Check Out These New Princess Teasers!

After a disappointing Super Bowl Sunday that did not reveal the promised trailer for the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid, Disney quietly dropped the 30-second TV spot online a couple of days ago. This is a teaser rather than a trailer with even less content than I was hoping for. Half the video shows footage that has already been released at the D23 Expo, while the other half reveals two-second flashes of additional scenes from various points in the movie. They are so quick that you might miss them if you blink. The only way to get a good look at what's going on is through screenshots.

One clip features our new Ariel bouncing off a phosphorescent pink cloud of translucent jellyfish. This is a fun little image that gives us a first look at the movie's visual effects in creating the fantasy underwater kingdom of Atlantica from the original film. Her playful movements are reminiscent of the showstopper "Under the Sea" number, which might be where this clip comes from since the teaser did not contain any new audio. We also see how Ariel's tail and top seem to shift in color between purple and green based on the lighting, making the difference between them more subtle than the original film. This is a clever tribute to mermaid-inspired makeup, nail polish, and other products that have been released over the years that shift between these two colors in different lighting and was likely inspired by Ariel's color combination from the animated classic. Another clip reveals a first look at five of Ariel's six sisters, who have been renamed and redesigned for this version of the film. Instead of the monochrome shells and tails that her animated sisters donned, these new mermaids are to be inspired by real fish with scaly color combinations such as blue and gold or orange and red. It gives them a more authentic look that further separates their identities from the original film.

One of the biggest reveals from the teaser is a first look at the "Kiss the Girl" scene, featuring Halle Bailey as Ariel in the iconic boat with Jonah Hauer-King as Prince Eric. Though it's only a brief flash, we see the moment where they nearly kiss just before Ursula's inevitable interference. The frilly white top that Ariel wears and formal attire on Prince Eric remind me more of the Broadway version of this scene than the original animated one. Ariel appears to have a pink headband in place of her big blue hairbow because princesses must always accessorize. Smaller moments in the teaser include Ariel reaching toward her reflection under the surface, making faces at a blowfish and a very brief flash of Ursula's eyes behind one of her tentacles. It wasn't enough to show us what Ursula will look like in the final film, but that might be because the visual effect artists are still working on it. You can watch the teaser below, and keep your fingers crossed that we get a full-length trailer sooner rather than later!

Another surprise teaser that dropped today was for Bad Cinderella, the American version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cinderella stage show. I wasn't impressed when this new version of the song first dropped, and I'm even less impressed after seeing it in action. Carrie Hope Fletcher's performance of this song was brilliant, and the costumes were perfect. I loved her black and green goth dress, comfy overcoat, and rebellious fingerless gloves as well as the beautifully embroidered pastel-shaded fairy tale costumes that the inhabitants of Belleville wore. This new version, which recently dropped on Twitter, features Linedy Genao performing a much angrier version of the song with lyrics that don't flow or rhyme as well as the original wearing bright red pants, an oversized leather jacket, and surrounded by villagers who look like a rainbow threw up on them. I think the change in the show's title from "Cinderella" to "Bad Cinderella" articulates how I feel about this new version better than I can. If this is what Andrew Lloyd Webber thinks would be more appealing to an American audience, I have never been more ashamed to be American. You can watch the tweet with the teaser below.

Beating you to it! Here’s a Belleville bootleg to celebrate our first preview.

p.s. we don’t support illegal recording in our theater and will be reporting your posts xoxo pic.twitter.com/a5DIkPNm8L

— Bad Cinderella on Broadway (@badcinderella) February 17, 2023

So what do you think of these new teasers? Are you excited to see more of The Little Mermaid and Bad Cinderella, or would you prefer to stick to the originals? In both cases, I think nothing can beat the originals, but I'm still morbidly curious about the newer ones. The problem with teasers is that they're too short to provide a clear picture of what we can expect and are normally used to build up hype without much context. In the case of The Little Mermaid, the hype was minimized as a result of dropping it randomly instead of during the Super Bowl as originally promised. Rumor has it that we may not get a full trailer until late March or early April, only a month or two before the movie will premiere. As far as Bad Cinderella goes, despite how I feel about the changes, I'm eager for there to be a good princess show on Broadway because the only other one that's currently in production is Britney Spears' Once Upon a One More Time, which looks awful. Did these teasers satiate your thirst for future princess content? Let me know in the comments!