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STORY STUDY - MEDIUM: FILM - “Aladdin”

Jeffrey Tung
Nov 20, 2017
3 min read

A rags-to-riches story with a little magic to speed up the process.

Directed by Ron Clements & John Musker, and written by Clements & Musker and Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio, based on Aladdin and the Magic Lamp from One Thousand and One Nights by Antoine Galland, Aladdin is the fourth film released during the Disney Renaissance.

Aladdin is a street urchin living in Agrabah. One day, he meets the princess of Agrabah, Jasmine, who escapes from her palace to avoid marrying a suitor and to explore the city.

Aladdin and Jasmine meet, and are instantly attracted to each other, but a misunderstanding by the palace guards have him arrested.

In prison, Aladdin is tricked by Jafar, the Grand vizier to Jasmine’s father, the Sultan, into retrieving a lamp from the Cave of Wonders as payment for freeing him.

When the plan goes awry, Aladdin becomes trapped inside.

That is, until, he rubs the lamp to discover the Genie of the lamp. As the “Genie rulebook” states, Aladdin is granted three wishes by Genie, giving him endless possibilities.

I honestly don’t know what I can say that already hasn’t been said about this film. It has memorable characters, beautiful animation, thrilling actions scenes, and even some moments that were probably a bit risqué even for Disney animation during this time (the distraction kiss.)

What I can say about is my personal relationship with it is how much I found to be a unique film when it came out. I have never seen the entire film when it was released, in fact it wasn’t until I was a late teenager can I remember seeing the entire film in one sitting and fully remembering what happened. I did watch the series when it was on TV, but I’m not counting that.

The Genie is the fan-favorite character the moment Aladdin enters the conversation, and it’s understandable. However, what I take out of it is Jasmine, who is one of my two favorite Disney princesses.

While Ariel from The Little Mermaid (another Clements & Musker directed project) might have been the first rebellious princess (she DID make a deal with the devil after all), Jasmine refined the concept; she doesn’t come off as too selfish, she just wants to be her own person. She might have a love interest in Aladdin, but when she’s introduced, where she escapes the palace, you can tell she’s strong, kind, and clever enough to have her own adventures, and whose actions are not motivated by a man. If she WAS going to be motivated by a man, she knew it would have to be someone under her terms, someone that fit well with her wit and personality.

Aladdin is one of those animated Disney films, like with a majority of them, especially the ones that came out during the Disney Renaissance (1989-1999), has continually stayed in the popular conscious. The characters still appear in the Disney parks, two direct-to-DVD sequels, a TV series, an upcoming (at the time of this posting) live-action film, and two stage musicals: one abridged version that you could only see in Disney California Adventure, which concluded its run in 2016, and a full length musical that debuted on Broadway in 2014.

So, why am I mentioning it?

Well, that’s probably because of its relation to next week’s Criterion week.