could do it, because, unlike in Bambi, there was actually a lesson to be told here. Bambi was just brutal and violent for no reason. There was no reason for Bambi's mom to be killed in that movie, and it just so jarring and unexpected that it really provides no lesson other than someday the people you love can just be easily taken away from you for no reason. Through the entire story of Simba and him losing his father, you learn about how to cope with death. But this movie also made me fall in love with a hand drawn animated style. And if it wouldn't have been for The Lion King in ninety four, the Renaissance era wouldn't have had that real defining factor.

00:23:08
Speaker 2: This is the defining.

00:23:09
Speaker 1: Movie of the Golden Age, and it showed that, combined with that animation and combined with the storytelling in this movie, that an animated.

00:23:19
Speaker 2: Movie can have a lot of depth.

00:23:21
Speaker 1: I feel like This was the movie that really made it feel like Disney movies were not just cartoons but real animated stories. So at number two, I have The Lion King. But at number one, my most influential Disney film of my childhood goes to a movie from nineteen ninety five called a Goofy Movie. The choke hold that this movie had on my childhood is unmatched. I watched this movie more and more than any other Disney movie because I just loved the story, and I think at the time when this movie came out in ninety five, I was four years old and I just thought it was a fun different movie. I loved the soundtrack, and up to this point, I had never really seeing Goofy on this big of a stage in a full theatrical release, which this movie was supposed to go straight to video. So even the fact that this movie was released on this scale is kind of like an underdog story. So when I first watched it, I just thought it was funny. I thought it was hilarious. I love the animation style. It really encompasses everything about the nineties, from the fashion, from the music, from the humor, and the thing I appreciated as I revisited this movie more and more throughout my childhood and even now as an adult, I feel like it is the perfect coming of age story from Disney. It's about Max, who is just a kid trying to be cool, trying to fit in, trying to get the girl, and I think we could all probably relate to that growing up, just trying to find your place, and that was something I really identified with growing up that I always felt like the odd kid. I felt like I didn't have a lot of friends, and if people just gave me a chance to see how cool I really was, or at least that I thought I thought I was, that I would be the most popular kid in school, much like Max. So you have that aspect of the coming of age story. But I think at the core of this movie, it's about the relationship with your parents. In this case, it is the story of father and son, where really the message behind this movie all comes down to its tagline, It's hard to be cool when your dad is goofy, because you have Goofy just trying to form a relationship with his teenage son when all he wants to do is listen to music, hang out in his room, and hang out with his friends. He feels like he is losing his son, so his idea is to go on this big fishing trip much like they did when he was younger, and gain back the little Max, his little boy, his little pride and joy. So that was a big influence on me. But even above that, I think it comes back to the humor and this was the first movie that really made me love and respect movie quotes. This film has so many memorable lines that I still quote to this day.

00:25:59
Speaker 2: It also has two of my favorite Disney.

00:26:01
Speaker 1: Songs of all time, eye to Eye and stand Out from the Greatest fictional pop Star of all time, power Line.

00:26:07
Speaker 2: And if there was only one.

00:26:09
Speaker 1: Movie from this list I could show my future kids, it would be this one. So my number one most influential film from Disney of my childhood is a goofy movie.

00:26:22
Speaker 2: Well well, well, if it isn't another Disney live action remake.

00:26:27
Speaker 1: I believe to my core that Disney live action remakes are a waste of time, And going into this movie, I did not want to like it. I was coming off of being burned by Pinocchio, Peter Pan and Wendy Even I'll go back further. Moulan all these movies were a waste of my time because they were all movies that I loved as a kid, that we all loved as kids, and it just felt like a cash grab to me, Hey, let's just remake those same movies, throw in some live action, throw in some cheap visual effects, and call it a remake. What I feel like it takes the magic out of what makes those movies great. And if I were watching those movies for the very first time as a kid, I don't feel like you would be as inspired. So they dug back into the archive found the movie that everybody loves, the Little Mermaid, and The Little Mermaid to me, isn't one of my favorites. In the segment earlier where I did my top ten influential films from Disney, I didn't put Little Mermaid on there.

