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13th Sep 2022

The Little Mermaid live-action trailer has has 1.5 million dislikes on YouTube in just two days

Steve Hopkins

The platform has had to disable the dislike counter

The live action trailer for The Little Mermaid was released by Disney at their D23 Expo fan convention this weekend to much excitement and fanfare, but within two days that hype has all but been eclipsed.

As of Tuesday evening, it had more than 1.5 million dislikes on YouTube. It passed the 1m milestone on Sunday.

YouTube has now disabled the dislike counter so people can’t see how many dislikes the video has received.

But people are using a plug-in that has enables users to see how well content is performing, and, well, The Little Mermaid isn’t doing very well. In fact, it’s kind of sinking.

A lot of the criticism of the trailer has centred on how it doesn’t really look like Ariel is under water as the visual effects aren’t good enough for some.

The Little Mermaid is the live action adaptation of the popular animated Disney princess film starring Halle Bailey as the beloved mermaid Ariel. It also stars Melissa McCarthy, Jonah Houer-King, Jacob Tremblay, Awkwafina, Javier Bardem, Daveed Diggs and Simone Ashley.

 

While people have been quick to diss the trailer, it also went viral for a very positive reason.

A lot of parents started posting their children’s reaction to seeing it on TikTok.

This led to people praising Disney and the film for its diverse cast – especially the fact that they cast a Black woman as Ariel.

 

In one video TikTok, a girl named Sienna can be seen watching the trailer with wide eyes and a huge smile on her face as she tries to contain her excitement.

When Ariel is finally revealed, she asks: “That is her? That is Ariel?”

Halle Bailey recently spoke with PEOPLE about the significance of her playing the lead character, saying: “The fact that now it’s getting to be played by me, a person who looks like me, woman of colour, I’m just like, wow, I’m so grateful for what it will do for all the other little Black and brown boys and girls who will see themselves in me.”

Because I know if I had seen myself when I was younger, I think my whole perspective would’ve changed.”

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