YMMV / The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Beginning

• Alternative Character Interpretation: This prequel's plot is driven by Ariel fighting to have music restored in Atlantica, even running away and risking her own life for it. In the original film, Ariel is introduced upfront neglecting rehearsals and missing Sebastian's concert because she's too focused on her also-forbidden hobby of collecting human trinkets. Did Ariel truly love music, or does she simply enjoy rebelling against her father's rules?
• Awesome Art: Even detractors of the movie admit that the animation here is impressive, with nice fluidity and expressions, especially compared to some other straight-to-DVD films that Disney has produced.
• Broken Base:
  • The whole storyline of Ariel fighting to restore music to Atlantica. Some fans like it just fine, since Ariel's character has always been associated with music and singing. To others it falls flat, because despite her iconic beautiful singing voice, they argue that Ariel doesn't care much about music in the original film – Triton and Sebastian are the ones who set up a concert to show off her singing, which she forgets in favor of exploring a shipwreck, and she later trades her voice to Ursula, showing that the human world matters more to her than being able to sing.
  • The backstory of Queen Athena's death. To some fans, it's a good explanation of Triton's irrational hatred for humans. To others, it's completely unnecessary because Triton's anti-human prejudice was already explained in the first film (humans kill marine life with their fishing and harpooning), and they argue that making it about his wife's death makes his bigotry too sympathetic.
• Just Here for Godzilla: The increased focus on Ariel's sisters is a big attractor of the film for some fans.
• Like You Would Really Do It: Ariel is given a Disney Death in the climax. While the scene is well executed and emotional on its own, it can be hard to take seriously given that the film is a prequel.
• Moral Event Horizon: Marina has no trouble whatsoever with letting her pet electric eels eat Ariel and her friends as long as she stays in power.
• Narm: Athena's death scene in the prologue can be hard to take seriously due to its awkward and out of place editing, with the scene consisting of several crossfades, close-up angles and dragged out shots, unintentionally giving the impression that she has plenty of time to escape before the pirate ship runs into her. No other scene in the film is edited in this way, and the fact that Athena risked her life for a music box doesn't help matters.
• The Scrappy: Marina Del Ray is by far one of the least popular characters in the franchise, and is considered a significant step down from Ursula and Morgana.
• Special Effects Failure: Unlike its predecessors, the film includes clearly CGI elements such as Athena's music box and the pirate ship that kills her, which don't blend in well with the traditional animation used for the rest of the characters and settings. The music box is especially out of place in scenes where Ariel and Triton - both 2D characters - are shown holding it.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: With Marina looking so much like a younger Ursula, and fitting what little canon backstory she had, many fans were baffled why the writers didn't just use Ursula instead of a Suspiciously Similar Substitute.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Other than showing Ariel's first meeting with Flounder and Sebastian being named court composer, the film does little to tie into the stories or character arcs from the original film. Most of the characters' relationships are already established, several characters such as Ursula and Scuttle are completely absent, and Ariel's interest in the human world is not alluded to at all.

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