Aladdin 2019 - May 25

And now let us talk about that plucky lad, named Al. Did his real life movie work?

Yes, yes it did. Why so surprised? ‘B&B’ reboot worked, so did ‘Jungle Book’, and even ‘Dumbo’ – for some people at least. Unlike ‘Dumbo’ though, ‘Aladdin’ did not take any risks or liberties with the original material and is 90% a direct reboot of the original 1990s film. And?

And nothing. The original movie worked because it was good, and 2019’s reboot did its’ best to follow the established lines and it worked. It wasn’t exciting but it work, which is good enough for Disney, given how the other approach in regards to SW seemed to have backfired, so playing it safe and secure for Disney forwards ho!

…Yes, Disney (and Guy Ritchie here) tried to be woke and forward here too, what with Jasmine and Genie’s plotlines, but again, it works. When America does not try to shove political correctness down everyone’s throat extra hard, it works.

On the other side it did not work with Jafar – in the original movie Jafar was decisively darkly sadistic, (actually many of Disney’s 1990s animated movies these days look darker than their modern counterparts), but also humorous and well rounded as a character. His 2019 counterpart, on the other hand, feels like a typical evil stereotype, with a hint of Jafar’s song from the ‘Return of Jafar’ movie aka ‘Aladdin II’ that went straight to DVD (I think). In it, Jafar sings a song that is called ‘second rate’, and in 2019 film, he constantly feels second rate to no one in general and everyone in particular. Maybe the scriptwriters tried to give him a dash of LK Scar, who constantly felt as if he was in Mufasa’s shadow, but that did not work for Scar in LK, and it does not work for Jafar in 2019 version. When in 1990s he just wanted to take over the world with magic and sorcery, at least he was ambitious, and – impressive as a villain. Yay?

…Considering that in 2019 version he actually was unable to handle the Sultan, yeah, Jafar became rather deflated here, and correspondingly the titular hero did too. It is hard to be a good hero if you do not have a good villain against you, after all. What is next?

Will Smith did not suck, but why should he? His unnatural coloration as the Genie was not his doing; it was more of a technical mishap and that is quite different. Yes, the movie ‘After Earth’ wasn’t very good, and the Netflix film ‘Bright’ or ‘Light’ or something like that wasn’t an improvement either, but WS still got skills, and so he delivered them with panache.

Moreover, speaking of technical mishaps? Abu rather worked, though his capuchin monkey origins were still showing very clearly in the movie, but Iago? Rather than being a generic parrot as he had been in the animated features, he is a scarlet macaw. Pause. Like the other macaw parrot, the scarlet macaw lives in the wild only in the American tropics, and never in the Old World, i.e. Agrabah. Ergo, how exactly did Jafar acquire him? Yes, it is a magical place but still, if Jafar had power or connections powerful enough to export an all-American parrot for his own personal use, then he was not so bad off to begin with. Of course, it is never enough when you are greedy or evil or both or whatever, but regardless did he have to be so lackluster? And did Iago have to be a macaw?

As for the third animal sidekick of the movie, Rajah – yeah, he is a tiger. A CGI tiger, because real life tigers are worse thespians than macaw parrots are – and macaw parrots supposedly can bite through steel wires, let alone human fingers and ears: as a generic parrot Iago was really comic relief, (though yes, he was an oddly competent minion for Jafar too), but as a macaw he could be much more formidable than, well, Abu. That said, the scene when Abu and Aladdin have to deal with a giant-sized Iago? Pause. Where were we?

‘Aladdin 2019’ works. Of course, so does ‘Hellboy 2019’, in my opinion, but much more people disliked it…primarily because it was not Del Toro’s work and design. Del Toro’s duology works too, no doubt, but did we need to piss on ‘Hellboy 2019’ as well? Who knows…?

Anything else? Well, the remade ‘Aladdin’ was good and fun to watch, but ‘The Jungle Book’ was better, though again, this is personal preference. And one more thing, one that may come as a surprise – there is a Soviet version of ‘Aladdin’ as well.

No, seriously, during the Cold War period, USSR went and made their own take on ‘Aladdin’, and it was real life with actors – years if not decades before 2019, almost without CGI, (save for the Genie, duh). There were special effects, but they were done with ropes and things instead. On the NatGeo website, there is a short article about the original 1001 ‘Aladdin’ fairy tale, and it tells people how in the canon it took place in China rather than in the Middle East; and boy, would it be interesting to see a ‘race-bent’ version of ‘Aladdin’ instead of this one? That said, both the Disney versions and the Soviet film took place in Middle East rather than China, but otherwise, the Soviet version was closer to the original, and Aladdin wasn’t exactly a street urchin (or a street rat) but he still was fatherless, leaving with his mother – and then, one day, when the royal entourage was taking princess Boudur (the initial name of the Jasmine-like character) to take a bath in the public bathhouse, (something must’ve gone really wrong with the palace’s baths), she had a tantrum and demanded that someone looks at her face, (a big no-no in medieval Muslim world). That someone got to be Aladdin, he was to be decapitated because he’s a penniless no one and Boudur was the princess, but the Jafar-like sorcerer intervened because he needed Aladdin to go into the dark magical cave and give him the lamp.

