'Little Mermaid' Director Says Disney Needs to Change, Put Wokeness Second

Disney's gone off the deep end with their woke messaging and needs to focus on the building blocks of story, so says the director of several Mouse House classics.

John Musker -- who directed the animated versions of "The Little Mermaid," "Aladdin" and "Moana" -- called out the content giant during an interview with El País ... basically saying Disney's gone overboard on getting their message across.

JM says, "I think they need to do a course correction a bit in terms of putting the message secondary, behind entertainment and compelling story and engaging characters."

To be fair, Musker doesn't call out making the movies woke by name ... but, read between the lines and you can see he thinks his former employer got their priorities backward.

He even calls out the most recent adaptation of "The Little Mermaid" ... telling EP he thinks the remake lost a little something when they played down the father-daughter dynamic -- while blasting the CGI Sebastian the Crab.

John directed "The Princess and the Frog" BTW ... and, he makes it clear he's not saying diversity isn't important in animation -- just that creators shouldn't sacrifice a quality script to check a few boxes.

As for the new Moana live-action film coming out ... Musker says he's got nothing to do with the flick -- but, he hopes it turns out well.