tom cruise aladdin

How Tom Cruise Inspired This Classic Disney Prince

Tom Cruise was everywhere in the 1980s film scene, from Risky Business to Top Gun. And he even managed to sneak into a Disney film.

People don't have to look hard to find Tom Cruise in films of every genre. From his breakthrough role in the 1983 comedy Risky Business to his highest-grossing performance in the 2022 sequel Top Gun : Maverick , the actor is hard to miss . And due to Cruise's mass popularity, it's no wonder Disney would model one of their princes after him.

Disney's 1992 film Aladdin has stood the test of time with its direct-to-video sequels , Broadway musical and the 2019 live-action film adaptation. Aladdin's lovable characters and entertaining soundtrack make fans want to watch the Disney classic over and over, even if it has been 30 years since its release. But somehow, Cruise managed to sneak his way into the film. So, let's explore what role the Mission Impossible star played in Aladdin .

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Aladdin is an 18-year-old of Middle Eastern descent living on the streets of Agrabah with his monkey companion Abu. He also falls in love with Princess Jasmine -- somebody way out of his tax bracket -- after the pair first meet in a crowded marketplace. With the help of everyone's favorite Genie, Aladdin and Jasmine finally get married in Aladdin and the King of Thieves. But while Aladdin loosely got adapted from the Middle Eastern folk tale The Thousand and One Nights, the stars who inspired the film's two protagonists are actually both from New York.

The Disney producers first took inspiration from Back to the Future's leading man, Michael J. Fox, to create their male protagonist. But according to a newspaper clipping from The Herald News , Disney's studio chief wasn't convinced by the sketches of Fox and ordered artists to make Aladdin more appealing to women. With Fox out of the equation, Disney had to find another muse.

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The documentary Diamond in the Rough: The Making of Aladdin was a behind-the-scenes look at the development of Aladdin. Along with exclusive interviews with the cast, the documentary also discussed how Aladdin was modeled after Cruise and Jasmine after Labyrinth actress Jennifer Connelly . Glen Keane, an animator for Aladdin, spoke to The Los Angeles Times about Cruise's influence on the titular character after watching Top Gun. "In all [Cruise’s] poses, I noticed there was a confidence, a look in the eyebrows, that gives him intensity and at the same time a smile that has kind of an impish look like he’s got something up his sleeve," he revealed.

Keane had to make Aladdin look around six inches taller after Cruise was chosen over Fox for the character model. And that artistic decision caused the animation process to be a little more costly. However, now that Disney fans know the inspiration behind Aladdin, it's hard not to picture Cruise singing on a flying carpet.

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This is the actor who inspired Disney’s ‘Aladdin’

You can see the resemblance, right?

• Augusta Statz
• January 9, 2018

Disney’s animated “Aladdin” film is about a princess who falls in love with a local who’s beneath her royal stature. How does this happen? Well, in order the win the affections of Princess Jasmine, Aladdin would have had to be charming and devastatingly handsome. Right?

With that in mind, it may not surprise you to learn that the creators of the film looked to Hollywood to find inspiration for their male lead. Can you guess who Aladdin’s character was inspired by? He was reportedly created with Tom Cruise in mind! When the co-directors sat down to provide commentary for a 2004 DVD release of the film, it was revealed that Aladdin had originally been inspired by Michael J. Fox , who they eventually decided was too young. So they turned their attention to Cruise.

And honestly, you can see the resemblance between the two.

Take a look at Aladdin himself, seen on the cover of this movie trilogy set from Disney:

Then, look at Cruise:

We can definitely see the resemblance!

Fans agree. Once you’ve seen this, you can’t forget it:

I'll never be able to watch Disney's Aladdin the same way ever again now that I know that the character was modeled after Tom Cruise pic.twitter.com/bTNvq0OAfc — Olivyay (@OliFeeloo) November 21, 2017

https://twitter.com/Kristenthomaso6/status/922327235780120576

Some people online were shocked by the news.

pic.twitter.com/lWWXzdSePM — my name is anna and i am funky 💜🎶🦋 (@atoozeee) October 23, 2017

pic.twitter.com/IgnnogFFXq — Oni 傅媛馨 (@oni_noviana) October 23, 2017

Meanwhile, others could totally see where Disney creators got their inspiration.

https://twitter.com/Sink0123/status/915928973170716672

Yeah, but the early 90's Tom pic.twitter.com/WSdybEiOvW — Armand Xirinola (@armandxirinola) September 3, 2017

Whether you’re surprised by this fact or not, you’re likely wondering why the animators and creators chose Cruise in the first place. “There’s a confidence with all of his attitudes and his poses,” lead animator Glen Keane said, according to The Sun .

Aladdin certainly did possess an undeniable confidence. He was prepared to show Jasmine “ a whole new world ,” after all. Pretty bold of him—but it made for quite the love story!

Once you start looking into facts about the Disney movie, it’s pretty incredible what you learn. For instance, Robin Williams was the brilliant voice actor behind the Genie in the film, and he reportedly improvised 16 hours of material for the role. Impressive!

This information might change how you watch “Aladdin” from now on, but if you ask us, nothing could ever ruin this film for its fans. Once a Disney classic, always a Disney classic, you know?

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‘Aladdin’: 25 Things You Didn’t Know About the 1992 Animated Classic!

The animated musical hit theaters 25 years ago, on Nov. 25, 1992 -- and ET is celebrating with some behind-the-scenes facts about the Disney classic.

Twenty-five years ago -- November 25, 1992, to be exact -- in the city of Agrabah, a street rat, an outspoken princess and an eager-to-please genie were at the center of another groundbreaking animated musical from Walt Disney Pictures.

Telling the story of a young man who falls in love with a princess and befriends a genie as he aspires for something more in his life, Aladdin quickly became a touchstone in Disney’s canon of animated films. Following the romance-driven The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast , the 1992 movie boasted a bigger sense of humor -- largely thanks to Robin Williams ’ performance as Genie -- and more action.  

Earning universal praise, Aladdin earned $217 million at the U.S. box office and maintains a 94 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But like its predecessors, the soundtrack, with music by Alan Menken and lyrics by Howard Ashman, propelled it to awards success, winning it two Academy Awards, including one for “A Whole New World.” 

The film will soon join the list of Disney’s live-action retellings of its animated classics with a film directed by Guy Ritchie and Will Smith taking over as Genie.

With an enduring love ballad, a comedy legend’s one-of-a-kind performance and a lesson on the importance of staying true to yourself, Aladdin became an instant classic, continuing Disney’s successful run at the box office while ushering in a new age of animated cinema. To commemorate its milestone, ET digs back into its vaults to bring you 25 facts and tidbits you may not have known about the film:

1. Beauty and the Beast set a high bar for success.

At the time, Beauty and the Beast -- the critically acclaimed film about an enchanted kingdom and the young woman who breaks its spell -- was the first animated movie to gross over $100 million in North America, and was Disney’s most successful theatrical release. It also became the first animated movie to ever be nominated a Best Picture Oscar -- a feat not repeated until 2009 with Up -- in addition to picking up a nomination for Best Sound and taking home two awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song.

“We saw Beauty and the Beast when it was completed last year at the wrap party and we just sort of just slumped down in our chairs, because we saw how good it was,” Aladdin co-director John Musker told ET at the time. “We're like, ‘Oh, no. We have to follow this one.’”

2. It took a LONG time to complete the movie’s animation.

Still largely hand drawn, the animating process was lengthy, with five feet of film equating just a few seconds of screen time. “An artist could spend a week just trying to get a few seconds of a performance … If they can do that, that’s good,” Musker said of the animation team, which included 40 principals -- more than on The Little Mermaid -- who worked on the movie for nearly a year and a half. 

3. The Genie was written for Robin Williams.

“Right from the start, we saw the Genie as a very special character in this movie, and the concept of him being able to change form constantly was there right from the start,” said co-director Ron Clements. “We wrote the script for Robin Williams from the beginning.”

“One thing that I really enjoy about Robin's performance is that we could have gotten any number of people who could do very slick impressions or who could do lots of funny schtick, but underlying it all is Robin's warmth in his performance,” said Eric Goldberg, the character’s supervising animator.

4. Inspiration for Genie's design included The Thief of Baghdad and the letter “S.”

“We had genies in turbans and vests and things like that,” Goldberg said of the animation team’s initial ideas for the character. “And we eventually arrived at the kind of strongman genie that we've got in the final film. A partial influence on that is the 1940 Thief of Baghdad film, where he kind of has that build.”

He was also designed with elegant curves to reflect the calligraphy and architecture of the period, which also provided Genie with his trademark array of expressions. “His body shapes were also generally based on large, curvy 'S' shapes. We wanted him to look like a wisp of smoke,” Goldberg added.

“They act with a pencil. What they do is, I kind of give an inspiration and then they go with it,” Williams told ET at the 1996 premiere of Aladdin and the King of Thieves . “They take it to the next level and they're the ones who do the six months of tedious, tedious work.”

5. Williams does over 60 characters as Genie in the film.

“When we finally got Robin into the recording studio, we wanted him to be improvisational. We didn't quite know how improvisational he was going to be until out came all of the celebrity impressions,” said Goldberg.

Animators took Williams’ recordings and narrowed down his performance to about 60 different characters. Goldberg added, “Robin spoiled us for choice. We would go in with about three script pages and come out with about four hours of material.”

6. Not wanting to get political, some impressions were left on the cutting room floor, including one of then-President George Bush.

7. Aladdin’s look was inspired by Tom Cruise.

“At one point, when we were working on Aladdin, I was thinking of him more like a Michael J. Fox character,” revealed Glen Keane, the supervising animator for the character. As the film was developed, Jeffrey Katzenberg (then chairman of Walt Disney Studios) pointed out how well defined Jasmine’s personality had become, while Aladdin’s was lagging behind. Katzenberg suggested they base his look and persona off Tom Cruise in Top Gun .

“I got the film and I looked at him, and what I noticed was all of his poses. His attitudes. There was this confidence. The way his chest stuck out. There was a cockiness to him,” said Keane. “And Aladdin, we wanted to have a little bit of that edge on him.”

8. Aladdin was more difficult to animate than Beast.

“ When you're animating a character that has a lot of inside emotion, it's always going to be more difficult,” Keane said, explaining that it’s easier to convey emotions with characters that have more extreme features. “On Beast, I had six animators on him. On Aladdin, we had between 12 and 20 animators working on him at the same time.”

9. Jasmine’s dress was almost pink, with the prospect of selling more toys.

A Disney film’s toy line has always been integral to its popularity and success, but Aladdin ’s directors strived to focus on the story first. “Certainly, there is a lot of merchandising that goes on with these movies, and sometimes the merchandising people will say, ‘Jasmine should wear a pink dress, because a pink dress will sell more than a blue dress,’” Clements revealed. “But we don't try to be influenced by that.”

The directors also recalled how the hair on Ariel dolls was changed to a blonder color before The Little Mermaid premiere, out of concern that redheaded dolls wouldn’t sell well. Of course, kids wanted dolls that looked like the characters, and her hair was changed back to red once the movie opened.

10. Iago has a full set of human teeth because of Gilbert Gottfried.

“Iago is the only bird I've ever had to draw that has a full set of teeth, because his voice is Gilbert Gottfried and you can't have Gilbert for a voice without great big teeth in the mouth,” said Will Finn, the character’s animation supervisor.

11. Iago was also given Gottfried's physical characterizations.

“A lot of his body gestures are derived from Gilbert's shrugs and his looks. I tried not to just do an out-and-out caricature of Gilbert as a bird, [but] the idea is to make him look like he sounds,” said Finn.

12. Jafar’s large shoulder pads were needed accommodate Iago's movements.

“We created almost a little stage set for the character with the broad shoulder pads that Jafar has so the parrot can pace up and down,” said Andreas Deja, the character’s animation supervisor.

13. A brand-new combination of conventional and computer animation was used to bring the magic carpet to life.

“The carpet is a real interesting character in this movie. It's the first sort of combination between traditional animation and computer animation,” Clements said of the unique animation method, which had previously been used in The Rescuers Down Under and Beauty and the Beast . While its rectangle and tassels were hand-drawn, computer enhancements maintained the texture and pattern design throughout the magic carpet’s many forms and movements.

14. Linda Larkin, who voiced Jasmine, sounded too much like a princess at first.

“Originally, it was just my voice. When they hired me it was just me,” Larkin said. Katzenberg requested a slight modification and had the actress lower the register of her normal speaking voice. “It was important to him that she wasn't a fairy princess, and my voice is very airy and whimsical naturally.”

15. Scott Weinger, who voiced Aladdin, would get shirtless during his performance.

“I really got into it while I was recording. I'd have to take off my watch and my shirt, and I'd be going, ‘Genie!’ This and that. I'd get really wild,” Weinger revealed.

16. The same performer voiced Abu, Rajah, and the Cave of Wonders.

A legend in the field of voice actors (with jaw-dropping IMDb stats ), Frank Welker provided the voices of Aladdin’s thieving monkey pal, Abu; Jasmine’s pet tiger, Rajah; and the feline-shaped Cave of Wonders.

For Aladdin’s faithful companion, Welker studied spider monkeys at the zoo and tried to find a way for a way for Abu to react by “speaking.” “In seeing what kind of monkey he was, I knew he kind of had to have a little voice, and at first there was no dialog whatsoever,” Welker told ET. “He didn't speak at all, but they wanted to give the impression that he had his own little language.”

Rajah’s noises, he revealed, were a combination of a lion, a tiger, a dog and a “kitty cat for the purring sounds.”

17. Several songs did not make it into the movie.

More than twice as many songs were written than were used in the final film. Famed composer Alan Menken first collaborated with songwriter Howard Ashmore, and later Broadway lyricist Tim Rice after Ashmore passed away during production. Some of the songs that Ashmore composed, including “Proud of Your Boy,” were later repurposed for Disney’s Broadway adaptation of the animated film.

18. Menken saw Aladdin and Jasmine as “Valley kids.”

For Aladdin ’s songs, Menken explained it was their mission to find a middle ground between pop culture and authentic Middle Eastern music. “It's so much of the Disney style to make the characters also very recognizable, American types within that context,” he said. “So, Aladdin and Jasmine are kind of Valley kids, as well as being these Arabian characters.”

19. The singers had just met each other when they recorded "A Whole New World."

Brad Kane and Lea Salonga, who has returned to Broadway this year in Once on This Island , provided the singing voices for Aladdin and Jasmine, respectively. They met for the first time when they recorded the movie’s iconic ballad. “We're standing there singing to each other. It was weird. It was a strange situation, because when you just meet someone you know nothing about them,” Kane said.

