The sad thing about films nowadays is that unless you are young enough not to be jaded, it’s very hard to go into many without having some original version or animated classic to compare it to. Sure, it’s fun to see a story told in a new way, but it also makes it difficult to judge the new version fairly, because your feelings towards the original can color your opinion. In the case of 2019’s live action remake of Aladdin, the original story that may be at the forefront of your mind is one of Disney’s 90’s animated classic films. Whether it was your favorite or not, whether you even liked it or not, it’s what you’ll be thinking of while watching it in 2019. Some elements are the same – many of the songs are carried over from the original, and your favorite characters are back (just with some updates). There are also new elements too – because this is live-action, the story is told in a new way, and that is worth considering when you settle yourself in to your seat with a bucket of popcorn. It’s easy to preemptively judge because there was already one good version of the story, but that doesn’t mean it has to be the only one.This new version of Aladdin may not be an complete diamond in the rough, but it’s not a lump of coal either.
Life in Agrabah has not been easy for the street rat named Aladdin (Mena Massoud). He makes his way in the world by stealing with his monkey Abu, but dreams of a life where he’s more than a thief. One day he meets a woman on the street and feels an instant connection with her, only to discover that she is actually the Princess Jasmine (Naomi Scott), sneaking out of her palace in order to get a better understanding of the country she wishes to rule as Sultan. Despite the chemistry between them, Aladdin knows that Jasmine is bound by law to marry a prince, and that would prevent her from falling in love with him. He is approached by Jafar (Marwan Kenzari), the royal Vizier, who offers him an opportunity – if Aladdin can go into the mystical Cave of Wonders and retrieve a simple lamp, Jafar will make him rich enough to be worthy of a princess. Aladdin enters the cave and finds that the lamp holds a Genie (Will Smith), who has the power to grant three wishes to the person who frees him from the lamp. While Aladdin decides to use his wishes to further his quest for Jasmine’s heart, Jafar longs for the Genie’s power in order to take control of Agrabah away from the Sultan (Navid Negahban) and become an all-powerful ruler himself.
This is not the animated version of the story we’ve all come to know as a classic; it’s been updated for a more modern audience. A lot of attention has been given to the fact that the majority of the cast is of Middle Eastern, Arab and Southern Asian descent, but that is only one of the positives. Another is that, despite Iago no longer being an anthropomorphized character (though still voiced by Alan Tudyk because Disney’s gotta Disney), he and Abu still manage to be engaging and funny without needing a comedic voice. Another positive to the live action version is in the physicality and choreography of the story of Aladdin. He becomes much more impressive as a sneaky thief when you can see the movements he’s making are not cartoonish – a real man pulling off real stunts make the character more fun to watch. The same goes for some of the musical numbers, which was unexpected. In other live action remakes, such as Beauty and the Beast (2017), the bigger numbers that are classic favorites don’t fare as well because they are live action – in some cases, those songs are so beautiful and amazing because you can do things in animation that you can’t mimic in real life. Thankfully the numbers in this film are still showstoppers, and you can tell the crew went all-out to make them that way. It’s not the same, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not bad either, just the opposite.
One of my favorite updates to the story was through the character of Jasmine (who was easily the best singer in the movie). Though her attitude about the marriage being arranged for her is the same (and if Prince Anders, played by Billy Magnussen, is the kind of offering she’s been getting, it’s not hard to see why), her reasons why and feelings towards the whole affair have been elevated. In 2019, Jasmine’s feelings are less about wanting to marry for love (though that would be preferable) and more about her ability to become Sultan and lead the country of Agrabah herself, which tradition says she is unable to do and dictates that she must marry instead. And unlike in the animated film, Jasmine’s determination to buck that tradition does not come off as anger on her part. She is not pissed about her situation; she’s frustrated, sure, but she’s shown with more grace and power than just a girl angry at her situation. Instead she is given the chance to rise above the men in her life and prove herself, whether or not it’s necessary for her to do so. Jasmine has always been a strong princess, and this movie does not diminish her.
When Will Smith was announced as the next Genie, I was just as nervous as anyone else. I had seen the character played by someone other than Robin Williams before because I had seen the stage production, but it was still an odd thought – the Fresh Prince of Bel Air was going to be singing “Friend Like Me”, one of my personal Disney favorites. The more trailers were the released, I started to feel more and more confident in the adaptation, but there was still a question of how Smith would do. After watching the movie myself, I would like to be clear for those who still have doubts. Smith is a great rapper, but as a singer, he’s still a little iffy – while the numbers “Friend Like Me” and “Prince Ali” are definitely fun to watch, he’s not killing them with his voice. What he does do well, however, is bring the spirit of the Genie to life. The 2019 is not a carbon copy of the 1992 Genie – how can he be, when Robin Williams and Will Smith are such different people? But they both capture the essence of what the Genie should be, just in different ways. The Genie is a character outside of the world he is inhabiting in Aladdin – he is a magical being who has lived longer than any other character, and knows more than all of them combined. 
