Hacker Cinema
Aladdin
1992 · Film · 91 min
Part of Aladdin Collection
Directed by John Musker, Ron Clements
AnimationFamilyAdventureFantasyRomance
In the boorish city of Agrabah, kind-hearted street urchin Aladdin and Princess Jasmine fall in love, although she can only marry a prince. He and power-hungry Grand Vizier Jafar vie for a magic lamp that can fulfill their wishes.
10 positive11 negative35 neutralfrom 56 commenters
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59 comments on Hacker News
Would most kids around the world even know Aladdin if it wasn't for the Disney copyrighted movie?
Disney can do whatever it wants if it restores and releases a 4K version of the theatrical cuts of the original trilogy, something the fan base has wanted for decades at this point. I won't hold my breath.
Very large companies are generally very bad at consistently producing original content because everything in a corporat eenvironment skews towards not taking any risks. Big companies want a repeatable formula. It's why we get to many sequels and reboots with depressingly few new properties. HBO has been the exception to the rule. I would've also said Apple TV tends to corporatize content into being inoffensive. Modern Family (even though it wasn't an Apple production) is kind of like the perfect Apple TV content. But we have things like Severance and Silo so maybe there's hope.
Anyway, the retconning and corporatization around Star Wars has been depressing to watch. The whole "Han shot first" was a line in the sand more than 30 years old that seemed to stem from George Lucas's desire for a lighter classification for the films. The Phantom Menace of course was very much aimed at a younger audience even though the plot revolved around a tax treaty dispute of all things.
The sequel trilogy was for me, as an original Star Wars fan, deeply depressing. I honestly haven't even watched the last one where Carrie Fisher did her best Mary Poppins. And honestly the whole prmise of midichlorians (from the original trilogy) and inheritance of Force ability was really offensive and against the original spirit of Star Wars. I mean as anyone example of corporatization the name "Rey" was chosen to be easily pronounceable in many languages.
Look where we started. The inspiration for Star Wars was the Viet Cong resisting American imperialism in Vietnam (direct from George Lucas) [1].
Disney produced beloved classics like The Jungle Book, Aladdin and Snow White. In the 2000s, they seemed unable to continue this creativity and it became an amalgam of Pixar and the MCU (and later Lucasfilm). Pixar was a culturally antiestablishmment company started by Steve Jobs (yes, yes, he bought a London computer graphics division). The MCU took decades of creativity in the superhero space and basically turned into 2000s era patriotic films. You can guess why the timing.
Oh it's worth adding the Star Wars originally had an expanded universe that was kinda managed by Lucasfilm. Disney abandoned this on purchasing Lucasfilm and some fans were very upset. This included Chewbacca having a wife and family back home. It was all fan fiction, basically.
Disney could very much use the Star Wars milieu to tell stories relevant to our times. The 2025 Superman movie did this for example. and it made some people very upset. But Disney absolutely will not do that. So I really don't think it matters what they try and do.
[1]: https://screenrant.com/star-wars-george-lucas-vietnam-war-inspiration-explainer/
> With Star Wars you have a dedicated adult fan base that’ll buy up remasters and reworkings. Aladdin? Not so much. Especially in the streaming era, no one is even buying any individual movie any more.
I agree it was likely Disney being cheap, but there are tons of people who'll buy up disney movies on physical media in the age of streaming. Not only are there disney fans who'd rival the obsessiveness of star wars fans, but like Lucas Disney just can't leave shit alone. They go back and censor stuff all the time and you can't get the uncensored versions on their streaming platform. Aladdin is even an example where they've made changes. It's not even a new thing for Disney. The lyrics to one of the songs in Aladdin were changed long before Disney+ existed.
Famously CRT TVs didn't show as much magenta so in the 90s home VHS releases compensated by cranking up the magenta so that it would be shown correctly on the TVs of the time. It was a documented practice at the time.
So, yes the VHS is expected to have more magenta.
Anecdotally, I remember watching Aladdin at the movie theatre when it came out and later on TV multiple times and the VHS you saw doesn't correspond to my memories at all.
And as someone who is part of those conservation communities that scan 35mm with donations to keep the existing look, a lot of the people doing those projects are aware of this. They do some color adjustment to compensate for print fading, for the type of bulb that were used in movie theatres back then (using a LUT), etc...
I do find that often enough commercial releases like Aladdin or other movies like Terminator 2 are done lazily and have completely different colors than what was historically shown. I think part of this is the fact that studios don't necessarily recognise the importance of that legacy and don't want to spend money on it.
I’m reminded of the beginning of the movie Elf, where the book publisher is informed that a printing error means their latest book is missing the final two pages. Should they pulp and reprint? He says,
> You think a kid is going to notice two pages? All they do is look at the pictures.
I’m quite sure bean counters look at Disney kids movies the exact same way, despite them being Disney’s bread and butter.
With Star Wars you have a dedicated adult fan base that’ll buy up remasters and reworkings. Aladdin? Not so much. Especially in the streaming era, no one is even buying any individual movie any more.