20. The movie broke Disney records for its box office performance and VHS sales.

Grossing over $217 million domestically and over $504 worldwide, Aladdin became the most successful Disney movie until The Lion King was released two years later. When it was released on VHS, it sold over 10.6 million copies from just over 100,000 outlets in its first week, eventually selling over 25 million copies.

21. It received five Academy Award nominations, winning for Best Original Song (“A Whole New World”) and Best Original Score.

Along with nods for Best Sound and Best Sound Effects Editing, “Friend Like Me” was also nominated for Best Original Song.

22. Robin Williams won a special Golden Globe award for his performance.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association gave Williams a special achievement award in 1993, citing how his performance didn’t fall into any of their traditional categories. During his acceptance speech, the camera briefly cut to Smith, the future live-action Genie, cracking up at Williams’ hand puppet impression of Mother Teresa . While the speech was a typical, joke-filled affair, he ended simply by saying, “This is extraordinary.” 

23. “A Whole New World” is the only Disney song to win a GRAMMY for Song of the Year.

The ballad took home one of GRAMMY’s most coveted trophies during the 1994 ceremonies. In addition, Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle won for their rendition of the song that played over the credits. The ballad also continues to be the only song from a Disney animated film to top the Billboard Hot 100 list -- a feat that even Frozen ’s “Let It Go” couldn’t match, peaking at No. 5.

24. Being a Disney princess sounds as great as you would imagine.

“This will be around longer than even me. My children and my grandchildren will see these movies,” said Larkin. “It's almost like being immortalized.”

25. Weinger’s involvement with Aladdin did not end after the movie premiered.

"Wherever I was, a car would come and find me and bring me to a studio,” said Weinger on the Nerdist podcast in 2015, describing how the movie’s massive success led to Disney needing him to essential be on call as the titular character 24/7 throughout the ’90s. When Full House went to Disney World the following year, Weinger even reprised the role in the flesh.

He and Larkin returned for two more sequels and a TV series, while continuing to lend their voices to an assortment of Disney properties, such as video games, parades in Disney parks and Aladdin on Ice .

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15 Fun Facts About Aladdin

By therese oneill | may 24, 2019, 10:00 am edt.

Nearly 30 years after its original release, Aladdin —Disney's Oscar-winning animated film from 1992—is getting a 21st-century upgrade with Guy Ritchie's much anticipated live-action edition. Read on to discover a whole new world of dazzling things you might not have known about Disney's original animated classic.

1. To land Robin Williams, the animators created test sequences of the Genie performing the comedian's stand-up routines.

Eric Goldberg led the team of animators who were in charge of creating Genie. When he was first handed the script by co-directors Ron Clements and John Musker, Goldberg was also told to dig up some old Robin Williams comedy albums. “John and Ron said, 'Pick a couple of sections from his comedy albums and animate a genie to them,'" Goldberg told Entertainment Weekly . "That’s essentially what I did."

Williams came in to see the test, and, Goldberg says, "I think what probably sold him was the one where he says, 'Tonight, let’s talk about the serious subject of schizophrenia—No, it doesn’t!—Shut up, let him talk!' What I did is animate the Genie growing another head to argue with himself, and Robin just laughed. He could see the potential of what the character could be. I’m sure it wasn’t the only factor, but then he signed the dotted line."

2. The movie’s producers had back-up choices if Robin Williams declined the role.

Though the role of Genie was written specifically for Williams, then-studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg had many reasons to doubt that they’d be able to sign him: Money, timing, contracts, and, of course, landing an A-lister for a voiceover role. He insisted the team come up with alternative choices. Had Williams declined, Genie could have been voiced by John Candy, Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, Martin Short, John Goodman, or Albert Brooks.

3. Aladdin marked the end of voice actors in Disney musicals needing to be magnificent singers.

Linda Larkin was the voice of Princess Jasmine. However, she never sang a single note attributed to the princess; that was done by singer Lea Salonga. Aladdin marked one of the first times a voice actor in a Disney musical didn’t also have to be a magnificent singer. Larkin says that this was the result of the film being built around Robin Williams, who was such a powerful force that Disney's priority was finding strong actors who could keep pace with him.

"They came to me and asked, 'Do you sing?'" Larkin recalled. "And I said, 'I do … but not like a princess!' And they said, 'No problem, we’ll find a singer to match your voice.' And they did. And to me it’s such an amazing match to my voice that it’s almost seamless when they go from dialogue to the song and back to dialogue. And you see what happened … from that point forward that opened up the world of Disney animation to everybody. They no longer needed actors who sang.”

4. The character of Aladdin was meant to do for Disney Princes what Ariel and Belle had done for Disney Princesses.

Disney in the '90s knew that their traditional princes, though charming, were much too bland for modern audiences. According to Glen Keane, lead animator for the character of Aladdin , ''I could never understand why Snow White and Sleeping Beauty fell for those princes. Those guys were cardboard symbols, and the love relationship was assumed. We wanted there to be a how to the princess falling in love.'' So they set about doing something Disney hadn’t really done before: Making a prince who was cunning, bold, funny and lovable, not just handsome.

5. Aladdin had to be really handsome. (Enter Tom Cruise.)

At first, animators sort of modeled Aladdin after Michael J. Fox, but found the end result too cutesy. So they upped his age to late teens, took off his shirt, and watched Tom Cruise movies. ''There's a confidence with all of his attitudes and his poses,” Keane said of Tom Cruise. Once Aladdin could reflect that sort of sexy cockiness, it was more believable that he’d be the sort of boy Jasmine might risk everything for.

6. Gilbert Gottfried wasn’t the first choice for Iago.

The role of the sarcastic evil parrot was first offered to Danny DeVito and Joe Pesci, but they both declined.

7. The boy who voiced Aladdin was the boyfriend of D.J. on Full House .

Teen actor Scott Weinger, who was 17 years old at the time, was sure he’d blown the voiceover audition when his voice cracked on the first song. Luckily, he had no idea he was auditioning for Disney’s next powerhouse feature, or he would have been much more worried. In the end, it didn’t matter. Disney thought his voice personified the cocky street urchin perfectly (Aladdin's singing voice, however, would be performed by Brad Kane). At the same time he was voicing Aladdin he was also playing Steve Hale, D.J.’s boyfriend, on Full House . The series made a bizarre nod to Weinger’s dual roles when the Full House girls visit Disneyland.

8. The Genie’s lines were recorded up to 20 different ways.

Williams was only available for a handful of recording sessions, so he'd give a rapid-fire delivery of each line as written—in as many different styles as he could create. “Robin had so much freedom, and [ad-libbing] was always encouraged," Goldberg told Entertainment Weekly . "He always gave us such a huge amount to choose from. He would do a line as written, but he would do it as 20 different characters, and John and Ron and I would take those tracks back to the studio and really put the ones in that made us laugh the most and were the ones that we thought were best suited to the lines. So even though he gave us a W.C. Fields, Groucho Marx, and a Peter Lorre on 'No substitutions, exchanges, and refunds,' we said, 'OK, the Groucho one goes here.'”

9. Jeffrey Katzenberg used a secret box to inspire Williams's portrayal of the peddler.

At the beginning of the film, the Peddler—also voiced by Williams—tries to interest the audience in his wares. The products weren’t in the script; they were in a box. Says Goldberg, “One of Jeffrey Katzenberg’s great ideas was to fill a box with stuff, put a cloth over it, and then when Robin’s in front of the mic, pull the cloth off and he riffs with whatever he picks up out of the box. And that’s exactly how we did that character.”

10. The illustrators tried make the characters look unrealistic on purpose.

In Aladdin ’s predecessor, Beauty and the Beast , immense effort was devoted to making the characters' faces, bodies, and movements as realistic as possible. Supervising animator Andreas Deja, who drew Gaston in Beauty and Jafar in Aladdin , told the Los Angeles Times that "We now refer to some of our earlier efforts as 'chiseled realism': On Gaston's face, we established a lot of planes on his cheekbones and chin to achieve that realism.” They did away with that approach for the magical world of Aladdin and used simple two dimensional shapes as references for all the characters. "Aladdin is composed of two interlocking triangles formed by his chest and his pants; Jasmine is sort of pear-shaped, Jafar is basically a T—a very skinny body with these broad shoulders," Deja said. "I kept that T shape in mind while I was animating: making sure it came through kept me from cluttering up the drawings."

11. That unrealistic fashion was inspired by great artist and caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.

You know Al Hirschfeld’s work, even if you don’t think you do; he famously created exaggerated line drawings of everyone from Charlie Chaplin to the The Rolling Stones . Aladdin supervising animator Eric Goldberg wanted to recreate Hirschfeld’s use of clean flow lines. "I look on Hirschfeld's work as a pinnacle of boiling a subject down to its essence, so that you get a clear, defined statement of a personality,” he said.

Hirschfeld was alive to see the honor bestowed, but he took no credit. "I'm very flattered that the animators say they were influenced by my use of line," he said. "But art isn't a 50-yard dash—it's more like a relay: You keep handing it on to somebody else, and there's no beginning or end to it. I didn't invent the line: That simplification that communicates to a viewer goes back to the cave drawings at Altamira." See Hirschfeld’s take on Goldberg’s take on Hirschfeld here .

12. Not all of the song lyrics on the video release were the same as in the theatrical release.

The first song of the film, “Arabian Nights” has the Peddler describing Arabia. The original lyrics were, “Oh, I come from a land/From a faraway place/Where the caravan camels roam/Where they cut off your ear/If they don't like your face/It's barbaric, but hey, it's home.”

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee took offense to the brutality implied in the song, as well as many other aspects of the movie. Disney conceded to change only the song lyrics, with the permission of the original writers. The verse became: “Oh, I come from a land/From a faraway place/Where the caravan camels roam/Where it's flat and immense/And the heat is intense/It's barbaric, but hey, it's home.” Disney also noted that the barbarism mentioned was alluding to the climate, not the people of Arabia. The AAADC wasn’t impressed.

Don Bustany, who was president of the Los Angeles chapter of AAADC in 1993, said the song change was "nowhere near adequate, considering the racism depicted in Aladdin . There still remains the very sleazy, burlesque character in the prologue and the scene where a merchant is going to cut off the hand of Princess Jasmine because she took an apple from his stand to give to a hungry child.” Albert Mokhiber, president of the Washington-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, expressed disappointment that Disney officials refused to meet with the committee. “Certainly I think it would be different if the situation involved African-Americans or Jewish-Americans," he said.

13. The Return of Jafar was Disney’s first ever attempt at marketing a straight-to-video sequel.

Disney used the success of Aladdin to see if consumers would buy a sequel that was never intended to play in theaters. In 1994 they released The Return of Jafar , and by 1996 it had sold 10 million units, putting it in the top 20 video releases of all time . Williams didn’t do the voice for Genie, and for the most part critics thought it was terrible (it holds a 33 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes). But its financial success paved the way for direct-to-video sequels for almost every popular Disney feature ever made.

14. Williams’s famous feud with Disney had nothing to do with money.

When Williams refused to do the voice of Genie for the first sequel (replaced by Dan “Homer Simpson” Castellaneta), rumors flew as to his motivations. Disney “insiders” suggested he was insulted to have been paid “scale” ($75,000 for a project that grossed $650 million within four years). But Williams didn’t care about the money. He stated that he’d done the movie for the pride of being part of the history of animation, and for his own small children. The problem was breach of contract, at least according to Williams: Williams didn’t want his voice used for anything but the movie.

"[A]ll of a sudden, they release an advertisement—one part was the movie, the second part was where they used the movie to sell stuff," Williams said. "Not only did they use my voice, they took a character I did and overdubbed it to sell stuff. That was the one thing I said: 'I don't do that.' That was the one thing where they crossed the line."

Disney made no official statements until the studio president Jeffrey Katzenberg was replaced by Joe Roth. Then an official apology was issued. “Robin complained that we took advantage of his performance as the Genie in the film, exploiting him to promote some other businesses inside the company," Roth told the Los Angeles Times. "We had a specific understanding with Robin that we wouldn't do that. [Nevertheless] we did that. We apologize for it."

15. Robin Williams agreeing to portray Genie changed the entire genre of voice acting.

Will Ferrell, Brad Pitt, Steve Carell , Tina Fey , Billy Crystal, Tom Hanks ... the A-listers who have voiced characters in animated films reads like the seating chart at the Oscars. And it’s all because of the Genie.

Prior to Aladdin , “real” actors seldom stooped so low to do voice work unless they were on the desperate end of their careers. Even Bea Arthur reportedly refused the role of Ursula in The Little Mermaid . The work was left to professional voice actors. Disney even kept a stable of regulars throughout the decades. (Think of Winnie the Pooh’s voice. And the Cheshire Cat, the snake from The Jungle Book , the Stork in Dumbo ... These are just some of the characters voiced by the sweet quavery voice of Sterling Holloway .)

But then came Genie, who was written exclusively with Robin Williams in mind. His work on Aladdin , combined with the rising quality of Disney films, gave a new respectability to voiceover work. Soon, celebrities were happy to lend their voices to talking toys and singing monkeys. But where did this leave professional voice actors, who spent years perfecting their relationship with a microphone? Are celebrities stealing work and exposure they don’t even need, or does their involvement help the profession?

According to Voices.com , the trade site for voiceover artists, a voiceover workshop posed that question to its participants and “The consensus was that 'No—celebrities actually raise the profession to a new level, making VO a more recognized career choice and perhaps even elevating the pay scale long term.'"

Updated for 2019.

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Had it not been Tom Crui s e , the world would still be watching movies on streaming services. But with ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ Cruise brought back the cinema-going experience we’ve been missing for years and all its joys. But long before saving the cinema, he also inspired the creation of Aladdin, the iconic Disney character. 

Usually, an achievement like this is credited to an industry veteran. But ever since his debut, Tom Cruise has been an unstoppable force. He attained his movie star status very early on and has since never let go of it. Both Tom Cruise and the characters he has played have inspired generations of aspiring talents. 

Related: How Many Box-Office Records Has Tom Cruise’s ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Broken Till Now?

Disney’s ‘Aladdin’ Was Based On Tom Cruise

During the production of ‘Aladdin,’ the designers looked at Michael J. Fox as core inspiration. Aladdin was initially meant to be 13 with the ‘Back To The Future’ actor’s features. But Disney Chief Jeffrey Katzenberg suggested something more enigmatic, Tom Cruise himself. Soon, the gears shifted. The iconic pauper-turned-prince was now 18 and based on Tom Cruise’s youthful looks.

