A Whole New World of Adventure
With the roaring success of the Little Mermaid and the growing buzz around Beauty and the Beast, confidence in the animation studio was higher than it had been in thirty years. Some assumed Katzenberg’s plan to release a new film every year was foredoomed. While the Rescuers Down Under was a small bump in the road, Katzenberg seemed to think the animation department was finally on the right track and his annual release plan was genius.
On a bit of a high after the Little Mermaid, Musker and Clements were offered three choices for their next job: an adaptation of the Tchaikovsky ballet Swan Lake, a pet project of Katzenberg’s called King of the Jungle, and an adaptation of the folk tale Aladdin. The pair went with option three, namely because it was connected to Menken and Ashman. The adaptation of Aladdin had begun as a passion project of Howard Ashman. Back in ’88, he had pitched the idea to Katzenberg with a 40 - page treatment he wrote and six songs he composed with Menken, including a big - band number called “Friend Like Me”. Apparently, Ashman envisioned the fim as a campy 1930s - style musical with a larger than life Genie, based on jazz legends Fats Waller and Cab Calloway.
To Ashman’s disappointment, however, Katzenberg dismissed the pitch and Ashman and Menken were tasked with saving Beauty and the Beast instead. After re - evaluating the pitch in 1990. Katzenberg warmed to the project and assigned screenwriter Linda Woolverton to flesh out Ashman’s treatment into a draft script. She used elements from 1940’s the Thief of Baghdad including an antagonist named Jaf’far and an elderly sidekick named Abu.
Musker and Clements contributed to Woolverton’s script and the animators made a story reel to give Katzenberg in April ’91. But on what the animators called “Black Friday”, Katzenberg demanded a complete redo of everything that had been worked on thus far, while refusing to reschedule the November ’92 release date, so the poor guys were left with fewer than 18 months to finish the film. God, I’m starting to hate Katzenberg.
Musker and Clements sought help from screenwriting team Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio to rework the story, to which end the roles of Aladdin’s mother and his three best friends were eliminated to rework him as a streetwise loner whose only friend was a monkey named Abu; plus the Genie could now only grant three wishes, and with certain restrictions, so the ending was reworked to play on Aladdin’s cunning, as opposed to Genie just always saving the day. Jafar’s parrot Iago was reworked from an uptight British butler to a more sarcastic, comedic role. And Princess Jasmine was turned into a fiercely independent woman who refused to marry for any other reason than love.
For the key role of the Genie, Katzenberg encouraged Musker and Clements to cast an A - list comedian, suggesting names like Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy and John Candy. But despite those suggestions, Musker and Clements had only one man in mind. In the early 90s, Robin Williams was getting into dramatic movies like Awakenings and Dead Poet Society. He was very thankful to Disney - owned Touchstone Pictures for the release of Good Morning, Vietnam, which got him his first Oscar nomination. So, when Katzenberg approached him to voice the Genie, he agreed to do it for SAG scale pay on a single caveat: his name and/or image would not be used in the film’s marketing and the Genie wouldn’t take up more than 25% of the space on all advertising material. At the time, Katzenberg agreed to those demands and Robin soon began voice recording sessions during breaks in the shooting of the two films he was working on at the time, Hook and Toys. Working with Musker, Clements and animator Eric Goldberg, Williams was encouraged to ad - lib dialogue however he saw fit, often being given suggestions for basic topic or dialogue and being allowed to expand and ellaborate. He improvised a total of 50 different characters and impersonations throughout more than 30 hours of recorded material.
THE STORY
In the fictional land of Agrabah, we meet a dark figure named Jafar who has just found the Cave of Wonders, which he’s been seeking for years. He orders a thief to find him a lamp, in return for the insane amount of treasure in there. But the Cave of Wonders, which has the head of a tiger, informs them both that only one whose worth lies far within, a “Diamond in the Rough”, can enter and come out alive.So Jafar resloves to find the right person. Then we meet a street urchin named Aladdin and his sidekick and pet monkey, Abu, who must steal to survive and repeatedly duck the royal guards who want his hands for trophies, while at the same time dreaming of a life in the palace of Agrabah, where they’d live without problems. Little does he know that in the palace, the stunning Princess Jasmine has just rejected another suitor, much to the dismay of her father, the Sultan, who wants her married by her next birthday which is in three days. Where does it go from here? I will not spoil it.
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In the beginning, animator Glen Keane had designed to resemble a young Michael J. Fox. However, Katzenberg felt the design too boyish and immature, instructing Kane to redesign Aladdin with elements derived from Tom Cruise and Calvin Kline models to create a more appealing hero. Teen heartthrob Scott Weinger, best known for his role on the AWFUL TV show Full House, was cast to bring Aladdin to life, depsite the fact that he couldn’t sing, and Broadway performer Brad Kane was enlisted to sing for him.
In the original script, Jasmine was a spoiled, materialistic brat who learns the error of her ways through her interaction with “street rat” Aladdin. After Katzenberg’s forced rewrite, Jasmine became much stronger, like Ariel and Belle. Animator Mark Henn based her design on his sister and Jennifer Connolly. And after an extensive search, TV actress Linda Larkin was cast nine months after her first audition. Though she was almost fired by Katzenberg because he felt her high - pitched voice was too similar to Jodi Benson’s Ariel and didn’t fit the role. So Musker and Clements assisted her with adjusting and lowering her voice to retain the role. However her singing voice still wasn’t strong enough, so Broadway star Lea Salonga was brought in to singfor her, marking the first time the speaking and singing voices were provided by two different people.
Much to Robin Williams frustration, because he didn’t back out of 20th Century Fox’s Fern Gully which signed him first, and because Jeffrey Katzenberg is a petty tool, the marketing of Aladdin heavily used Genie’s image and Williams’ voice which went against the promises made by Katzenberg “Petty Tool” while securing him for the role. Genie was also prominently featured in the tie - in merchandise including toys featuring Williams dialogue, allowing Disney to profit from his performance without increasing his paltry salary. So incensed was Williams by this backflip that he refused to reprise his role for the much worse straight - to - DVD sequel, Return of Jafar, and declared he’d never work for Disney again until the Petty Tool was fired and his successor as studio president Joe Ralph issued an immediate public apology.
MY VERDICT
This was the first Disney film I ever saw in the cinema, my dad took me to see it when I was about 4 or 5. So for nostalgia’s sake, it will always have a special place in my heart. But, nostalgia aside, the animation is great, the songs were all incredible and memorable and the characters, while a few are a little on the bland side, are still more or less real people.
Is Aladdin a Disney Classic? The soundtrack and Williams’ performance coupled with incredible animation thrilling sequences make Aladdin another Disney Classic of the booming 90s period.
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