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The Little Mermaid is officially in theaters, and it's personally my favorite one of these Disney live-action remakes since Cinderella.
I just had so much fun watching this movie and it took me back to when I was a kid and was simply obsessed with Ariel.
Of course, one of the reasons this movie works is Halle Bailey's perfect casting as Ariel. Not only does she embody the iconic Disney princess so well, but oh my god, her versions of these songs are so good, too.
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A lot went into turning The Little Mermaid into a live-action movie, and a lot of the moments that made the original 1989 animated movie so special were recreated for this version.
In particular, one moment that everyone was excited to see pulled off in the live-action movie was Ariel's iconic hair flip.
In case you need a refresher, the notable moment comes after Ariel has made her deal with Ursula and trades her voice for a chance to live in the human world and fall in love with Prince Eric.
She swims to the surface and we get this gorgeous shot that has becomes one of the most memorable scenes from the film.
So, the live-action The Little Mermaid made sure to include it and recreated it pretty perfectly with Halle.
Here's a side-by-side of the animated movie vs. the live-action:
Anyway, since Ariel's hair flip is so important, Halle and the team behind the new movie wanted to make sure to get it just right, and it was apparently one of the harder things to accomplish.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Halle said the scene "was so fun to do," but was "definitely hard" because in the water her hair is "really, really heavy."
She continued, saying, "I have my locs, which are my favorite thing. I've had my locs since I was 5. It feels like wool when it's wet. So it gets heavier. It kind of almost doubles the weight when they're heavy."
"It was just a lot of hair on my head," Halle said. "So whenever I would get in the water, it would be heavy. So that one scene, it was really funny: that whole day we were trying to get it right, get it right, and finally they got a take that they really liked."
Halle went on to explain in a separate interview with Sherri Shepherd that it took her "like, 20 takes" to get Ariel's hair flip just right because of how heavy her hair was and it hurt her neck to keep flipping her head back.
In fact, in order to make it as beautiful as the animated shot, what ended up happening is one of the members of the stunt team helped Halle achieve the perfect flip.
Halle explained in a red carpet interview that a stunt team member named Dan would push her hair back with her and it allowed it to look "way more graceful than [it] actually was."
A lot of thought went into Halle's red locs for the movie, which included adding "three shades of red" wraps to Halle's natural locs. The film's hair department head Camille Friend said in an interview with Variety that it was important to her and Halle that they kept Halle's natural hair, and they elected to not use a wig.
The extensions that were added to Halle's natural locs were said to have cost $150,000, according to Camille. She explained, "I’m not guesstimating, but we probably spent at least $150,000 because we had to redo it and take it out. You couldn’t use it and we’d have to start again. It was a process."
Also, part of Halle's stunt training included strengthening her neck muscles, as seen in this video posted by film and TV personal trainer Sana Shirvani, who worked with the cast. This probably helped a lot when filming the specific hair flip scene, too.
Overall, I'm just continuously impressed with the amount of detail the entire The Little Mermaid team put into making this movie, and it makes me want to go see it again.
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