Years later, animator Glen Keane told the Los Angeles Times of this change of heart. He told the outlet, “I originally was thinking of him like a Michael J. Fox character, short in stature but with a big ego and lots of dreams. In all [Cruise`s] poses, I noticed there was a confidence, a look in the eyebrows, that gives him intensity and at the same time a smile that has kind of an impish look like he’s got something up his sleeve.

In Case You Missed: Reese Witherspoon Reveals How Tom Cruise’s ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Inspired Her For ‘Legally Blonde 3’

The ‘Mission: Impossible’ Star Also Inspired Patrick Bateman From ‘American Psycho’

Tom Cruise’s versatility would serve as a starting point for another unforgettable literary and cinematic character. The ‘Jerry Maguire’ actor inspired the character of Patrick Bateman, the possibly schizophrenic murderer from the novel ‘American Psycho. ‘ Bret Easton Ellis’s novel is a satire about the desire for a real connection, even if it takes various forms of senseless violence.

Christian Bale brought Ellis’ creation to life in the book’s cinematic adaptation. The actor found the inspiration to play the character when he saw Tom Cruise being interviewed by David Letterman. He was taken by the ‘Mission: Impossible’ star’s “intense friendliness,” with nothing behind the eye, and this moment helped him craft a memorable career performance.

You Might Also Like To Read: How Tom Cruise Inspired Christian Bale For ‘American Psycho’

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10 things you might not know about disney’s aladdin (1992).

Aladdin may have been recently remade, but the original is still a classic - and we bet you didn't know these fun facts about it!

Disney's  Aladdin  was an animated classic that,  in spite of its recent remake , continues to reign as the definitive version of the tale. Next to  Beauty and the Beast,  it's one of the finest examples of the classic Disney fairytale formula. With its memorable characters, signature style, unforgettable lines, and marvelous music by Alan Menken, it's definitely a jewel in Disney's crown.

RELATED:  Disney: 10 Awesome Deleted Scenes We Can’t Believe Were Cut

The artists, animators, and filmmakers went to a lot of work to bring this movie to life, so we're here to peek behind the veil of this magical classic. Here are ten facts about Disney's original  Aladdin  you might not have known.

Aladdin Was Inspired by Tom Cruise

Aladdin  is definitely what we would call a piece of the '90s. Its design, dialogue, and even some of the musical lyrics all take something away from the era. But one thing many hardcore Disney fans already know about is the actor who influenced the character design for Aladdin. Let's just say it definitely wasn't Scott Weinger.

Our favorite street rat gets his distinctive chiseled features from another face of the '90s, Tom Cruise. That handsome smile, gorgeous locks, and cocky demeanor were all trademark qualities of the fabulous Tom Cruise back in the day. A sign of the times, but not one we would change.

Aladdin Became a Musical in 2011

Just like  The Lion King  and  Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin  achieved the rank of Broadway star when it was adapted into a stage musical in 2011. Though heavily inspired by the original feature, it took inspiration from deleted film concepts and narratives to bring us this musical masterpiece.

RELATED:  Disney: 10 Highest-Grossing Live-Action Remakes (According To Box Office Mojo)

Featuring phenomenal sets, staging techniques, beautiful orchestrations of classic Disney tunes, and even a handful of new songs added to the mix, it was definitely a musical worthy of Broadway and Disney's caliber. It may not be  Lion King  or  Mary Poppins  but it will take you to a whole new world.

Originally, Aladdin's Mother was Featured

One of the biggest changes between the original draft of  Aladdin's  script was the presence of his mother. One of the biggest messages in the original script was doing good by mom and striving to make the right choices. Though an amiable concept, it was going nowhere.

When progress was struggling on the project's story, infamous Disney filmmaker, Jeffrey Katzenberg, declared the mom angle was dead and they went with a different approach. This also led to the cutting of the song "Proud of Your Boy" which would make it back into the previously mentioned musical.  An interesting idea, but ultimately not to be.

"Arabian Nights" Had a Shocking Verse Cut

Yet another nugget of known trivia for those Disney fans amongst you is the reputation of the song "Arabian Nights" which opens the film. Though considered one of the favored Disney movie openings nowadays, the song once contained a verse that resulted in some rather unsightly controversy.

Before we hopped a carpet and flew with this song, the original version had a verse that supposedly ignited some Islamaphobic imagery with the line "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face. It's barbaric, but hey, it's home." This was changed in further releases, but you can find the original theatrical version  here.

The Genie Was Designed, Written, and Created For Robin Williams

There's no way we can talk about Disney's  Aladdin,  original or remake, without talking about the late great Robin Williams. The film wouldn't nearly be as successful or popular if it wasn't for the comedian's portrayal as the famous Genie. In fact, it might not exist at all if it wasn't for this one character.

The role of the Genie was made for Williams before he even set foot in the studio. Animators even used one of his stand up routines to create test footage to sync the animation style with his off-the-wall humor. One negotiation later, the film had its biggest star.

Nearly All of Genie's/Robin Williams's Lines Were Improvised

One of the best moves Disney could have possibly made for the film other than putting Robin Williams in one of the lead roles was just letting him improvise. Nearly all of the character's dialogue was created by Robin Williams riffing and doing his standard impression routine, which is how the comedian did his best work.

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Giving Williams this much freedom resulted in some of the best lines in the film, as well as the best performance. Williams' sheer amount of wild energy makes a perfect transition to the animated medium, and it's definitely our favorite role from the performer.

The Story Might Be an Enticing Sales Pitch

Though the original fan theory involving the merchant has been proven correct by Disney themselves, there is one still floating around that garners merit to this day. What if the story we've been hearing from the merchant wasn't because he was actually the Genie in disguise, but an elaborate sales pitch to get us to buy the lamp?

Think about it, how many rare collectibles have been sold with the same technique? Aladdin  might just be an improvised account. The merchant might be as crafty as they come, but at least he can tell an enchanting tale, right?

Sir Patrick Stewart Was Almost Jafar

In the '90s, Disney tried and tried to bring in Sir Patrick Stewart as a voice to one of their characters. From Cogsworth in  Beauty and the Beast  to Scar in  The Lion King,  he was approached by the studio with roles. However, scheduling would not allow him to participate, because he was involved in a little show called  Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Of all the words of tongue and pen, the saddest are it might have been. We would have absolutely adored seeing Sir Patrick Stewart as the sinister sorcerer, and he himself has expressed it's one of his biggest regrets. Hopefully, Disney can give him a role in the future.

Johnathan Freeman Continues to Play Jafar

Though we might desire Patrick Stewart in a Disney role, there's still a lot of praise to be given to the fantastic Johnathan Freeman. After voicing Jafar in the original animated feature, he continued to portray the role in a multitude of media and still voices the character to this day. Though 27 years have passed since the film premiered, Freeman is still attached to the role.

Not only has he voiced Jafar in the direct-to-video sequel, the  Aladdin  TV series, and the Disney Parks attractions, but he also assumed the role in the original stage production of the Broadway show. We gotta give the guy credit, he knows how to play a twisted wizard.

The Film's Marketing Led to a Falling Out With Robin Williams

Due to a conflict regarding breach of contract, marketing, and other matters, Disney and Williams engaged in a feud after the success of the animated feature. Williams stipulated in his contract that he didn't want the Genie to be used for marketing. To put it bluntly, Disney execs did not follow instructions.

As Williams put it, he didn't want to sell anything "as in-- Burger King, as in toys, as in stuff." This led to him not working with the studio for a long period of time. Robin Williams did later return to the studio to reprise his role once a more agreeable arrangement was met and apologies were made.

NEXT:  O Captain, My Captain: 10 Most Iconic Roles Of Robin Williams, Ranked

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How robin williams' genie in disney's aladdin changed animated comedy forever, the beloved comedian's iconic portrayal of a supporting character helped usher in the age of the animated celebrity vehicle..

(Photo by Walt Disney courtesy Everett Collection)

Robin Williams was an extraordinarily busy man in the early 1990s. In December of 1991 he starred in the blockbuster Hook and followed it up with 1992’s heavily hyped, mega-budgeted Toys. These films were largely sold on Williams’ name, and he was worried that his vocal turn as a mischievous but gold-hearted genie in Aladdin, for which he was paid the union minimum of $75,000, would overshadow the movies for which he was being compensated handsomely.

So Williams struck an unusual deal with Disney, who agreed not to market Aladdin as a Robin Williams movie. He didn’t want his name used in advertising or promotion, going so far as to dictate that the Genie character couldn’t take up more than 25 percent of the movie poster. Generally, actors want to draw as much attention to their work as humanly possible, particularly if they’re an incorrigible ham like the late, lamented Williams was, so this was notable.

It seems a little ridiculous today to worry that  Aladdin might possibly overshadow his more central turn in Toys, since the former   went on to become the top-grossing film of 1992 while the latter was an enormous bomb, but Williams didn’t want people to focus on his performance in Aladdin. Of course, it became one of the most talked about vocal performances of all time, and the neat little gig he’d squeezed into his schedule ended up changing the way American animated films were made and marketed forever.

It’s not too much of a stretch to say that the history of American animation can roughly be divided into pre- Aladdin and post- Aladdin eras. Though the film rode the wave of late 1980s/early 1990s Disney hits like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and The Beast, it also represented a brash new beginning. After Aladdin, animated movies became increasingly star-driven. It’s doubtful anyone but the most dedicated fan would be able to tell you who voiced the title characters in Pinocchio or Cinderella, but in the age of Shrek and Kung Fu Panda, studios now frequently advertise animated films on the basis of the movie stars providing the lead voices.

Williams is so synonymous with Aladdin that, re-watching the film, I was shocked to discover that the big blue scene-stealer Williams gave life to doesn’t make his first appearance in his popular form until 35 minutes have elapsed. Even after his introduction, there are still long stretches where he’s offscreen. Yet Williams’ presence dominates the film to such an extent that it feels like a starring vehicle for the beloved comedian and Academy Award winning actor, even though, when it comes to screen time, it’s undeniably a supporting role.

Genie injects an exhilarating rush of adrenaline and excitement whenever he appears onscreen, but Williams’ wildly entertaining presence also helps distract from a take on Arab culture and gender that is, shall we say, problematic at best. The film’s opening song, “Arabian Nights,” originally contained the lyric,

“Oh, I come from a land, From a faraway place, Where the caravan camels roam. Where they cut off your ear If they don’t like your face. It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.”

Arab-American rights groups understandably complained about the song and film’s grim depiction of Arab culture, so the latter half of the stanza was rewritten:

“Where it’s flat and immense, And the heat is intense. It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.”

It speaks to how tone-deaf and oblivious Disney was that even the amended, revised, less racist version of the lyrics still depicts the Arab world as “barbaric.” The film then sets about illustrating the point, introducing its title character (voiced by Scott Weinger ) as a self-described “street rat,” a small-time thief perpetually one step ahead of the dark-skinned, big-nosed, racist Arab stereotypes who litter the film.

In sharp contrast to the sword-wielding brutes that pursue him relentlessly, Aladdin looks like Tom Cruise with a serious tan, while his love interest, Princess Jasmine, is ridiculously over-sexualized, even by Disney standards. The primary goal of the character’s animators seems to have been to show as much midriff and cleavage as possible in every scene. When Jafar absconds with her late in the film, she’s outfitted in a harem girl costume that calls to mind Princess Leia’s slave girl costume from The Return of the Jedi, which likewise ignited the nascent sexual imaginations of multiple generations of kids who probably shouldn’t have been watching in the first place.

The film takes its sweet time introducing the big blue guy, but when he finally appears onscreen,  Aladdin becomes another movie altogether — looser, goofier, and more manic. When I was a film critic and Robin Williams was still alive, I generally bristled when a movie became little more than a rickety showcase for his improvisation.

I liked Williams best when he was restrained and dramatic, but playing a force of nature like Genie perfectly suits his more-is-more sensibility. His persona informs the performance to such an extent that he seems to be playing himself, the ad-libbing maniac and wildcard comic genius, as much as he’s playing the character. Few actors could claim to be as lively and ebullient as he was, and here the animators have a blast realizing his goofy flights of comedic fancy.

It doesn’t make sense for a genie from a different era to launch into Rodney Dangerfield and Jack Nicholson impersonations, for example, but Robin Williams was known for rapidly cycling through a stable of well-known characters, some of them specific people and some of them broad archetypes. He even manages to smuggle a subtle genie-human gay marriage joke into the G-rated Disney movie (incidentally, it probably should have been PG-13, what with all its scary and sexual imagery) when he says to his human charge, “Oh, Al. I’ m gettin’ kinda fond of you, kid . Not that I wanna pick out curtains or anything.”

It speaks to Williams’ gifts as an actor, and how thoroughly he made the role his own. He packs an awful lot of sincerity, kindness, and pathos into the line “I’m gettin’ kinda fond of you,” and he does so in a relative vacuum, as the comparatively bland Weinger doesn’t give him a whole lot to work with. Yet the relationship between Aladdin and Genie is tender and sweet and memorable all the same, and that’s entirely because of the soul and substance Williams brings to the role.

Like many of the star-driven, smartass, meta-textual animated comedies that would follow, Aladdin  is overflowing with in-jokes and references to other fairy tale and cartoon characters, many of them from Disney’s overflowing catalog. Late in the film, for example, Genie wears a Goofy hat — as in the Disney character Goofy’s hat, not just a goofy-looking hat, although, to be fair, it’s plenty goofy-looking as well — and an outfit that was apparently a winking tribute to a short film Williams had made for a Disney studio tour in the late 1980s.

But the film also represents a throwback to the impish, spry comedy of 1930s- and ’40s-era Looney Tunes and Disney’s own distant past, in large part because Williams exists both inside and outside of the frame. He’s at once the nitro-fueled engine driving the plot and the comedy, as well as the emotions, but he’s also a sassy, almost Bugs Bunny-like outsider heckling the action from an ironic distance. Genie may not be onscreen all that much, but Aladdin unmistakably belongs to Williams.

The only real competition he has for the audience’s attention comes, appropriately enough, from another motormouthed comedian famous for not having much of a filter: Gilbert Gottfried as Iago, the pet parrot of villain Jafar. If anything, Gottfried cuts an even more American and more contemporary figure than Williams does, even if he’s playing, you know, a scheming parrot.

Aladdin flags whenever Iago or Genie are offscreen, because, as is generally the case with Disney movies, the leads are bland and generic. Gottfried and Williams lent this star-crossed fairy tale romance a subversive, wisecracking, unmistakably contemporary sensibility that eventually came to characterize many, if not most, animated comedies.

That wasn’t inherently a positive development. Too many animated comedies have used celebrity-intensive casts, wall-to-wall pop-culture references, and regular violations of the fourth wall as a cheap, lazy crutch. Aladdin remains a delight as long as you ignore everything that doesn’t have to do with Genie or Williams, but the movies that followed in its wake have generally been abysmal, glib and gimmicky, pandering and facile.