00:27:22
Speaker 2: It didn't really.

00:27:23
Speaker 1: Speak to me as a kid. I also didn't put Aladdin on there. Those movies were two great that a lot of people enjoyed. There just wasn't anything about their story that resonated with me. So going into this one, I decided not to rewatch The Little Mermaid because I made that mistake before going into a remake.

00:27:39
Speaker 2: I wanted to watch that and then.

00:27:41
Speaker 1: Judge it based on the original movie, but they just end up making the exact same movie, and I didn't want to watch the same movie twice and when it's not my favorite movie. So that is where I'm coming at you with this review. I did not want to like this movie, but I think it's hard to deny the magic of the Little Mermaid.

00:27:58
Speaker 2: Because at its core, it's a really good story.

00:28:01
Speaker 1: And going into this I do enjoy the soundtrack, have some gams on there, and I feel like there are things in this movie that benefited from live action but also that heard it. But when you outweigh the two, there were a lot more benefits. But let's get into what we all know that this movie is about. It follows the original story pretty much the entire thing. You got a young mermaid named Ariel. She is the youngest daughter of King Triton. She is infatuated with everything that's going on above her outside of the ocean and obsessed with humans, and King Triton is trying to get her to stop talking about humans, stop exploring these waters, and just leave them alone, but all she wants to do is be a part of their world. Go up there and experience what it's like to be outside of the ocean. So she makes a deal with the evil Ursula, who takes away her voice, gives her legs, and allows her to go find this Prince Eric, who she had rescued early on in the movie. But of course, because of the Disney movie, they have to throw in the twist there. She only has three days to get a kiss from Prince Eric, and it has to come from true love, otherwise she'll turn right back into a mermaid and then be the sole property of Ursula.

00:29:16
Speaker 2: Now.

00:29:16
Speaker 1: The thing I really wanted to judge this movie on was the look of it. I just watched Peter Pain and Wendy and that movie look Disney plus quality.

00:29:25
Speaker 2: It looked like a bunch of cheap visual effects.

00:29:28
Speaker 1: So I wanted to feel inside this movie and get the feeling that, Okay, this actually deserves the big screen. And the underwater world was pretty magical, But I think what really won me over visually was everything that happened at sea on the ships. I thought that looked really great. It reminded me of Pirate of the Caribbean, so I thought that was a great opening sequence. Whenever the boat Catches on Fire and Ariel has to say, Prince Eric, I was into that. It gave me that feeling of excitement. Now where the live action really hurt this movie was with all this tea creatures and Sebastian, even though he was funny David Diggs did a really great job at voicing that character, there was just so much disconnect. So even though the voice acting was pretty good, it just felt like I was listening to a track and trying to associate it with this character. Flounder was all out terrifying. He looked like something from my nightmare. And every time that Flounder came on screen, he looked like he was in pain. To me, with his eyes, Flounder was telling me every moment I live with z Acony, please kill me. That is the visual I had while looking at Flounder. So I feel like they almost should have gone full Roger Rabbit and just did a two D animation on Flounder and on Sebastian.

00:30:42
Speaker 2: And the big thing about Disney is the.

00:30:44
Speaker 1: Tie in with merchandise. Essentially, every Disney movie is just a commercial to get you to go to Disney World of Disneyland, to get you to buy all the merch that goes along with a movie. If I was a kid going into watching this version of the Little Mermaid, I would only want things with Ariel. I wouldn't want anything with Flounder or Sebastian because it's not really visually appealing. I don't want a Flounder notebook. So, if anything, it's gonna make Haylee Bailey and the image of her as Ariel be the biggest takeaway from this movie, and I think that is great, But all the other characters just fall completely flat, to the point where it is pretty distracting.

00:31:26
Speaker 2: And forgive me, I know I mess up her name again.

00:31:28
Speaker 1: It's Halle Bailey, but I get it so confused with Halle Barry. It'd be like if there was another A List actor named Brent Pitt. I would get those two confused too.

00:31:37
Speaker 2: Sorry.

