Director Rob Marshall has directed a number of films for Disney, most recently the live-action adaptation of “The Little Mermaid” starring Halle Bailey, currently in theaters. Marshall also made another movie for the mouse house, which is about the sea – and about sea creatures: “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides“.
The fourth part of the series “Pirates of the Caribbean” is, of course, again about the adventures of Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp), but also about the fact that the pirates of Blackbeard (Ian McShane) want to catch a mermaid, which they eventually succeed in doing. So Rob Marshall had been into mermaids before. And although “On Stranger Tides” is more than ten years old and a lot has happened in the field of animation technology since then, the adventure “Pirates of the Caribbean” was used as an example for the new movie “Arielle”.
“Stranger Tides” as a study object for the crew of “Arielle”.
In an interview with revealed producer John DeLuca, who also worked on both films, that “Stranger Tides” was a major influence on “Arielle”: “We have so much time [mit dem Film] spent. We never thought we’d be making a full underwater movie. We learned so much from it.”
DeLuca and Rob Marshall showed the crew of “Arielle” the mermaid scenes from “On Stranger Tides” as an example of where they wanted to go: “It was a great starting point for us.” While the final look of the mermaids is obviously different, they brought a lot of knowledge from the “On Stranger Tides” shoot, which helped the “Arielle” team develop ideas for the look of the fish tails and iridescent skin.
“The scenes out [‚Fluch der Karibik‘] had a lot going for it in how we envisioned the look and what you can achieve,” says Marshall. “We explained exactly how we were doing it all back then – when we used visual effects, when we used costumes, things like that. We gave the whole team a complete understanding. That was actually really helpful.”
Rob Marshall benefited from his experience
The fact that he had already worked with actresses embodying mermaids on “On Stranger Tides” also helped with the filming of “The Little Mermaid”. This allowed him to better assess which scenes you prefer to film underwater and which not, and when you should rely entirely on CGI.
And the result is really impressive: Arielle, her sisters, her father Triton (Javier Bardem) and the rest of the sea people look strong live. In particular, the slightly scaly sparkling skin, which was not seen in the animated classic “Arielle”, convinced us how in our podcast episode about the remake can hear. The whole can be seen in cinemas since May 25, 2023.