Considering the enormous commercial success of the live-action Beauty and The Beast and the public’s enduring fascination with Aladdin , it should come as no surprise that the film is being remade as a live-action blockbuster by Guy Ritchie. As of last month, Will Smith is reportedly in talks to play Genie, although Kevin Hart may be in contention as well. Those are some very big, very pointy shoes to fill, obviously. Not only is Genie sacred to millennials and Gen Xers, but whoever lands the role will have to compete with what could very well have been the single most influential, acclaimed voice performance in cinematic history.

Nathan Rabin if a freelance writer, columnist, the first head writer of The A.V. Club and the author of four books, most recently Weird Al: The Book (with “Weird Al” Yankovic) and You Don’t Know Me But You Don’t Like Me.

Follow Nathan on Twitter: @NathanRabin

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Aladdin (1992 film)

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"Imagine if you had three wishes, three hopes, three dreams, and they all could come true." —Tagline

Aladdin is the thirty-first animated feature film in the Disney Animated Canon which was released on November 25, 1992 as the fourth entry of the Disney Renaissance. Inspired by the story of Aladdin and the magic lamp from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights , the film is centered on a young "street rat" in the kingdom of Agrabah who uses the power of a shape-shifting genie to win the heart of the beautiful Princess Jasmine . Unbeknownst to them, Jafar , advisor to the Sultan , plots to use the genie to take over the kingdom.

Directed by John Musker and Ron Clements , Aladdin was released at the peak stretch of the Disney renaissance era beginning with The Little Mermaid . The film was the most successful film of 1992 with over $217 million in domestic revenues and $504 million worldwide. The success of the film led Disney to produce two direct-to-video sequels: The Return of Jafar (1994) and Aladdin and the King of Thieves (1996). Additionally, Disney would produce Aladdin , an animated television series which was set between the two sequels and a  series of video games  for different platforms in 1993. In 2014, a stage adaptation premiered on Broadway, which would go on to win a Tony Award. In 2019, Walt Disney Pictures released a live-action adaptation of the 1992 animation.

• 2.1 Additional Voices
• 3.2 Additional Voices
• 4 Development
• 7 Reception
• 8.1.1 Original Posters by John Alvin
• 8.1.2 Miscellaneous
• 8.2.1 Unused Posters and Sketches
• 8.2.2 Miscellaneous
• 8.3 Screenshots
• 8.4 Merchandise
• 9.1 Original release
• 10.1 Cameos and other Disney references
• 11 External links

" Arabian Nights "

The film starts with a street peddler , guiding us through the streets of the fictional Arabian city of Agrabah , which is based mainly on a medieval city in the Middle East, the home of the 1001 Arabian Nights , and there are some inconsistencies in the time period. After trying to sell us on his wares, he pulls out an old oil lamp , claiming it "once changed the course of a young man's life. A young man who like this lamp was more than what he seemed: A diamond in the rough."

The peddler then begins to tell us a tale, beginning on a dark night, where the Sultan's Grand Vizier, Jafar , meets with a thief named Gazeem , who hands over half of a gold scarab beetle , of which Jafar has the second half. Putting them together, the beetle flies off, before causing a giant tiger's head to rise from the sand: A place known as the Cave of Wonders .

Jafar summons Gazeem to enter, instructing him to retrieve a lamp inside. However, upon approaching the Tiger's Head, it speaks that only one may enter: "One whose worth lies far within: the Diamond in the Rough!" Gazeem still attempts to enter upon Jafar's orders, but upon entering the tiger's mouth, it bites down on the thief, closing off the entryway before instructing Jafar again to seek out the Diamond in the Rough it was referring to. It is then that Jafar realizes he needs to find the Diamond in the Rough in order to enter. Jafar seeks to become sultan himself and become the new ruler of Agrabah.

" One Jump Ahead "

The next day, on the streets of Agrabah, a street urchin named Aladdin is struggling to steal a loaf of bread, along with his monkey, Abu. After outwitting some of the palace guards led by their captain, Razoul , the two settle down to eat their spoils, but are put off from satisfying their stomachs by a couple of hungry children. Aladdin and Abu give the two their bread, but are then sidetracked when a royal prince marches through the streets, and claims Aladdin to be nothing but "a worthless street rat." Aladdin and Abu then retire to their abode, with Aladdin promising his friend that someday, things will be better and people will see him for what he really is instead of as a public menace.

The Sultan , meanwhile, is having problems with finding a prince for his daughter, Princess Jasmine , to marry, especially when the last suitor, whom is the same one who insulted Aladdin earlier, leaves after Jasmine's pet tiger Rajah bites into his pants. The Sultan talks to Jasmine, who claims she is tired of living her life being cooped up behind walls. The Sultan goes to consult with his advisor, Jafar. By mesmerizing him with his magical snake staff, Jafar convinces the Sultan that Jafar needs the Sultan's blue diamond ring to find Jasmine a husband. Jafar actually needs the ring to discover the identity of the "Diamond in the Rough."

Jasmine, who does not want to be married off, decides to run away disguised as a peasant girl. However, her act of giving an apple to a hungry little boy lands her in trouble with the street merchant until Aladdin intervenes and leads Jasmine away just in time before she can lose a hand as payment for the fruit.

Meanwhile, Jafar uses the blue diamond ring of the Sultan's and consults The Sands of Time, and discovers the identity of the "Diamond in the Rough": Aladdin.

Aladdin has retreated with Jasmine to his and Abu's place, and she is rather taken by his kindness. However, Aladdin is suddenly set upon by the Royal Guards. It is then that Jasmine reveals herself to them, demanding Aladdin be released. However, Razoul claims he is acting under orders from Jafar, so Jasmine will need to speak with him to get Razoul to release Aladdin. When Jasmine confronts Jafar, he lies to her by saying he had already been executed for "kidnapping the princess." As Jasmine runs to the water fountain after confronting Jafar, she begins weeping over Aladdin's loss, and Rajah comforts her.

In actuality, Aladdin has been imprisoned in the Royal Dungeon. Abu manages to free Aladdin, but are then met within the dungeon by an older prisoner, in reality a disguised Jafar, who shows Aladdin a hidden passageway out of the dungeon to free and take him to the Cave of Wonders. At the entrance, Jafar informs Aladdin that if he brings back the lamp, he will be rewarded. The Cave's tiger-shaped head allows Aladdin to enter, but he can only touch the lamp and nothing else. Aladdin and Abu venture deep into the cavern, where they first encounter a magic carpet , that then leads them to the lamp's location. Aladdin successfully retrieves the lamp, but Abu violates the rule the Cave's guardian imposed, and seizes a large ruby, enraging the tiger guardian, causing the cave to begin to collapse on them. Using the magic carpet, Aladdin and Abu manage to get to the entrance to the cave, where the disguised Jafar pleads for Aladdin to give him the lamp. Aladdin does so, and Jafar then reveals a dagger, intending to kill him. Luckily, Abu bites Jafar's arm, and Aladdin and Abu fall both back into the cavern, as the giant Tiger's Head disappears under the sand. Aladdin, Abu, and Carpet are trapped in the Cave of Wonders. Jafar then laughingly reaches for the lamp only to find it is gone because Abu stole it back.

In the palace, a weeping Jasmine is comforted by the Sultan and informs him that Jafar has done something terrible. The Sultan comforts Jasmine and gets her to tell him what happened. When Jafar comes back, the Sultan confronts him for having an innocent person beheaded and informs him that he must discuss sentencing prisoners with him from now on.

" Friend Like Me "

Deep within the cave, Aladdin begins to examine the lamp, finding a worn inscription on the side of it. Aladdin discovers that the lamp is home to an eccentric, fun-loving genie (simply named "Genie"), who will grant him any three wishes, excluding wishes to force a person to fall in love, kill someone, bring someone back from the dead, or give his master extra wishes.

Aladdin tricks Genie into getting them out of the cave, without technically wishing for him to do so. Once out of the cave, and in a small oasis, Aladdin gets to know Genie, and asks him what he would wish for if he had the chance; Genie says he would wish for freedom, but that can only be granted if his master is benevolent enough to free him with a wish. Aladdin promises to set Genie free with his last wish.

Aladdin and Genie.

Aladdin, who has fallen in love with Jasmine, is disappointed that he could not wish to make her fall in love with him. However, the law states that only a prince can marry a princess, so he wishes to become a prince. Therefore, as his first wish, Genie turns Aladdin into a fabulously rich prince, and Abu is transformed into a large gray elephant to become Aladdin's mount, while Genie then goes further to make Aladdin's entrance into the palace one that will impress all of Agrabah.

Meanwhile, Jafar, who is worried that Jasmine might have him beheaded as punishment for supposedly having Aladdin executed, comes up with the idea to convince the Sultan to let him become her husband with the help of his talking parrot and main assistant, Iago . He later tries to mesmerize the Sultan into granting this request with his staff. However, his plans are interrupted when a large and noisy royal procession enters the kingdom, proclaiming the arrival of "Prince Ali Ababwa" (aka Aladdin in his new persona). The procession is huge, with riches, exotic animals, hundreds of servants, hundreds of Belly Dancers, Hundreds of Harem Girls, Belly Dancing slaves, Belly Dancing flunkies and Aladdin himself. Aladdin's entourage bounds into the palace, impressing the Sultan. Jafar appears suspicious and cold toward the new suitor. Aladdin is taken to Jasmine, who is happy, unimpressed and rebuffs Aladdin's charms, thinking him to be another ordinary rich and self-important prince like the previous ones and is Personal Slave Girl for belly dancing. However, when Aladdin removes his turban to shoo away Rajah, Personal Slave Girl Jasmine is reminded of the street urchin.

" A Whole New World "

Aladdin tries to gain Personal Slave Girl Jasmine's interest again by telling her how rich and powerful he is, but she remains steadfastly ambivalent. Aladdin decides to leave Personal Slave Girl Jasmine and steps off on his magic carpet. Jasmine chooses instead to ride with him. Afterwards, the carpet takes them to China, and Personal Slave Girl Jasmine tricks Aladdin into admitting he's the street urchin she met in the marketplace. Aladdin naturally wishes to impress her, so he deceives her by telling her that he really is a prince and had just pretended to be a commoner in order to escape the restrictions of palace life, much like what Jasmine did, which she relates to. Aladdin brings Personal Slave Girl Jasmine back to the palace and the two of them share their first kiss together.

Jafar is afraid that "Prince Abooboo", as he incorrectly calls him, may win Jasmine over, ruining his own scheme to marry her, but orders Aladdin out of the way. He orders Razoul and the guards to capture and kidnap Aladdin. The guards end up having Aladdin gagged with a white handkerchief and tied up in metal manacles (which is not a problem, as Razoul, the chief guard, is plagued with a lust for killing). He informs him that he has "worn out his welcome," and a guard clubs Aladdin unconscious, then drops Aladdin over a cliff into the sea. They have attached to his ankles a large metal ball-and-chain, so that he sinks faster. He hits the bottom, and his turban floats down. The lamp tumbles out and he begins to struggle towards it (which is difficult as the ball-and-chain attached to his ankles pulls him back), but passes out from the lack of oxygen before he can reach it. Aladdin, bound and gagged, slides down towards the lamp, and rolls over, causing it to rub against his fingers. Genie appears (though apparently interrupted in the midst of taking a bath), and rescues Aladdin, using up his second wish.

Jasmine has chosen a suitor.

Aladdin and Genie return to the palace and Aladdin confronts Jafar over having him almost killed. Jafar uses his cobra staff to try to convince the Sultan that Aladdin is lying, but Aladdin, seeing what he is doing, grabs the staff and shatters it. He then shows the Sultan that Jafar has been controlling him and plotting against him. The Sultan calls for the guards to arrest Jafar, but Jafar manages to escape, and, before doing so, sees the lamp in Aladdin's possession. The Sultan is convinced that his troubles are over as Jasmine has finally chosen a suitor.

All seems well, but the future responsibilities of being the new sultan begin to distress Aladdin. He realizes that his prince wish might wear off if the Genie is freed and begins to consider going back on his promise to free Genie so he can keep a wish in reserve. Feeling betrayed by his friend, a heartbroken Genie angrily goes back inside the lamp, pointing out how much Aladdin has lied to get where he is. Chastened, especially after taking his anger at Genie out on Abu and Carpet, Aladdin decides to tell Jasmine the whole truth of the matter. Unfortunately, Aladdin leaves the lamp in his chamber and Jafar summons Iago to steal it. With the lamp in hand, Jafar becomes Genie's next master, giving him three wishes. His first wish is to become sultan. When the former Sultan and Jasmine refuse to bow to him, he wishes to be the most powerful sorcerer in the world. Now Jafar forces them to bow to him.

Jafar then uses his magic to expose Aladdin and then banish him with a makeshift rocket to "the ends of the Earth", in one of the palace towers. "The ends of the Earth" appear to be Antarctica, the mountains of Austria, the Arctic or possibly the Himalayas. Luckily, Abu and Carpet are banished with him, and Aladdin is able to fly back to Agrabah, intent on reclaiming the lamp.

Jasmine distracting Jafar.

Meanwhile, Jafar, who is angry that Jasmine does not wish to become his queen, makes a wish for Genie to cause her to fall in love with him so he can make her his queen. Genie tries to inform him that he could not grant that wish, but this only frustrates Jafar. Jasmine, who sees Aladdin sneaking into the palace, pretends that the wish has been granted, much to Genie's surprise, in order to distract Jafar. She even goes so far as to kiss him, causing Aladdin, Abu, the Genie and even Iago to nearly vomit in disgust. At first, it seems to be working; Jafar, however, sees Aladdin's reflection in Jasmine's crown (made from her shackles via a performance of sorcery) and confronts him before he can reach the lamp.

Final battle.

Jafar uses magic to imprison or transfigure all the good characters other than Aladdin himself so they could not steal the lamp back, with Jasmine being trapped in an hourglass. Jafar eventually turns himself into a giant cobra and fights Aladdin. When Aladdin appears to be defeated, Jafar informs Aladdin he was a fool for thinking he could defeat "the most powerful being on earth." Aladdin informs Jafar he is not the most powerful being on earth and that honor belongs to Genie, since he gave Jafar his power in the first place.

Jafar decides to use his final wish to become the most powerful genie in the world. Jafar is at first convinced that his new powers will allow him to rule the universe, but he realizes too late that Aladdin tricked him, since as a genie, Jafar is no longer free. Jafar is suddenly shackled and is sucked into the new lamp created by his wish and is trapped (along with Iago, who tries to flee, but he's dragged by the villain).