00:31:38
Speaker 1: The other thing that live action made better in this movie was the soundtrack. It really brought all the songs to being able to see the characters singing it loud, seeing it.

00:31:47
Speaker 2: Come out of their mouth.

00:31:49
Speaker 1: That added a whole other level to it that I felt like the songs in this version resonated with me a little bit more. Although I do wonder what everybody else does when this one character just goes and start singing and doesn't stop.

00:32:02
Speaker 2: Do they all just like float there and be like, all right, she's gonna keep singing, She's gonna keep going.

00:32:06
Speaker 1: And I also realized how much Sebastian is trying to brainwash Ariel with Under the Sea, and I did pick up on a lot more themes now. I think watching this movie as an adult, you see that he is just trying to keep her in the sea, trying to get her to buy into the fact that you have everything.

00:32:24
Speaker 2: You need here.

00:32:25
Speaker 1: You don't need to go exploring, You don't need to go experience everything in the world.

00:32:30
Speaker 2: Stay at home or you belong.

00:32:33
Speaker 1: And as I get older, I do grasp on to these themes a little bit more. I think it probably would have resonated with me more if I had kids, And I can kind of see the shift that more people are probably having going to see this movie.

00:32:47
Speaker 2: The movie we.

00:32:47
Speaker 1: Remember as a kid, you probably identified with Ariel of wanting to go and find your prints and wanting to go against what your parents say to chase the things in life that you want, chase love, chase new adventures. It's kind of like what a teenager would experience when they're wanting to go to college.

00:33:06
Speaker 2: As kids, we saw that perspective.

00:33:09
Speaker 1: And now as the ones taking our kids now as adults and getting them to watch this movie, we kind of see it from King Triton's side. Hey, I don't want my kids to go meet up with some random dude she just saved and go hang out with the humans and put herself in danger. So it's like almost going full circle and going from one character's perspective to another character's perspective. But I think who really stole the show in this movie was Melissa McCarthy as Ursula. Perfectly cast and she played the characters so well, and I feel like in live action you really get that grasp of the evilness of Ursula through these new visuals. I love the look of her tentacles in her entire world every time she was on screen. That was my favorite moments. They could probably do a spin off movie just following the life of Ursula. Think Joker, but Disney, because she really did a great job at making this movie exciting and making it feel different. And I always just loved the dark side of old Disney stories, and I feel like her as Ursula really drove this movie home. I also love Hobby air Bardem as King Triton Anton Sugar himself from No Country for Old Men. Ever since that movie, he kind of has a lifetime past for me that I will watch anything he does.

00:34:25
Speaker 2: But he is really great in a regal king role.

00:34:29
Speaker 1: So I thought he did a really great job as Ariel's dad. When it came to Prince Eric, I think there was a lot to be desired. He wasn't my Prince Eric. He kind of looked like an AI generated Ryan Gosling.

00:34:40
Speaker 2: Part of me had to remember that this.

00:34:42
Speaker 1: Is a movie made for kids, because I did question their chemistry a little bit, but I realize that you can't really make it full on love story, show all these things because it's kids watching it. So I felt like they're acting was a little bit limited, but it's because it is a remake of a d Disney movie and you have to be very kid friendly. So that would have been an entirely different movie that I wanted. Apparently, that's probably the Little Mermaid that you would buy in the alley, and it's on like an old burned DVD, so that's an entirely different movie that I wanted. I had to get back into reality and think, oh wait, those this is for kids. But what this movie ended up doing it did make me buy in to the Disney magic again. I think if a kid watched this movie now, they're definitely going to enjoy it.

00:35:26
Speaker 2: Parents are going to enjoy it.

00:35:28
Speaker 1: But I do have to compare it to the original because I don't think if you started with this movie it would create that same lasting fandom. I think you'll probably forget about this movie in six months, another year. You're not really going to want to revisit it. It's cool now, but it's not going to have the same kind of longevity as a movie from the eighties. So I think the Disney magic still lies in the animation. But they prove to me that they can make a good adaptation and add a little value and not just feel like they're going through all the motions, check all the boxes and just making exactly what exists on animation without making it better. You gotta make it better, otherwise there's no reason to do this. Pinocchio, they didn't make it better. Peter Pan and Wendy, they didn't make it better.