Williams accomplished this through impressions and pop culture references that a character from an ancient Arabian desert couldn’t possibly know; Smith manages the same sort of feeling by being himself. He is a modern (though magical) man in an ancient world, and that combined with his inner Will-Smith-ness helps turn the Genie into the mythical figure he needs to be for the story to work. It’s not the same as Robin Williams, it’s not the same as the Broadway stage Genie from James Monroe Iglehart – it’s Will Smith’s Genie, and honestly, I’m glad to have seen his interpretation. And this is what Disney SHOULD be doing with their remakes – the people they cast do not need to be carbon copies of the originals, because the stories are being updated too. I am not angry about Will Smith’s Genie, and I look forward to seeing Halle Bailey’s Little Mermaid because it’s not about being exactly the same – it’s about capturing the spirit of the character in a new way.
Some of Aladdin’s changes have been good, and some just didn’t hit the mark the way they could have. I’ve already discussed Smith’s singing, but I also was not a huge fan of Massoud’s. Between the two of them it sounded a lot more like rhythmic speaking than singing, and some of the songs would have suffered a lot more without the choreography and spectacle to back them up. They also skipped over Jafar’s refrain of “Prince Ali” – sure that wasn’t a huge number and not a big deal but I would’ve preferred that to the third reprise of “One Jump Ahead.” Though this movie starts to tap into the vein of Jafar’s backstory, giving him a good reason for why he wants the throne of Agrabah, it comes at a price. Though we begin to understand the motivations of Jafar, he loses a lot of what made him an awe-inspiring villain to begin with. Jafar in the original animated film was terrifying in every way – his voice, his costume, the sinister snake staff that could control minds – and yet very little of that translated well in his 2019 self. He goes through more costume changes than Jasmine does (and his outfits are just as nice, honestly), but he comes across more whiney than truly evil, and though his anger seems real, it doesn’t inspire fear. 
Even his magic doesn’t quite measure up to the original – you would think that making a giant snake fight would be no trouble with the amount of CGI studies have at their finger-tips, but the battle at the end of Aladdin seems almost lukewarm in comparison to what we would expect from all-powerful beings. It would make an excellent 3D roller coaster though. There are also story elements that could have been perhaps a little better defined if there was more detail about Agrabah as a country, though the movie does attempt to touch on them – several allies of the fictional country are mentioned, including the nation where Jasmine’s mother (another dead Disney queen) was born, but other than Jafar’s wish to grow Agrabah’s empire, there’s no real discussion or need for allies, for marriage alliances, or for the isolation imposed on Jasmine (a detail we just had to accept in the original version, and one that is only briefly touched upon now). Sometimes the attempt to bring in more story elements became a hinderance, not because this needed to be a carbon copy of the animated classic, but because sometimes there’s just not enough room in a film add more detail.
We’ve now reached a peak time in Disney live action adaptations where several have been released and several more are just lining up to go. Even if you exclude the movies that are not technically remakes (Christopher Robin, for example, is a sequel rather than a remake), it’s a long list, and it calls into question the necessity of doing them at all. The adaptations, after all, are the same stories being told again. There are more details being added, new songs performed, sometimes even wrapping up a plot hole or two. In most cases, the stories are updated for a more modern audience; but most of the movies being remade are the classic Disney movies that audiences already love. So why reboot them at all, and should Disney keep doing it? There are some Disney remakes I love, and some I think are unnecessary, but my own opinions may be unimportant. These new movies, while a chance to relive my childhood, are only partially marketed towards me. I realized this during Aladdin – during the “Friend Like Me” sequence, down in the front few rows of the theater, a couple of kids (probably about ten years old) got up and started dancing along. No one was angry at them, since most of us were dancing a little in our seats. These kids knew the song already; they’d probably watched the original movie at home with their family like I had. This story was also for them – a chance to see these characters and hear this tale in a whole new way. It’s easy to get annoyed with Disney because they’re a large corporation and they’ve already made money off of telling these stories, but they are good at telling them. Whether or not we prefer the new versions to the ones we grew up with is not the point – it’s the fact that these stories are reaching a whole new world.
3.5 / 5
I’m actually really impressed – Guy Ritchie managed to keep his love of slow-motion to a minimum!
ReelTalk 