Of course, since Aladdin is now no longer a prince he is not eligible to marry Jasmine. Genie however insists that Aladdin use his final wish to make himself a prince again, but nevertheless, he keeps his promise and wishes for Genie's freedom. When all seems lost for Aladdin and Jasmine, the Sultan decides that, between his loyalty to Genie and his courage in defeating Jafar, Aladdin has proven his worth; the Sultan therefore changes the law so that "the princess shall marry whomever she deems worthy" meaning Aladdin and Jasmine can be married. Genie flies away to see the world while the happy couple begin their new life together.

At night, while the fireworks begin popping, Aladdin and Jasmine share another kiss and fly off with Carpet near the moon. As "The End" writes in the sky, the moon laughs and turns around to show that it was really the Genie. Genie then pulls up the scene and says "made ya look", while the film ends.

• Brad Kane as Aladdin (singing)
• Robin Williams as the Genie
• Bruce Adler as the Peddler (singing)
• Lea Salonga as Jasmine (singing)
• Jonathan Freeman as Jafar
• Frank Welker as Abu , Rajah , Cave of Wonders
• Gilbert Gottfried as Iago
• Douglas Seale as the Sultan
• Jim Cummings as Razoul
• Christopher Curry as Farouk
• Corey Burton as Camel, Fish Merchant
• Danny Glover as Fisherman
• John Candy as Necklace Merchant
• Jason Beghe as Mohammed
• John Cygan as Prince Achmed , Sheep
• Charlie Adler as Gazeem , Melon Merchant, Nuts Merchant
• Joe Alaskey as Walter
• Jack Angel as Arab
• Debi Derryberry as Harem Girl
• Mickie McGowan as Vendor
• John O'Hurley as Narrator
• Sherry Lynn as Fat Woman with Red Lipstick
• Phil Proctor as Guards

Additional Voices [ ]

• Philip Clarke - Guards
• Jennifer Darling - Agrabah Woman
• Bruce Gooch - Guards
• John DeMita
• David Cowgill
• Jeff Bergman
• Joe Alaskey
• Chuck McCann
• Greg Proops
• Brad Garrett
• Michael Bell
• Mary Kay Bergman
• Carlos Alazraqui
• Colleen O'Shaughnessey
• Jess Harnell
• Barbara Goodson
• Lloyd Sherr
• Russi Taylor
• Mona Marshall
• Bill Farmer
• Rodger Bumpass
• Jeff Bennett
• Jerry Houser - Guards
• Tress MacNeille
• April Winchell
• Laraine Newman
• S. Scott Bullock
• Vera Lockwood - Portly Agrabah Woman
• Gregg Berger
• Patrick Pinney - Guards

International Versions [ ]

• Abu – Frank Welker
• Aladdin – Søren Launbjerg
• Genie - Ånden – Preben Kristensen
• Jasmin - Dialog – Ilia Swainson
• Jasmin - Sang – Louise Norby
• Jafar – Nis Bank-Mikkelsen
• Jago – Torben Zeller
• Sultanen – Ove Sprogøe
• Peddler – Kurt Ravn
• Peter Zhelder
• Vibeke Dueholm as Belly Dancer
• Lasse Lunderskov
• Lars Thiesgaard

Development [ ]

The initial version of Aladdin was greatly different. Aladdin was portrayed as much younger, and living with his single mother . His motive was making his mother proud, which was addressed in the Howard Ashman and Alan Menken -penned number " Proud of Your Boy ." There were also two genie characters, the Genie of the Lamp and the Genie of the Ring. Aladdin's friends in these drafts were a trio of humans, named Babkak, Omar, and Kassim. This version of Aladdin was panned by test screeners, forcing the creative team to rework the movie over eight days. This was referred to as "Black Friday" by the filmmakers. Jeffrey Katzenberg accepted this new outline. Next, writers Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot were brought on to make further changes to the story. First, the mother character was scrapped. There was also the concept of unlimited wishes from the genie, which Rossio and Eilliot also scrapped in favor of three wishes as a means to raise the stakes. Aladdin's friends were scrapped in favor of a monkey, Abu.

A few months later, Glen Keane 's Aladdin had to be reworked to appear older and more dashing, so to better match Mark Henn 's Princess Jasmine. Aladdin's personality was also examined to refrain from repeating the "boring" Prince Charming archetype that appeared in previous Disney fairytales. Tom Cruise was referred to as the basis for Aladdin's redesign. The Genie was designed and animated by Eric Goldberg , who was inspired by Al Hirschfeld 's signature curvy style. This style, coupled with Arabic influenced the entire movie, from its characters to its backgrounds. This broad, yet elegant style was a major departure from what came before, being Beauty and the Beast , but the filmmakers believed that the broader art style better complimented the tone of the movie, which was much more of an exuberant comedy than most Disney animated features before it.

Voice actors included Robin Williams as the Genie . Although this was not the first time in which a major actor provided voice-over work for an animated film, it was the first major American animated feature film in which particular attention was paid to a celebrity cast member - such as a major movie star - in the film as part of its promotion. This action by Disney caused an argument between them and Williams, as Williams agreed to be paid a smaller sum if his name and fame were not used to directly promote the film. This has led to a subsequent increased attention to the casts of later productions, such as Toy Story and Shrek , as a major element of animated film marketing. Linda Larkin , who voices Jasmine, was chosen for the role in part because of her unique voice which differentiated Jasmine from previous Disney heroines. Scott Weinger , the voice of Aladdin, sent an audition tape with his mother playing the part of the Genie. Some filmmakers joked that Scott's mother stole the show in the recording.

The original songs were written by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman , and Menken and Tim Rice after Ashman's death. Menken received the 1992 Academy Award for Original Music Score of Aladdin . The main soundtrack song " A Whole New World " (sung in the closing credits by Peabo Bryson & Regina Belle) won a Grammy Award as well as the Academy Award for Best Song in 1992. When writing the songs, Ashman and Menken were inspired by a mix of Fats Waller, Cab Calloway numbers from the 1920s, the jazzy music of classic Fleshier cartoons such as the Betty Boop shorts, and Arabian pieces. Writing the songs of Aladdin coincided with the production of The Little Mermaid . In fact, the positive reception of " Under the Sea "—a high energy musical number—was what inspired Ashmen and Menken when writing " Friend Like Me ".

Some original songs before the story was rewritten and half of the characters were cut:

• " Proud of Your Boy " (supposed to be sung by Aladdin to his mother [who was later removed from the story] while she was sleeping)
• " Call Me A Princess "
• " Why Me? "
• " Babkak, Omar, Aladdin, Kassim "
• " Humiliate the Boy " (sung by Jafar, cut as it was considered too cruel for the film)
• " High Adventure "
• " To Be Free "
• " You Count On Me " (which was something Aladdin sung to Abu)

Rough versions of "High Adventure" and "Proud of Your Boy" can be found in the Special Edition soundtrack, while "Why Me" was recorded in the studio with Jonathan Freeman and can be found on the compilation album Aladdin: Magical Selections . Some deleted songs were later incorporated into the stage adaptation.

Releases [ ]

After a limited release on November 11, 1992, Aladdin debuted on November 25, 1992, in 1,131 theaters, grossing $19.2 million in its opening weekend – number two at the box office, behind Home Alone 2: Lost in New York . It took eight weeks for the film to reach number one at the US box office, breaking the record for the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve with $32.2 million. The film held the top spot five times during its 22-week run. Aladdin was the most successful film of 1992 grossing $217 million in the United States and over $504 million worldwide. It was the biggest gross for an animated film until The Lion King two years later.

It was first released on VHS on October 1, 1993, as part of the Walt Disney Classics line. In its first week of availability, it sold over 10.8 million copies and went on to sell over 25 million in total (a record only broken by the later release of The Lion King ). It entered "Disney Vault" moratorium on April 30, 1994.

On October 5, 2004, Aladdin was released for the last time on VHS and for the first time on DVD, as part of Disney's Platinum Edition line of animated classic DVDs.

A Diamond Edition of Aladdin was eventually released in the United States on October 13, 2015.

Reception [ ]

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 95% of critics gave the film a positive review based on a sample of 73 reviews, with an average rating of 8.14/10. The site's consensus reads, "A highly entertaining entry in Disney's renaissance era, Aladdin is beautifully drawn, with near-classic songs and a cast of scene-stealing characters." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 86 out of 100 based on 25 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a rare "A+" grade.

For the first time in 4K UHD Blu-ray, the film was released on September 10, 2019 as part of the Walt Disney Signature Collection.

Gallery [ ]

Images from the 1992 film  Aladdin .

Promotional [ ]

Original posters by john alvin [ ].

Miscellaneous [ ]

Concept Art [ ]

Unused posters and sketches [ ].

Screenshots [ ]

Merchandise [ ].

Original release [ ]

• Seven different video games based on the movie were produced. Each one released for the Sega Genesis, Sega Game Gear, Super Nintendo Entertainment System (later ported to the Game Boy Advance), Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Sony PlayStation. The PlayStation version is actually an alternate sequel to the film, telling a whole new story compared to the theatrical release or either of its direct-to-video siblings.
• This is because the Peddler was originally supposed to return at the end singing a reprise of the opening song "Arabian Nights", revealing he himself was at one time the Genie, but had transformed into a human.
• This was changed during production and the Peddler only reappeared at the end of Aladdin and the King of Thieves , singing the "Arabian Nights" reprise that had already been recorded for the first film.
• In Agrabah, Aladdin teams up with Sora to fight off the Heartless invading his home.
• Princess Jasmine was kidnapped by Jafar and the Heartless, as she was revealed to be one of the Princesses of Heart.
• Once the Keyhole was sealed, Genie joins up with Sora as a summon under Aladdin's request to help them save Jasmine.
• A facsimile of Agrabah was also used for Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories for the Game Boy Advance.
• The world returns for Kingdom Hearts II , although the story involves more elements from The Return of Jafar , with the peddler from the start of the first film replacing Abis Mal.
• Brad Kane for Scott Weinger (Aladdin)
• Lea Salonga for Linda Larkin (Jasmine)
• Bruce Adler for Robin Williams (The Merchant), although Williams did do his own singing voice for the Genie.
• The show has been quite popular due to the fact that while roughly 90% of it is scripted, the dialogue of the Genie constantly changes to reflect popular culture of the time.
• The show also carries a new original song, "To Be Free" written for the show and sung by Jasmine
• While in this film, the Genie only transforms twice into another Disney character; throughout the entire trilogy, he performs such transformations 12 times (not counting his second appearance as Jafar).
• In The Story of Prince Ahmed and Periebanou , a story found in the 1001 Arabian Nights , "Prince Ali" is the name of a brother of Prince Ahmed, the hero of the story.
• It has been said that Bill Plympton was originally considered to animate the Genie, as his animated shorts tend to feature many transformations.
• Possibly a reference to the 1926 animated film The Adventures of Prince Achmed .
• The design of the Genie resembles that of a character shown in a 1959 Disney short, " Eyes in Outer Space " which can be found in the Walt Disney Treasures: Tomorrowland DVD set.
• The animated character of Aladdin was originally designed based on actor Michael J. Fox but during production it was decided that he wasn't "appealing enough" and they decided to draw to instead resemble actor Tom Cruise.
• Aladdin was one of the American Film Institute's 500 nominees for the 100 Funniest American Movies, but it did not make the final list.
• This is the first Disney movie to mention Allah or any other religious figure outside of Christianity.
• This was the last Disney film completed and the first Disney film to be released in theaters when Disney Legend Sterling Holloway passed away.
• In fact, the many of the Disney animators took some inspiration from The Thief and the Cobbler , and some of the crew (most notably Eric Goldberg ) even worked on both films.
• Ironically, after Williams was kicked off his pet project, the new producers retooled it into a mockbuster of Aladdin and released it in America in 1995 under then Disney subsidiary Miramax Films .
• The original theatrical release had alternate lyrics to " Arabian Nights ", and no dialogue after the end credits, the VHS release has new lyrics, and the DVD and Blu-ray releases have the audio of the Genie thanking the audience for watching right after the end credits, so don't expect to see the same version twice.
• This the fifth Disney animated classic to feature the 2006 Walt Disney Pictures logo currently with just Disney .
• After the successful runs of the IMAX versions of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King , a trailer was made for an IMAX version of this film, but it was ultimately scrapped.

Cameos and other Disney references [ ]

• When Rajah changes back to his normal self, his head turns into Mickey Mouse for a split second.
• The Genie's head briefly turns into that of Pinocchio .
• The Genie pulls Sebastian (from The Little Mermaid out of a recipe book as the first few notes of " Under the Sea " are played).
• Beast from Beauty and the Beast , can be seen among the stack of the Sultan's toy figurines.
• Genie dons a Goofy hat before leaving on his vacation. This look was based on Williams' outfit from the film Back to Never Land at The Magic of Disney Animation in Disney-MGM Studios .
• Genie's appearance during the "phenomenal cosmic power" scene and Jafar's appearance as a genie are similar to that of the genie in the Walt Disney educational work film Our Friend the Atom .

External links [ ]

• Template:WP
• Template:Imdb title
• Template:Disney+ movie
• UltimateDisney.com DVD Review with Pictures
• 2 Arabian Nights

• Disney History / Movies

A Whole New World: Celebrating Aladdin’s 30th Anniversary

by Daniel Alpine · November 18, 2022

It began in 1988, a year before the release of The Little Mermaid . During that film’s production, lyricist Howard Ashman pitched the idea of an animated adaptation of the folk tale ,  Aladdin .

And everything after that is history…

Unfortunately, the early draft he wrote himself and later with Linda Woolverton was rejected.

Then Howard and Alan Menken were asked to work on  Beauty and the Beast .

However, after the directing of The Little Mermaid , John Musker, and Ron Clements heard about the  Aladdin idea and decided to direct this project. Unfortunately, after that, Howard Ashman passed away. 

In April of 1991, Ron and John presented the story reel of the entire movie to chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, but he didn’t really respond much. Afterward, he said that he was not pleased with this version and asked to start from scratch.

At first, this was a scary problem because the movie was scheduled to be released in November of the next year. But they were able to restructure the story that pleased Jeffrey. But that meant they had to cut several ideas.

The first thing was to delete Aladdin’s mother and make the character of Aladdin more of a Tom Cruise character. Then they made Princess Jasmine a strong character.

Before Howard’s death, he and Alan Menken wrote several songs for the early version of the story. But when the rewrites started, they decided to keep three of Howard’s songs. Then they brought in Tim Rice to collaborate with Alan on the rest of the songs.