00:36:13
Speaker 2: Move on. They really ruined that story.

00:36:16
Speaker 1: So they did in turn make some things better, but also didn't really capture the essence of the characters, so I don't think it'll have the same lasting impression. So for me, a Disney remake has a ceiling of about a four. The Lion King got that, Aladdin got that. Even though Cruella wasn't a true remake, I think that was a great live action reimagination and origin story, so they could probably do a similar movie like Cruella with Ursula. It was so hard for me to fully buy into it because of Flounder and Sebastian, and I didn't want it to but they are such a big part of the movie and a big part of the story that I really couldn't look past that, So it just made the movie less enjoyable for me. So for The Little Mermaid, I give it three point five out of five.

00:37:04
Speaker 2: Forks.

00:37:05
Speaker 1: The next Disney live action movies we have to look forward to. We have Snow White coming out on March twenty second, twenty twenty four, and then move Fassa The Lion King also in twenty twenty four on July fifth, which will be the prequel to the live action version from twenty nineteen. Don't mess with my Lion King anymore. Just don't mess it up.

00:37:27
Speaker 3: It's time to head down to movie Mikes, Traylor Paul.

00:37:32
Speaker 1: If I have to hear one more person complain about long movies, I just might lose it. I just might quit this podcast. I feel like movies have historically been long. I don't feel like it's out of the norm for a movie to have a two and a half a three hour run time. If you look back on some of the greatest movies ever made that have long run times.

00:37:53
Speaker 2: We never question it.

00:37:54
Speaker 1: Look at movies like The Godfather, Saving Private Ryan both three hours, The Green Mile three hours, in night minutes. Titanic, one of the greatest movies ever made, is three hours and fourteen minutes. No one really complains about Titanic being that long. Endgame is three hours. I just rewatched that movie for like the tenth time last weekend because I was.

00:38:13
Speaker 2: Feeling like I needed a little Avengers in my life.

00:38:16
Speaker 1: I love that that movie is three hours because I get to live in it longer. Gone with the Wind from nineteen thirty nine is three hours and forty two minutes. So this is nothing new. I just feel like long movies get a lot of attention whenever they come out because it's something for people to be divided on and it's something for people to complain about. I, for one, welcome in. I would watch a five hour director's cut of a movie.

00:38:40
Speaker 2: That warranted it.

00:38:41
Speaker 1: Why am I bringing this up because Killers of the Flower Moon is coming out on October sixth, and it is three hours and twenty six minutes. That is a long movie, but it is from director Martin Scorsese, one of the greatest filmmakers of our lifetime.

00:38:55
Speaker 2: This is what he does.

00:38:57
Speaker 1: Big dramas, crime epics are his specialty, and I feel like he is a director that I have no worry going into a movie knowing that it is three plus hours.

00:39:07
Speaker 2: I am in for it.

00:39:07
Speaker 1: I will watch every single minute and be dialed into a Martin Scorsese movie because he has proven to me time and time again that he can do it, and he can do it well. Look at movies like The Wolf of Wall Street that has a long run time, The Irishman on Netflix, which is over three hours, I have no doubt in my mind that this movie will warrant the three hour runtime. So so a big, long run time from him doesn't intimidate me. So I'll get into what this movie is actually about before I do. Here is just a little bit of the Killers of the Flower Moon trailer.

00:39:40
Speaker 5: The O Sage took their name from Missouri, and O Sage rivers move said the Great wide Father, there are many, so many hungry wolves. Can you find the wolves in this picture?

00:40:03
Speaker 1: I just love the way that Leonardo DiCaprio is speaking in this trailer, the way that he looks. It is already being described at his best role ever, which is saying a lot because he has done so many great movies throughout his career. But what Killers of the Flower.

00:40:19
Speaker 2: Moon is about.