NG is right here – there were at least two main villains in the original Aladdin fairy tale – a sorcerer who was not really interested in politics, he just wanted magic power for evil’s sake, and a vizier, who wanted the princess to marry his son so that he would become the next sultan and subsume the dynasty – kind of GoT thinking here – but Aladdin failed that plan with the genie’s magic: by then he outmaneuvered the sorcerer and kept the genie and his lamp for his own. That said, he was still nicer than in the original fairy tale and did eventually keep the genie from the sorcerer’s grasp by his wits and by befriending the genie and so on – but there weren’t really any animal sidekicks, unlike the Disney movies…though the evil wizard was chased out of town at the end of the film by a goat.

Yes, a goat, an ordinary goat, (who probably belonged to Aladdin and his mom or not, it does not matter), chased the sorcerer out of town. Jafar was a sadistic villain who deserved his gruesome defeat in both ‘Aladdin’ and ‘Return of Jafar’, but, on the other hand, if the first film had ended instead of him being powerless and chased out of Agrabah by some random goat…we would’ve had a very different ‘Aladdin 1992’ instead.

As for the Soviet movie, it was so popular in the U.S.S.R. that it even got adapted into a puppet theatre story with basically the same characters, though this time the main villain was the vizier, who wanted to marry princess himself, with the wizard being his flunky, (just think a human version of Iago pre-redemption), who tried to set him and Aladdin onto a collision course to become the winner by default…but got eaten by some random wild lion instead.

…Yeah, it is a good thing that Rajah did not get to be a liger, (a RL tiger-lion hybrid). Those unnatural hybrids are huge and impressive, but most animal protection groups hate them, and for a good reason, though yes, the question as to why Rajah got to be a tiger and not a lion in the original ‘Aladdin’ movie is anyone’s guess. In ‘Aladdin 2019’, it is more justified, but regardless…

…Back to the soviet ‘Aladdin’? (Or rather ‘Aladdin’s Magic Lamp’?) No, not really. Yes, it had a more GoT feel to it than the Disney versions, so let us have a shout-out to S.A. Chakraborty and her ‘Daevabad Trilogy’. Here, she has genies live in a world slash society not unlike that of Martin’s series, save that it is less tangled and convoluted and stretched-out but it still works. Essentially, if you like GoT and ASOIAF, give ‘The City of Brass’ and ‘The Kingdom of Copper’ (aka the published novels of the trilogy) a try – you may enjoy them too.

And secondly, the second shout-out goes to Tanya Huff and in particular her novel ‘The Fire’s Stone’, which is also a novel with strong Got elements, but also magic…and some atypical sexual situations; very mature, very progressive, and very Canadian. Take that, Americans! While you posture and preen about political correctness and whatnot, Canadians go forth and do it! Up yours!

Chakraborty’s novels, though, have something similar too – one of the main themes in this literary world is the half-human half-genie race…yeah, not unlike ‘Aladdin 2019’ there is human-genie interaction of the sexual kind, but in a much more serious manner. What is next?

Nothing. C&D S2 is coming to its’ finale and AoS will finally have Deke Shaw return in the next week’s episode. Sigh. In the first half of AoS S5 he was quite competent and someone to reckon with, though already AoS had problems in figuring out as to how to handle him on a regular basis – so naturally they brought him to the past in S5 second half though he wasn’t really required anymore – and the issue of how to make him fit into the AoS was made worse. Sometimes they honestly tried into making him into a love interest for Skye/Daisy/Quake, other times they flat-out did not, but all the same, he was becoming a part of the team – and then AoS S6 began. Given what as to what we have learned about his background story and in-world skill set, you would think that he would be right there with Jemma (his maternal grandma) and Daisy (his love interest) along the others in space, helping them get ‘grandpa Leo’ back but we so far we saw neither hide nor hair of him until now, and our first glimpses of him in S6 make him look completely ridiculous. Sure, there probably will be some sort of a cock-and-bull justification regarding this turn of event, but here Marvel shot itself in the foot when it showed that CM red carpet interview with him and Wen, when he honestly admitted that he and Iain (Fitz) hated each other. Just how bad their relationship became that MCU and co. had to reboot his entire story line after making him a regular character too? Guess we will have to wait and see as to what will happen next week.

This is it for now; see you all soon!