She was both blonde and brunette: what the Little Mermaids looked like in all the adaptations of Andersen’s fairy tale The Stars

The cartoon was created by director Ivan Aksenchuk, and The Little Mermaid was voiced by Nina Gulyaeva. The caricature was created using an expressive art technique and impressed with its beauty. The heroine appeared as a sophisticated girl with huge eyes and long curls into which wreaths were woven.

Although the title has nothing to do with the fairy tale, the animated series is based on Andersen’s plot. Mako is a mermaid and the youngest daughter of a sea king who is also trying to enter the human world. True, unlike the original, the ending is not tragic.

But in the second Japanese film adaptation, on the contrary, they strictly followed the original – there is no happy ending here. The Little Mermaid here is not at all like the canonical Disney image (it will appear later, by the way) – here was a blonde.

The film was shot in M. Gorky’s film studio and is dedicated to the memory of Andersen himself. According to the plot, it all started with a conversation between passengers in a stagecoach. The narrator decides to entertain the young girl and begins to tell her a story about a little mermaid. Victoria Novikova played both the young lady and the fairy-tale heroine. Mikhail Pugovkin, Galina Volchek and other famous artists also took part in the film.

Another adaptation of Andersen’s fairy tale was published in the same year. The original title of the film was “Little Sea Fairy”. Although the film also ended on a sad note, in this film adaptation, the Little Mermaid did not turn into sea foam at all, but into pink flowers on the surface of the sea. The main role was played by the Czech actress Miroslava Šafranková.

One of the most famous film adaptations of The Little Mermaid, giving us the image that has best stuck in pop culture. It is he who is copied for Halloween and other costume parties. Here, the role of the mermaid princess named Ariel was voiced by Jodi Benson, and in the official Russian translation, which was published in 2006, the Little Mermaid was sung and voiced by Svetlana Svetikova. The cartoon was such a success that the story became a cycle with a sequel, a prequel and an entire animated series.

A looser version of the classic story. Directed by directors Chris Bouchard and Blake J. Harris, the story begins with a reporter and his niece on a journey to find a mermaid performed by a traveling circus. The role of the fairy-tale heroine was played by Poppy Drayton, who is known from the TV series The Chronicles of Shannara.

The most recent and perhaps most controversial film adaptation to date has caused such a public uproar. The film became popular due to the fact that for the first time the dark-skinned actress Halle Bailey was cast in the role of the Little Mermaid.

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