After First Look At Scuttle In The Little Mermaid Is Released, Fans Are All Saying The Same Thing

While most people who did watch the Oscars last weekend were likely there to see who won the various awards, there were likely more than a few whose primary objective was to watch the first full trailer for Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid. Overall the trailer is being received quite well, but some fans are taking issue with a specific element. They have a problem with Scuttle.

In the animated film, Scuttle was voiced by the great Buddy Hackett, but in the live-action version, Scuttle will be handled by Raya and the Last Dragon’s Awkwafina. And while this would seemingly change the bird’s gender, that’s not the only thing that the new movie is changing, and fans on Twitter don’t like change.

One certainly expects there to be significant differences between the exaggerated animated character from the Disney classic and the more realistic version we expect to see in a live-action remake. However, that’s not what is happening here, because Scuttle actually isn’t even a seagull anymore.

For those of you not up on birds, this version of Scuttle is actually a gannet. It’s another breed of seabird, but one not related to the seagull we all know. The reason for this change isn’t specifically clear. It’s possible that it was just decided that it would be more interesting to use a different bird. The gannet is native to the area where we expect the movie would be set, the northern coast of Europe and the British Isles, so maybe that’s why.

It certainly wasn’t done because Disney was having trouble rendering a CGI seagull. As one fan pointed out, they had one of those in the recent remake of Pinocchio, and it turned out fine. Perhaps it was because they’d already done it once that the studio decided to try something else. 

The design of the bird itself looks fine, but people are clearly having a problem with the fact that Scuttle doesn’t match whatever their preconceived notion was. Why people are so hung up on a seagull that, in the original film, isn’t that important a character, is unclear, but here we are.

Honestly, when it comes to the animal characters in The Little Mermaid remake, I feel like Sebastian and Flounder, while certainly looking fairly realistic, look much stranger than Scuttle, but fans are having their fun with this one, as you’d expect.

In the end I don’t think anybody is going to stay away from The Little Mermaid because they don’t like the change in Scuttle. There are a lot of people excited about this one and it has the potential to really take the box office by storm. We’ll find out when it hits theaters in May.