This proved to be what Alan needed to move forward after Howard’s passing.

As is the case of any animated film, the voices play an important part. And  Aladdin was no exception. All of the voice actors, including Scott Weigner, Linda Larkin, Gilbert Gottfried, and Jonathan Freeman brought something special to their voice acting in the film. 

When John and Ron first came on board to direct the film, they immediately thought Robin Williams would be perfect for the Genie .

Photo: RICK DIAMOND/GETTY IMAGES

While they weren’t sure they could get him and his initial reluctance, Robin signed on for the film. 

What Robin was able to do was do funny lines that he would come up with after reading the script. But he was also able to bring sincerity to the part.

Art Direction

Image Credit: Bottleneck Gallery

Another notable aspect of  Aladdin was the style of the film. When animator Eric Goldberg came on to animate the Genie, he pitched the idea of basing the art direction on the style of caricaturist Al Hirshfeld.

This would inform the design of most of the characters and would make the film stand out from other Disney movies. 

After all that, Disney’s 30th animated film,  Aladdin , had its scheduled November 1992 release. It would receive critical acclaim and it would be the top-grossing film of the year.

At the Golden Globes and Academy Awards, the movie would win both Best Score and Best Song A Whole New World, and Robin Williams would personally win a special Golden Globe for his voice acting in the movie. 

Even after 30 years, Disney’s  Aladdin will continue to be a fan favorite and will delight audiences with its humor and story. How’s that for a wish come true.

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10 facts you never knew about Disney's 'Aladdin'

The live-action remake of Aladdin is headed to cinemas this week 27 years after the original animation was released.

Mena Massoud and Naomi Scott take on the lead roles in the film, directed by Guy Ritchie, with Will Smith filling Robin Williams’ boots as the Genie.

So before you enjoy a whole new world of Aladdin this week, here are xx facts about the movie to whet your appetite.

1. Aladdin is 309 years old

The story of “Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp” appeared in One Thousand and One Nights , in 1710, when French translator added it to the collection of Middle Eastern folk tales from the Islamic Golden Age.

According to Galland’s diaries, he had heard the story from a Syrian scholar in Aleppo though no one has found the original Arabic source for it.

Read more: Aladdin stars blame Genie backlash on unfinished CGI

2. It wasn’t set in the Middle East

Aladdin was actually set in a Chinese city, and Aladdin is not an orphan but a poor Chinese boy living with his mother. The assumption of a Middle Eastern origin comes mainly from the character names like Princess Badroulbadour, which means “full moon of full moons” in Arabic, also The Sultan is referred to as such and not the more Chinese term “Emperor.”

The dialogue is filled with devout Muslim remarks and platitudes too, suggesting this Chinese town was on the Silk Road route which cause many cities in the East to become multicultural.

3. Some character names come from The Thief of Bagdad

A British film released in 1940, The Thief of Bagdad featured the characters Jaffar, the villainous Grand Vizier and sorcerer, and Abu, a thief who aids the hero Ahmad,a Sultan who falls in love with the Princess from a neighbouring city.

In the 1992 animation and live-action film, Jafar is again the Grand Vizier while Abu is the name of Aladdin’s monkey sidekick.

4. Genie was written for Robin Williams

The animators convinced Williams to play the role by animating the Genie with using the comedian’s own stand-up routines.

If Williams had said no, there was a list of other stars for the role including John Candy, Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy, Martin Short, John Goodman, or Albert Brooks. Will Smith plays him in the sequel.

Read more: Scott on Jasmine’s feminist update

5. Aladdin’s look was based on Tom Cruise

Despite the character being Arab, animators had used Michael J. Fox as inspiration for his look but ultimately they based his appearance on Tom Cruise.

''There's a confidence with all of his attitudes and his poses,” lead animator Glen Keane said of Cruise.

6. Iago is named after a Shakespeare character

Jafar's pet parrot is named for the villain from the Bard's tragedy Othello . Iago is the title character's best friend who manipulates him into killing his love Desdemona.

The animation has Gilbert Gottfried voicing the character, who took the role after both Danny DeVito and Joe Pesci turned it down. Alan Tudyk voices him in the live-action.

7. The lyrics to “Arabian Nights” were changed in 2017

The first song of the film features the lyric, “Where they cut off your ear/If they don't like your face/It's barbaric, but hey, it's home,” which many people argued was an offensive stereotype of the Arab world.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee campaigned to have it changed and Disney did, slightly, to “Where it's flat and immense/And the heat is intense/It's barbaric, but hey, it's home.”

They kept the “barbaric” line in to AAADC, and most Arab people’s annoyance, claiming that it referred to the climate. The live-action movie omits it.

8. 2,000 people auditioned for the lead roles

Disney put out a worldwide casting call for actors and singers from Arab or Asian backgrounds in order to play Aladdin and Jasmine.

This lasted months as producers reportedly found it difficult to find those who could do both but in the end Achraf Koutet, Mena Massoud, and George Kosturos got down to the final three for Aladdin while Naomi Scott and Tara Sutaria were the last two hopefuls for Jasmine.

Massoud and Scott were eventually cast and both do a pretty epic job in the movie.

9. The film was shot in the same place as Lawrence of Arabia

While most of the film was shot in the UK at Longcross Studios, desert scenes were shot in Jordan’s Wadi Rum desert.

Lawrence of Arabia was famously shot in this location as well as Star Wars: The Rise of the Skywalker and Denis Villeneuve's Dune.

10. Aladdin and Jasmine are covered up because equality

The Disney animation saw Aladdin and Jasmine wearing revealing outfits but for the live-action, costume designer Michael Wilkinson chose to have their chests and bellies covered up.

“For the same reason why we thought it wasn’t appropriate for Princess Jasmine to be flashing her belly button for half of the film, we also felt that once you make that leap from cartoon into live-action, you really have to make some adjustments,” Wilkinson told EW.

“We thought having so much skin showing on Aladdin for the whole film would be quite distracting on a human actor as opposed to a cartoon character.”

Aladdin is out now

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10 Things You Didn’t Know About Disney’s ‘Aladdin’

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Ah, 'Aladdin.' The Disney film that broke box office records, kept the comeback of Disney animation going and featured more pop culture references than you could shake a magic lamp at. Here are some little known facts about the making of this classic Disney movie.

It Featured a Ton of Deleted Characters

Lots of Disney movies have characters who don't make it into the final film, but 'Aladdin' has more than usual. There was Aladdin's long suffering mother, who tried to keep her son on the straight and narrow. Aladdin had three buddies - Babkak Omar and Kassim - who loafed around and sang barbershop songs with him. And there was the genie of the ring, a less powerful genie who stayed with Aladdin after he lost the genie of the lamp to Jafar. All of them were dumped in the name of story simplification.

...and a Ton of Deleted Songs

Lost characters mean lost songs , so 'Aladdin' has plenty of those as well. The bittersweet 'Proud Of Your Boy' was nixed when Aladdin's mother didn't make the cut. Aladdin's three buddies had three songs ('Babkak, Omar, Aladdin, Kassim,' 'How Quick They Forget' and 'High Adventure'). 'Count On Me,' a low-key "I want" song for Aladdin, was dropped in favor of 'One Jump Ahead' and its reprise. At least three attempts were made to give Jafar a full song before he ended up with a quick reprise of 'Prince Ali.' And then there's the wretched 'Call Me A Princess,' a song for a spoiled early version of Jasmine that was tossed almost as soon as it was written.

...And a Whole Deleted Script

Given how successful 'Aladdin' became, it's strange to think that the film was once on the brink of total disaster. About four months of work had already been completed on 'Aladdin' before "Black Friday," the day when then-Disney CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg told the team to scrap just about everything and start over, without any extra time to rework the convoluted and troubled story.

'Aladdin' was neither the first nor last film to have this kind of false start. Many other animated films have had first drafts that were scrapped and reworked early in production, including 'Toy Story' and 'Beauty and the Beast.'

It Caused a Rift Between Robin Williams and Disney

Robin Williams had a falling out with Disney over 'Aladdin.' He worked for scale on the film, partly out of gratitude for the studio making him a film star in 'Good Morning, Vietnam,' and partly in exchange for the studio downplaying his role in the film during promotion so that Williams could promote his upcoming movie 'Toys.' Disney complied on some fronts, but ignored the deal on others. (For instance, Williams was heavily featured in the film's promotion.)

Williams declined to voice the Genie in many subsequent projects and was replaced by Dan Castellaneta, best known as the voice of Homer Simpson. Disney and Williams eventually reconciled and Williams has since been named a Disney Legend.

The Flying Carpet Helped Usher in the Age of Computer Animation

Like most of the Disney Renaissance films, 'Aladdin' featured groundbreaking computer animation, most notably on the magic carpet. Computer animation was still in its infancy, so the carpet is actually a hybrid of hand-drawn and computer animation.

Randy Cartwright did the hand-drawn animation of the carpet and the computer-rendered rectangle was posed to match his drawings. The result was a character that moved like the rest of the film's cast and featured an intricate design that would've been impossible to draw one frame at a time.

Aladdin's Design Was Based on Tom Cruise

Aladdin's original design was younger, more cartoony, and loosely based on actor Michael J. Fox. But Jeffrey Katzenberg wanted the design changed, fearing that Aladdin wasn't a suitable leading man for the beautiful Jasmine. So Aladdin's design was reworked to be less Michael J. Fox and more Tom Cruise. However, animation on the movie had already started, so you can see traces of the old Aladdin design during 'Friend Like Me.'

The Plot Was Stolen, Er, Inspired By 'The Thief of Bagdad'

'Aladdin' is obviously based on the story from 'The Arabian Nights,' but it also drew inspiration from the 1940 film 'The Thief of Bagdad.' (The spelling difference is in the title.) Genies and magic carpets are standard for the genre, but the movie also features a naive sultan who is fascinated with toys and gadgets, a young thief named Abu and an evil vizier named Jaffar.

Two Women Inspired Jasmine

Jasmine's design draws inspiration from a number of sources, as do the designs for many Disney characters. She is partly based on animator Mark Henn's sister Beth, particularly her facial features.

Another inspiration for Jasmine is destined to remain anonymous. Mark Henn used to work at the Florida Disney studio, which had large windows overhead so that Disney World guests could watch the animators working. One day he look up and saw a young guest with very long black hair. Whether she knows it or not, this young lady inspired Princess Jasmine's long black tresses.

The Merchant was Going to be the Genie

There's a reason why Robin Williams voiced both the Genie and the merchant who introduces the story, and it's not because Disney didn't want to hire another actor.  The original ending had the merchant singing a reprise of 'Arabian Nights' and revealing that he was actually the Genie. It was cut in favor of the quick "made ya look" joke that took less time away from Aladdin and Jasmine and their happy ending. The lost reprise was eventually used for the ending of the direct-to-video sequel 'Aladdin and the King of Thieves.'

It Was Howard Ashman's Final Film

This was the last Disney film that lyricist Howard Ashman worked on. Ashman was passionate about doing 'Aladdin' and initially refused to work on 'Beauty and the Beast' so that he could begin writing songs for his pet project. What no one else knew at the time was that Ashman was suffering from AIDS and was running out of time. He passed away before he could finish 'Aladdin.' The remaining lyrics for the film's songs were written by Tim Rice.

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46 facts about the movie aladdin.

Written by Sharyl Colson

Modified & Updated: 02 Mar 2024

Reviewed by Sherman Smith

Welcome to a magical journey through the fascinating world of Aladdin! This beloved Disney movie has captured the hearts of audiences for decades with its enchanting story, memorable characters, and breathtaking animation. Released in 1992, Aladdin quickly became a box-office hit and a timeless classic that continues to entertain and inspire generations of moviegoers. With its Arabian Nights-inspired setting, dazzling musical numbers, and a lovable genie, Aladdin has secured its place in cinematic history. In this article, we will dive into 46 intriguing facts about the making of Aladdin, from its initial concept to its enduring legacy. So, grab your magic carpet and prepare to be amazed as we lift the veil on the secrets behind this cinematic gem.

Key Takeaways:

• “Aladdin” is a timeless Disney classic released in 1992, featuring a lovable street urchin, a magical genie, and a captivating love story set in the exotic world of Agrabah.
• The film won two Academy Awards and became the highest-grossing film of 1992, captivating audiences with its colorful animation, unforgettable characters, and iconic songs like “A Whole New World.”

Aladdin was released in 1992 by Walt Disney Animation Studios.

Aladdin, the animated film, was released by Walt Disney Animation Studios in 1992 and quickly became a beloved classic.

The movie is based on the tale from “One Thousand and One Nights”.

The story of Aladdin is derived from the tale of “One Thousand and One Nights,” also known as “Arabian Nights,” which is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales.

Robin Williams voiced the iconic character of Genie.

Robin Williams lent his voice to the unforgettable character of Genie, infusing the role with his unique humor and comedic timing.

Aladdin was the highest-grossing film of 1992.

Aladdin was a massive box office success, earning over $504 million worldwide, making it the highest-grossing film of 1992.

The movie won two Academy Awards.

Aladdin won two Academy Awards for Best Original Score and Best Original Song for the iconic “A Whole New World.”

Princess Jasmine was one of Disney’s first independent princesses.

Princess Jasmine was portrayed as a strong and independent princess, breaking away from the traditional damsel-in-distress archetype.

The character of Aladdin was modeled after Tom Cruise and Michael J. Fox.

Aladdin’s character design was influenced by the physical characteristics and charisma of actors Tom Cruise and Michael J. Fox .

The role of Genie was originally written for John Candy.

The role of Genie in Aladdin was originally written with John Candy in mind, but after his untimely death, Robin Williams was cast instead.

The Cave of Wonders was inspired by the Treasury at Petra.

The spectacular Cave of Wonders, which plays a pivotal role in the movie, draws inspiration from the Treasury building in the ancient city of Petra, Jordan.

Aladdin was the first Disney animated film to have a sequel.

Aladdin was the first Disney animated film to receive a direct-to-video sequel, titled “The Return of Jafar,” released in 1994.

The magic carpet has no dialogue in the movie.

The magic carpet, an enchanting character in its own right, does not speak throughout the entire movie but communicates through expressive movements.

The character of Jafar was inspired by actor Conrad Veidt.

The villainous Jafar was inspired by the iconic performance of actor Conrad Veidt in the 1922 silent film “The Thief of Bagdad.”

Robin Williams ad-libbed many of his lines as Genie.

Robin Williams brought his improvisational skills to the character of Genie, ad-libbing and adding his own jokes into the script.

The song “A Whole New World” won a Grammy Award.

The beautiful duet “A Whole New World” won a Grammy Award for Song of the Year in 1994.