00:40:20
Speaker 1: It's based on the best selling book which is set in the nineteen twenties in Oklahoma, and it depicts the serial murder of members of the oil wealthy Osage Nation and a string of brutal crime that came to be known as the Reign of Terror. What I love about this trailer is it feels very ominous and doesn't give away too much about where they're gonna take this story. I think that is truly what a trailer is supposed to do. It's not supposed to tell you the entire story from start to finish. That is the signs of a bad movie. It's supposed to entice you, generate your curiosity while giving you the tone of the movie and giving you that excited feeling. I feel this trailer does it perfectly. What you hear in this trailer is Leonardo DiCaprio's character named Ernest, who is reading aloud to himself from a children's book. It is from the advice of his uncle William, who was played by Robert de Niro in this movie, and he thinks reading this book may help him get acclimated to this new town. The visuals in this movie give me vibes of the movie There Will Be Blood. It looks like a beautifully made movie that tells a dark story about greed and murder, which are two themes that Martin Scorsese does really well, and Apple Movies just looks spectacular. I feel like if there's one thing that Apple TV Plus does so well is creating just very beautiful content with rich colors, a lot of great cinematography, and even though it is a streaming service, I always feel like all of their projects deserved to be seen on a big screen with big sounds. So this movie is going to theaters in October before it is going to streaming, so this is relatively new for Apple. I think this is easily them trying to say we are here to be taken seriously. We saw that with their movie Coda winning an Oscar, and now I feel like this is definitely teeing them up to be nominated for more Oscars. And this is based on me just watching the trailer. You just have Scorsese, you have Leonardo DiCaprio, you have Robert de Niro, who have historically done some of the best dramas in film throughout their career working together. So it just has Oscar written all over it. So even though I myself am not afraid of a long run time, I welcome the longer movies. I understand that it feels daunting when looking at the runtime of anything, whether it be a podcast, whether it be a song. Just something in your mind makes you not want to watch something when it seems like it's going to take you a long time and take a good chunk of your day. So I love the fact that this movie is coming out in theaters first, so the people who want to experience that way like myself can go and have that experience, and I think for a director like Martin Scorsese, he believes that his movie should be seen in that way. And I say this defending him, even though I kind of have beef with him too, because he always just makes fun of superhero movies. He says they are not cinema, and I feel like he alienates a lot of people who love superhero movies and also love his films too. We are not a completely different audience. I can enjoy Good Fellas as much as I can enjoy Spider Man or Guardians at the Galaxy. But I feel like with him saying that he wants me to feel bad for.

00:43:33
Speaker 2: Also enjoying superhero movies.

00:43:35
Speaker 1: If I was him, or any director that maybe gets discouraged about filmmaking when it seems like superhero movies are the only ones generating income, I would welcome it. Martin Scorsese, I challenge you, let your last film ever to be a superhero epic, drama, crime movie. I'm talking to the departed, but everybody has superpowers. But again, Killers of the Flower Moon is coming out in select theaters on Friday, October sixth, and then in theaters everywhere on October twentieth. There's still not a confirmed date on when it will stream on Apple tv Plus, but I assume it'll probably be that forty day run in theaters, so you'll probably be able to watch it at home late November early December.

00:44:19
Speaker 2: Ted that for was this week's edition of Movie.

00:44:21
Speaker 1: By Frame or Bar, and that's going to do it for another episode here of the podcast. But before I go, I got to give my listener's shout out, which I do every single week. Somebody who sends me an email Moviemike d at gmail dot com, tweets me at Mike d Shrow, or comments over on my Instagram, and this week's listener shout out comes to you from my Instagram comments. It is from Kayla, who commented on my Fast extraview and said watch Fast X last night and totally agree with your review Fast Action Entertainment the whole way through. Would it be a Fast and the Furious film without some familiar cheesiness and Jason Momoa was an awesome addition. Thank you Kayla for also enjoying and appreciating my love of the Fast X movies. After reading all the comments and how everybody is so split on fast movies. I have just determined that it's going to be a genre that I love that other people will just continue to hate. So I am looking forward to the next one. Any spinoff they make from Fast and the Furious, I am here for it.

00:45:23
Speaker 2: So thank you for listening.

00:45:24
Speaker 1: Hope you have a great rest of your week, and until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later.