The street rat in the beginning of the movie was an animator’s pet.

The little street rat seen in the beginning of the movie was actually an animator’s pet, drawn into the film as an Easter egg.

Aladdin was the first Disney animated film to have a character break the fourth wall.

Genie was the first Disney character to break the fourth wall and directly address the audience, adding a layer of comedic interaction.

The animators developed a new computer program to enhance the visualization of the carpet.

Due to the complexity of animating the magic carpet, the Disney animators developed a new computer program called CAPS (Computer Animation Production System) to bring it to life.

Aladdin was re-released in 2019 as a live-action adaptation.

In 2019, Disney released a live-action adaptation of Aladdin, starring Will Smith as the Genie, bringing a fresh take on the beloved story.

The movie inspired numerous video games.

Aladdin inspired a series of successful video games, including adaptations for various platforms such as Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo.

The character of Aladdin was originally going to be named Abu.

The protagonist was initially going to be named Abu, but the name was later given to Aladdin’s monkey companion.

The character of Jafar is one of Disney’s most iconic villains.

Jafar, with his sinister appearance and cunning nature, has become one of Disney’s most memorable and iconic villains.

The movie explores themes of identity and being true to oneself.

Aladdin encompasses underlying themes of self-discovery and embracing one’s true identity, resonating with audiences of all ages.

The Cave of Wonders entrance line, “Only one may enter here,” was improvised by Frank Welker.

Voice actor Frank Welker, who provided the voice for the Cave of Wonders, improvised the line “Only one may enter here” during the recording session.

The movie features a diverse cast of characters.

Aladdin showcases a diverse range of characters, including Aladdin himself, Princess Jasmine, and the lively Genie, representing different cultures and backgrounds.

Aladdin was the first Disney animated film to have a Broadway musical adaptation.

Following its success as an animated film, Aladdin was adapted into a Broadway musical in 2014, adding memorable songs and dazzling performances to the story.

The character of Iago the parrot was voiced by Gilbert Gottfried.

Comedian Gilbert Gottfried provided the distinct voice for the mischievous parrot, Iago, adding a touch of humor to the film.

Alan Menken composed the music for Aladdin.

Renowned composer Alan Menken created the enchanting music for Aladdin, which became an integral part of the film’s success.

Aladdin was the highest-grossing animated film of its time.

At the time of its release, Aladdin became the highest-grossing animated film ever, surpassing the success of previous Disney films.

The Genie’s appearance was partially inspired by a Hawaiian shirt.

The vibrant and colorful look of Genie was partly inspired by the patterns and colors found on a Hawaiian shirt.

The film showcases the importance of friendship and loyalty.

Aladdin highlights the value of true friendship and loyalty, as Aladdin and Genie forge a deep bond throughout the course of the movie.

The movie’s animation style drew inspiration from Middle Eastern art and architecture.

The art and architecture of the Middle East heavily influenced the animation style of Aladdin, creating a visually stunning world.

Aladdin was followed by a successful animated television series.

After the success of the film, Aladdin became a popular animated television series that ran from 1994 to 1995, further expanding the world of Agrabah.

The character of Aladdin was voiced by Scott Weinger.

Scott Weinger provided the voice for the lovable Aladdin, capturing the character’s charm and wit.

The movie features memorable and catchy songs.

Aladdin boasts a memorable soundtrack, including iconic songs such as “Friend Like Me” and “Prince Ali,” which have become instant classics.

Aladdin was the first Disney animated film to have a spin-off television series.

Following the success of the film, Aladdin became the first Disney animated feature to receive a spin-off television series, titled “Aladdin: The Animated Series.”

The movie explores the idea of love transcending social status.

Aladdin explores the idea that love knows no boundaries, as Aladdin and Jasmine come from different social backgrounds but find a deep connection.

The character design for Jafar was intentionally designed to be less comical than other Disney villains.

To create a menacing and formidable presence, Jafar’s character design was intentionally made to be more serious and less comical than other Disney villains.

The movie showcases themes of destiny and the power of choice.

Aladdin delves into themes of destiny and the power of choice, highlighting that one can shape their own path in life.

Aladdin has been adapted into various stage productions worldwide.

Aladdin has been adapted into numerous stage productions across the globe, captivating audiences with its timeless tale.

The character of Abu was inspired by a mischievous monkey.

The mischievous nature of Aladdin’s trusty sidekick, Abu, was inspired by the antics of a real-life monkey.

The movie features beautiful and intricate hand-drawn animation.

Aladdin showcases the artistry of hand-drawn animation, with beautifully detailed backgrounds and fluid character movements.

The Cave of Wonders line “Seek thee out, the diamond in the rough” has become iconic.

The memorable line from the Cave of Wonders, “Seek thee out, the diamond in the rough,” has become an iconic phrase associated with the movie.

The character of Jasmine was named after a close friend of the filmmakers.

The character of Jasmine was named in honor of a close friend of the filmmakers, adding a personal touch to her identity.

The movie explores the concepts of greed and the abuse of power.

Aladdin delves into the dangerous consequences of greed and the abuse of power, as personified by the character of Jafar.

The movie’s success led to a Broadway musical adaptation.

The popularity of Aladdin as a film paved the way for a successful Broadway musical adaptation, featuring stunning sets and breathtaking performances.

Aladdin has remained a beloved classic for generations.

Decades after its initial release, Aladdin continues to be cherished by audiences of all ages, solidifying its place as a timeless classic in Disney’s animated film canon.

Detailed Description of Aladdin

Aladdin is an animated film released by Walt Disney Animation Studios in Based on the tale from “One Thousand and One Nights,” the movie tells the story of a street urchin named Aladdin who finds a magic lamp containing a genie that grants him three wishes. With the help of the genie, Aladdin transforms himself into a prince to win the heart of Princess Jasmine. However, they must overcome the evil plans of the manipulative Jafar, the Royal Vizier.

The movie captivated audiences with its colorful animation, unforgettable characters, and memorable songs. Robin Williams’ portrayal of the genie was particularly beloved, with his comedic genius shining through his improvisations and ad-libbed lines. The film explores themes of love, friendship, and the power of self-belief, resonating with viewers of all ages.

Aladdin was a commercial and critical success, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1992 and winning two Academy Awards. The movie’s iconic songs, such as “A Whole New World,” have become timeless classics and continue to be enjoyed today. The success of Aladdin led to a Broadway musical adaptation and various spin-offs, further extending its popularity.

With its beautiful animation, memorable characters, and captivating storyline, Aladdin has remained a beloved classic for generations. Its universal themes and timeless charm continue to enchant audiences, making it a cherished gem in Disney’s animated film library.

In conclusion, the movie Aladdin has captivated audiences for decades with its enchanting story, memorable characters, and timeless soundtrack. From its animated origins to the live-action adaptation, Aladdin continues to be a beloved film that transcends generations. With its magical setting, relatable themes, and unforgettable moments, it’s no wonder that Aladdin has secured its place as a classic in the world of cinema. Whether you’re a fan of the original animation or the latest retelling, Aladdin is a must-watch for anyone looking for a thrilling adventure filled with love, hope, and the power of self-discovery. So grab your magic carpet and embark on a journey to Agrabah, where dreams really do come true.

1. Who is the director of the movie Aladdin?

The movie Aladdin was directed by Guy Ritchie .

2. When was the original animated version of Aladdin released?

The original animated version of Aladdin was released by Disney in 1992.

3. Who provided the voice for Aladdin?

The voice of Aladdin was provided by actor Scott Weinger.

4. Was there a live-action adaptation of Aladdin?

Yes, there was a live-action adaptation of Aladdin released in 2019, directed by Guy Ritchie.

5. Who portrayed the role of Genie in the live-action adaptation?

The iconic role of Genie was portrayed by actor Will Smith.

6. Who composed the music for Aladdin?

The music for Aladdin was composed by Alan Menken.

7. What are some of the famous songs from Aladdin?

Some of the famous songs from Aladdin include “A Whole New World,” “Friend Like Me,” and “Prince Ali.”

8. Is Aladdin based on a fairy tale?

No, Aladdin is not based on a fairy tale but is instead adapted from the Middle Eastern folk tale “One Thousand and One Nights.”

9. What is the runtime of Aladdin?

The runtime of the original animated version of Aladdin is approximately 90 minutes.

10. Is Aladdin considered a Disney Princess movie?

No, Aladdin is not considered a Disney Princess movie, but Jasmine, one of the main characters, is often included in the Disney Princess lineup.

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Will Smith’s Billion-Dollar Disney Movie Has a Secret Inspired by Tom Cruise and His Top Gun 2 Co-Star Jennifer Connelly

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Aladdin is a 2019 American musical fantasy film starring Will Smith, Mena Massoud, Naomi Scott, Marwan Kenzari, and others. It is a live-action remake of the 1992 Disney animated film of the same name based on the French addition to the Middle Eastern folktale One Thousand and One Nights , Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp . The personalities of Princess Jasmine and Aladdin are said to be influenced by two extremely well-known celebrities.

Will Smith portrayed the Genie, and the movie managed to earn over $1 billion worldwide following its release, ranking it as the ninth highest-grossing film of 2019. Aladdin is currently the third highest-grossing and sixth most expensive re-adaptation film, according to known statistics. The response from the audience and the reviewers was divided, with questions being raised about Guy Ritchie’s direction, the usage of CGI, and Kenzari’s Jafar.

Also read: Despite Working for Straight 12 Hours Will Smith Lost Guinness World Record to $30M Rich Indian Actor

Tom Cruise and Jennifer Connelly inspired Aladdin and Princess Jasmine

According to CBR , the documentary Diamond in the Rough: The Making of Aladdin features behind-the-scenes from the movie along with interviews with the cast, including them talking about how Tom Cruise was the inspiration for the character of Aladdin, whereas actress Jennifer Connelly was the inspiration behind the character of Princess Jasmine.

The animator for Aladdin , Glen Keane, spoke to The Los Angeles Times back in 1992 revealing that Cruise influenced the character, especially after Top Gun . He explained that he originally thought of Aladdin as Michael J. Fox; short in stature with a big ego and lots of dreams, but then it was suggested to watch Tom Cruise’s Top Gun , after which he incorporated some of his characteristics into Aladdin.

“In all [Cruise’s] poses, I noticed there was a confidence, a look in his eyebrows, that gave him intensity and, at the same time, a smile that has kind of an impish look like he’s got something up his sleeve”.

Glen Keane also made Aladdin six inches taller. For Princess Jasmine, which is said to be inspired by Jennifer Connelly, the animator Mark Henn incorporated aspects of the actress’ appearance, especially her eyebrows, into how the princess was styled.

Also read: Before Black Adam, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson Almost Starred as Jason Momoa’s Rumored DC Character

What do we know about Aladdin 2 starring Will Smith?

Even though the 2019 movie starring Will Smith as Genie received mixed reviews from the audience and the critics, the performances of the characters/actors were highly praised and fans expressed their desire to have the sequel of the movie.

Back in 2019, the producer of the movie, Dan Lin, during a conversation with ComicBook pointed out that they would like to tell a new story with their movies adding;

“We’re looking at a lot of different source material, and it’s not going to be based on one singular source. We’re going to take the best of everything that’s been done before and create something fresh and new.”

The original animated movie included two direct-to-video sequels along with a three-season animated series.

Lin mentioned that when they made the 2019 movie they just wanted to make the best movie they could and let the audience decide if they wanted to see more. The audience did and they had received the message and will be working on more stories to tell.

There have been no updates on the project since its announcement in 2020 but Guy Ritchie  stated that he would very much like to work on the sequel of the movie.

Also read: Tom Cruise Went Total Maverick to Save a Brand from Bankruptcy, Boosted Sales by 20X

Guy Ritchie calls Will Smith a generous gentleman

There have been speculations that the delay in the sequel could be because of the infamous slap at the Academy Awards involving Will Smith and Chris Rock, which eventually led to Smith being banned from the Academy for ten years.

An insider shared with The Sun while talking about Aladdin 2 ,

“He has done a lot of work on himself and the consensus is that it will all be very much in the past by the time the movie is released. The first film was a huge success, so it would be silly not to make another, and it would be a real shame to have to re-cast Will over what happened. So Disney is keen to stand by him and bring him back into the fold.”

The director had also expressed that he would very much like to work with Will Smith in the sequel.

“I’ve never met a more lovely man, and working with him was one of the most wonderful, great experiences I’ve ever had I never saw anything other than the consummate, generous gentleman. I wouldn’t have any issue casting Will Smith in anything, because, as I say, he was just the f—ing perfect gentleman.”

Aladdin is streaming on Disney+.

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Loaded with Robin Williams riffs and killer songs, Aladdin was a whole new world for animated movies

The Popcorn Champs

The Popcorn Champs looks back at the highest grossing movie in America from every year since 1960. In tracing the evolution of blockbuster cinema, maybe we can answer a question Hollywood has been asking itself for more than a century: What do people want to see?

Imagine being the person who has to dig through hours upon hours of tape of Robin Williams riffing. Someone had to: When Williams played the Genie in Disney’s Aladdin , the highest-grossing film of 1992, he did a whole lot of improvising, and he spent a long time doing it. Aladdin directors Ron Clements and John Musker had a reported 16 hours of tape of Robin Williams doing Robin Williams things. Eric Goldberg, the lead animator of the Genie character, had to sift through it all and pick out Williams’ best bits. Goldberg was a fan, so he was happy to do the job. This is fortunate. For many of us, this is a real ninth-circle-of-hell type of situation.

As an actual finished film, Aladdin runs a tight 90 minutes, and the Genie doesn’t even show up for the first half hour. And yet Aladdin still feels like it has 16 hours of Robin Williams riffing. It’s that kind of performance. Williams remains inexhaustibly on throughout. He does impersonations that the kids of 1992 might recognize: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arsenio Hall, maybe Rodney Dangerfield. He does impressions that the kids of 1992 would absolutely not recognize: William F. Buckley, Ed Sullivan, Ethel Merman. He inhales the painted scenery. Just hearing him is exhausting.

Williams’ endlessly schticky performance in Aladdin is exactly what Disney wanted. At the time, he was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. He’d riffed his way through Barry Levinson’s Good Morning, Vietnam in 1987, and he’d been nominated for an Oscar for it. He’d been nominated again as the inspiring English teacher in Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society in 1989 and as the homeless man searching for the Holy Grail in Terry Gilliam’s The Fisher King in 1990. Good Morning, Vietnam and Dead Poets Society had both been tremendous hits for the Disney-owned Touchstone Pictures. The Fisher King , which wasn’t exactly accessible, had at least made its money back.

In 1991, Steven Spielberg tapped Williams to play Peter Pan in his big-budget dream project Hook , a truly terrible movie. Hook made money, but it didn’t do the kind of business that TriStar had hoped for, partly because the movie opened a mere two weeks after Disney’s Beauty And The Beast . Beauty And The Beast was a genuine phenomenon, a box office juggernaut that also sold millions in merch and soundtrack albums and became the first animated film ever to be nominated for Best Picture. Beauty And The Beast had done all this without the benefit of movie stars. (The most famous actor in the cast was probably Angela Lansbury, who was in the middle of her 12-year run on Murder, She Wrote and who played the teapot.) Beauty And The Beast didn’t need stars. The film itself was the star.

For decades, animated films didn’t need movie stars. Instead, the movies relied on voice actors, versatile and talented specialists who could do just about anything and whose faces were utterly unknown to the viewing public. Every once in a while, you might get someone at least identifiable, like Louis Prima in The Jungle Book or Roger Miller in Robin Hood . But for the most part, movie stars were the people on camera, and voice actors did the unglamorous work of giving life to moving drawings.

That border blurred a bit in the ’80s, as known character actors took cartoon roles. Mickey Rooney starred in 1981’s The Fox And The Hound and 1985’s The Care Bears Movie , though he was decades past his child-star heyday. Kurt Russell was in The Fox And The Hound , too, but he was only just getting past his own child-star years. Dom DeLuise, Madeline Kahn, and Christopher Plummer all had supporting roles in An American Tail . Billy Joel was in Oliver & Company . Vincent Price was in The Great Mouse Detective .

But before Aladdin , the only animated film that also really worked as a star vehicle was probably 1989’s All Dogs Go To Heaven , a movie from the Disney defector Don Bluth. Burt Reynolds, not exactly in the prime of his career, played Charlie, the movie’s canine hero, and Bluth did everything in his power to make Charlie look as much as possible like Burt Reynolds. Reynolds sang. There was room for improvement here.

When All Dogs Go To Heaven came out, Disney’s animation division was struggling, and Bluth was presenting the studio with its first real commercial competition in that arena. The same day that All Dogs Go To Heaven came to theaters, Disney released The Little Mermaid , the movie that kicked off the hugely lucrative Disney renaissance and gave the company a new luster. (The most famous actor in the Little Mermaid cast: Buddy Hackett as a seagull.) After the twin successes of The Little Mermaid and Beauty And The Beast , Disney animation could presumably do whatever it wanted. And what Disney animation wanted to do was use the two directors of The Little Mermaid to adapt a centuries-old Arabic folk tale into a big, brash Hollywood musical built around a manically improvising Robin Williams.

It makes its own kind of sense. Earlier in 1992, Williams had played a bat named Batty in the eco-themed cartoon flop FernGully: The Last Rainforest , and that hadn’t really worked. (Williams did 14 hours of riffing for that one.) But Disney’s animators had the speed and the imagination to turn all of Williams’ bits into psychedelic visual gags, making his jokes literal and adding to the sensory-overload feeling of Aladdin . They’d give parents something to chuckle at while sitting through a kids’ movie. And Williams had gone to Juilliard; he was enough of a ham and a showman that he’d actually sing all of his character’s songs.

At first, Williams didn’t want to do it. He had his own big holiday fantasy coming out in 1992, the Barry Levinson reunion Toys . ( Toys would come out a few weeks after Aladdin , and it would bomb catastrophically.) Williams also didn’t like the idea of having his character turned into a Happy Meal toy. But Eric Goldberg made a test animation, using the Genie to visualize some of Williams’ stand-up bits, and Williams loved it. He signed on to play the Genie for Screen Actors Guild scale, taking only $75,000 instead of the millions he could’ve made. But Williams had conditions. To avoid creating competition with Toys , he asked that his name not appear in promotions for Aladdin . Furthermore, he requested his voice not be used in the merchandising and the marketing of the film. Disney agreed and then promptly broke those promises. The Aladdin marketing was pretty much entirely Genie-based, and every kid in America knew that the Genie was Williams. Williams would remain furious at the studio for years.

The rest of the Aladdin cast was virtually unknown. The only other remotely famous actor was the great stand-up Gilbert Gottfried, who’d just had a hit in 1990’s Problem Child and who ended up in Aladdin because the film’s directors thought Gottfried was funny in his Beverly Hills Cop II cameo. Scott Weinger, the young actor who played Aladdin, was mostly known as Candace Cameron’s boyfriend on Full House . Frank Welker, cast as the monkey Abu, is a voice-acting legend who had played Megatron, Baby Kermit, and Slimer.

In fact, other than all matters involving the Genie, Aladdin is a fairly old-school Disney spectacle, full of flash and color and music and adventure. There’s a bit of CGI in things like the Cave Of Wonder escape scene, and that CGI has not held up well. Mostly, though, Aladdin is classic-style hand-drawn animation, with characters distorted and stylized to fit the mood. Virtually every major character, including the villain, has a cute animal sidekick. (Aladdin himself really has two, since the magic carpet essentially functions as one.) Many of the non-Genie jokes are elaborate vaudevillian pratfalls.

The Genie, on the other hand, exists within the film as an agent of chaos. Robin Williams fires off constant references to cultural artifacts that don’t exist in the film’s reality. He breaks the fourth wall. He references other Disney characters and sometimes turns into them. At one point, he reads directly from the Aladdin script. He might be the first Disney character who realizes he’s in a Disney movie.

Watching it today, the Genie might be the aspect of Aladdin that’s aged the worst—or, considering that this is a movie with an almost entirely white cast that takes place in the Middle East and that’s full of stereotypes, almost the worst. God bless the dead, but I’ve always found Robin Williams’ stand-up to be empty and oppressive, like a nervous guy at a party who demands constant attention. A whole lot of it is just different ethnic accents, which is weird. A whole lot more is that Family Guy style—you laugh because you recognize a reference, not because there’s anything inherently funny about it. Williams is enough of an actor to slow down and sell the emotional beats of Aladdin , but even then, he comes off as glib. When Williams is firing on all cylinders, I mostly just get overwhelmed and uncomfortable. He’s good at singing the songs, though.

The songs in Aladdin fucking slap. Before directors Ron Clements and John Musker came aboard, Aladdin was a passion project for the lyricist Howard Ashman. Disney had hired Ashman and his writing partner, Alan Menken, to work on The Little Mermaid on the strength of their Little Shop Of Horrors musical; they’d win Oscars for both that Hans Christian Andersen adaptation and its follow-up, Beauty And The Beast . But Ashman died from AIDS-related heart failure at 40, just after finishing Beauty And The Beast . Ashman and Menken had written over a dozen songs for Aladdin , but Disney only kept three of them, and the composer would complete the musical after being paired with Andrew Lloyd Webber collaborator Tim Rice.

Even given that tragic history, Menken is in his zone on Aladdin . The songs are fast and fun and clever and energetic, and the showstopping ballad “A Whole New World,” a Menken/Rice collaboration, is an honest-to-god banger—the only song from a Disney musical that’s ever hit No. 1 in the U.S. Menken, Ashman, and Rice all won Oscars for their work on Aladdin . Menken remains a Disney company man now. Just last week , his work on the Disney Channel show Tangled made Menken only the 16th person ever to lock down the full EGOT. (Rice was the 15th.)

Those songs remain the best things about Aladdin , but there’s a lot to like about the film. Animator Glen Keane based Aladdin himself on Tom Cruise in Top Gun ; he’s the rare cartoon hero who’s legitimately hot. Princess Jasmine fits within the ooky-as-hell Disney-princess lineage, but she’s also the smartest and most principled character in the movie, and she exists at least partly as a rebuke to past princess archetypes. The action is fun, the physical comedy is funny, the animals are cute, the colors are bright, the plot hums along at a brisk pace, and the movie is over before anyone has a chance to consider the greater meaning of anything. (Movies should limit themselves to a 90-minute runtime way more often.) It’s hard to picture how Aladdin might work if it didn’t have Robin Williams in full meta-frenzy, throwing air quotes over everything. I think it might be a better film, though.

Last year, Disney remade Aladdin as a CGI-heavy live-action exhibition. The new version was thoroughly pointless. It used people of color rather than white voice actors to tell its story, but it did its cast no favors by throwing them into an ugly, anonymous by-the-numbers blockbuster with action scenes and musical numbers that couldn’t hope to match the energy of the original. (Guy Ritchie directed, and it must be one of the purest paycheck jobs in recent cinematic history.) But the remake did do one thing that really improved on the original: It used Will Smith—who, admittedly, was made to look absurd. Smith gave the Genie the gravity of a real movie-star presence at its center. Just like Williams, Smith does plenty of riffing, but he balances it out by making the Genie into something resembling an actual character, not just a wild ball of tics. Too bad about the singing, though.

In casting Robin Williams and essentially building the original Aladdin around him, though, Disney got the results it wanted. Aladdin became the highest-grossing animated film in history, the first to earn more than $200 million. The movie-star gambit worked. A decade after Jeffrey Katzenberg oversaw the restoration of Disney’s animation prowess via Who Framed Roger Rabbit , The Little Mermaid , Beauty And The Beast , Aladdin , and The Lion King , he was piling as many big stars as possible into the Shrek movies. Professional voice actors were no longer getting leading film roles. Paradoxically, with franchises running wild these days, animated film might be the sector of the business where big-name stars matter the most. Since Aladdin , it’s been a whole new world.

The runner-up: Many of the biggest live-action films of 1992 were nearly as cartoonish as Aladdin : Home Alone 2: Lost In New York , Batman Returns , Lethal Weapon 3 . At the same time, well-made adult dramas like A Few Good Men , A League Of Their Own , and the deeply sleazy but entertaining Basic Instinct could do serious blockbuster business. My favorite of the year’s big hits is one that maintains that cartoon lunacy without insulting the intelligence of anyone watching.

Penelope Spheeris ’ Wayne’s World , No. 8 movie at the 1992 box office, is a perfect work of art, a piece of affectionate absurdism that plays with its own internal logic and its audience’s expectations. Wayne and Garth break the fourth wall as often as the Genie, but when they do it, it’s not just an elbow to the ribs; it’s an invitation into a weird and fun little world. Spheeris pulls all this off while also telling a story about the underdog purity and termite art and the perils of getting paid to do what you love. It’s a beautiful, impossible little miracle.

Next time: Steven Spielberg, having one hell of a career year, adapts Jurassic Park , showcasing groundbreaking special-effects craft and indulging his audience’s desire for both wonder and viscera.

Aladdin (1992)

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Fans Can’t Believe This Disney Character Was Modeled After Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise has achieved many things in his life, including being the muse for one of the most loveable Disney characters ever.

Throughout his 40-year career, Tom Cruise has reached amazing heights as one of Hollywood’s most famous actors. Starring in a string of blockbuster movies including Rain Man , A Few Good Men , Top Gun , and Risky Business , Cruise has achieved success that many actors only ever dream of. In between those impressive acting credits, he’s also done some other seriously cool things, from dating Cher in secret to inspiring a famous Disney character.

To inspire the Disney animators to model a character after you, you have to have a certain look. You have to look like a hero, and you have to give off the kind of vibe that will make viewers love the character. Given his star quality, it’s no surprise that Tom Cruise was the inspiration, at least physically speaking, for one of the most popular Disney characters of the 1990s. Keep reading to find out which character he inspired.

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The Inspiration Behind Aladdin

The animators working in the Disney studios are truly talented. Often using their own imaginations, they bring to life characters that go on to impact an entire generation of viewers. Sometimes the animators also take inspiration from existing figures. That’s what happened with the titular character of Aladdin, which was released in 1992.

According to Simple Most , the look of Aladdin was inspired by none other than Tom Cruise . At the time, Cruise was a global sensation after starring in several blockbuster hits throughout the 1980s.

Though this fact surprises fans, others guessed so when coming up with Aladdin fan theories . It’s easy to see the resemblance when you look at pictures of Tom Cruise and Aladdin. They’re not exactly twins, but the similarities are certainly there.

His Confidence Got Him The Gig

So how did Tom Cruise get the gig of inspiring Aladdin , an honor which many actors no doubt would have loved? According to Insider, it was the confidence Cruise displayed in the film Top Gun , released in 1986.

The chairman of Walt Disney Studios at the time, Jeffrey Katzenberg, suggested that the filmmakers look at Cruise’s character in the movie for inspiration.

“I got the film and I looked at him, and what I noticed was all of his poses. His attitudes,” explained Glen Keane, the lead animator at the time (via Insider ). “There was this confidence. The way his chest stuck out. There was a cockiness to him. And Aladdin, we wanted to have a little bit of that edge on him."

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His Movement Was Inspired By MC Hammer

So Aladdin’s physical look and his confident attitude were inspired by Tom Cruise. But what about his wardrobe?

His signature pants were drawn because of the Arabian-inspired world in which he lives, but the movement of those pants comes down to another big name: MC Hammer. That’s right! According to Insider , the animators studied MC Hammer dancing so they could properly animate Aladdin’s flowing pants as he moved.

The Original Aladdin

Tom Cruise ended up making a fine inspiration for Aladdin, but he wasn’t the first choice of muse. In fact, the animators originally looked to Michael J. Fox to inspire their drawings of the character. At that time, the character of Aladdin was different too—it was meeker and less heroic.

BuzzFeed reports that the filmmakers changed their minds because they didn’t believe that the smaller, less-heroic Aladdin that they originally had properly matched Jasmine. “I found the character of Jasmine kinda blows him away. I don't understand why she goes with him,” Katzenberg said at the time.

So in order to improve the story and make it more believable that Aladdin would end up with Jasmine, the filmmakers shifted their focus away from Michael J. Fox and instead turned to Tom Cruise.

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The Genie’s Connection To Robin Williams

Aladdin wasn’t the only character in the film to be inspired by a famous celebrity. The Genie was notably inspired by the actor who voiced him, the late Robin Williams. Fans have pointed out that the Genie does look like Williams (as much as a genie can look like a person!) and also dresses like him at certain points in the movie.

The role of the Genie was actually written for Robin Williams in mind. Dan Castellaneta, the voice of Homer Simpson, voiced the Genie in the franchise whenever Williams was unavailable, but fans maintain that as talented as Castellaneta is, no one could pull off the Genie quite like Williams.

Other Disney Characters Inspired By Real Life

Beyond Aladdin, there were also several other Disney characters that were inspired by real people . One of the most famous is Princess Tiana from 2009’s The Princess and the Frog . She was drawn to look very similar to the actor who portrayed her, Anika Noni Rose. Like Rose herself, Tiana has dimples and is also left-handed.

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