I'm not sure if I'm just young enough to be on the other side of this despite seeing all three of those Disney movies as a millennial kid (Lion King and Aladdin were VHS mainstays in my house, and I remember seeing Mulan in theaters), but I honestly don't find the film grain to look better at all and think all three of those bottom images are much more appealing. For the Toy Story ones, I think I'm mostly indifferent; I can see why some people might prefer the upper film images but don't really think I'd notice which one I was watching. I'd definitely think I'd notice the difference in the 2D animation though and would find the film grain extremely distracting.
The texture of the film grain makes Mulan and Aladdin really look better. The large simple filled sections look like they have so much more to them.
Walt Disney died in 1966. There were less but still many notable traditionally animated films (or films which blended some modern technology with hand drawn cels) since then.
The Jungle Book - 1967
Little Mermaid - 1989
Beauty and the Beast - 1991
Aladdin - 1992
Lion King - 1994
It's likely more a question of what you grew up with. When I was a kid I remember heavily disliking many of the earliest Disney animated movies like Pinocchio/Dumbo/Bambi but I absolutely adored the animated Robin Hood, Sword in the Stone, etc.
It's obviously not the same, but I totally disagree with "It did die with Walt". For example, I think Aladdin is one of the best movies of all time, period. Granted, a huge part of that is the genius of Robin Williams, but to create a film that has both parents and their kids doubled over in laughter is no easy feat. But it still had great animation, a great story, great songs, etc.
> What are the first words of the disney movie, "Aladdin" ?
The first words of Disney's Aladdin (1992) are spoken by the *Peddler*, the mysterious merchant at the beginning of the film. He says:
"Ah, Salaam and good evening to you, worthy friend. Please, please, come closer..."
He then continues with: "Too close! A little too close. There. Welcome to Agrabah. City of mystery, of enchantment, and the finest merchandise this side of the River Jordan, on sale today! Come on down!"
This opening sets the stage for the story, introducing the magical and bustling world of Agrabah.
His genie in Shelly Duval's Fairy Tail Theater: Aladdin (directed by Tim Burton) was terrifying and brilliant!
https://youtube.com/watch?v=_hDTxK4xfCA
On one hand there are works like Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies. Its not a whitewashing of the original and its not trying to be. Even better is that it does a moderately good job of preserving the direction of the original story while adding absurd extensions like zombies and busty breasts overflowing their blouses.
On the other hand there is Disney's Aladdin. Uggghhh, yeah, its a complete whitewash. Nobody knows what Aladdin really is any more. Call that a new original story about some goofy cartoon who sings songs with some blue vapor clown thing. Don't call it a fairy tale, because its not remotely related to the fairy tale of the same name. Its no different than spinning the historical tragedy of the Trail of Tears into some positive romantic comedy cartoon fantasy to sell movie tickets. Sure, you if look hard enough you might be able to find some sliver of an encounter to support your whitewash idea, but that doesn't make it savory.
You create your own monsters. my 2 years old must have watched the mario movie 200 times at least. I was like him, I watched Aladdin 200 times.
When I read this, some kind of interferences/ images are parasitizing my mind; drawn cartoon with colors of the princess in Aladdin, the Disney one; cinematic/documentary video of a cobra in the desert that rises up its head.
Sometimes it's voices, sometimes it's music; what parasites lives in the mind of someone that has aphantasia ? How do you think when solving a mathematical problem ? How do you design an algorithm ?
So if I create a movie about cyber pangolin, a gory half human half pangolin cyborg fighting for Justice in a post bio-punk world where people are swapping their organs out on a daily basis due to immuno suppressant immunity; and I used a model that saw Aladdin, you think Disney could successfully sue Cyber Pangolin for violating the copyright of Aladdin?
Cuz I don’t.
> And of course, the depressing string of live-action remakes which, if they're all quickly forgotten, often hit the 1 billion mark
Live action Aladdin was surprisingly good—it was best went they stepped away from the original animated movie, and switched to remaking Hitch.
I'm a huge fan of the Disney movies that came out when I was growing up (Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast are my favorites). My kids like those movies a lot too.
But I think some wonderful movies have been made in the last ten years, most notably Encanto and Turning Red. They're both massive successes, and I think they are in many ways better than those movies I grew up with.
Not to mention Frozen, Moana, Inside Out, etc. These are all wonderful movies.
(Ratatouille is also great, btw, don't get me wrong!)
I'm sure they can figure out the history well enough to depict it, or punt on the accuracy. They probably figured it wouldn't be a popular enough setting for the intended audience.
It's been done a few times. Prince of Persia was set in a fantasy land without a real attempt at historical accuracy, but it was sorta Sasanid Persia. Similarly, Aladdin in Iraq. There was also the 2004 Alexander which was quite accurate, but it wasn't a good movie. And Lawrence of Arabia, sorta fictionalized but accurate in spirit, which was the best.
300 was interesting cause they made it clear the story was being told from the Greek perspective by having Dilios narrate it, and he hyped it up even more than the actual Greek historians did, instead of the movie presenting it as a factual view. The movie still pissed off the Iranian government, but whatever.
Lets see... the most recent comedy movies I've seen...
Knives Out (2019) was probably the one I enjoyed the most.
JoJo Rabbit was trying too hard IMO, but I still smiled/laughed throughout it. WW2 is kinda overdone at this point (though serious films like Downfall are worth revisiting)
Free Guy was fine? Apparently "The Suicide Squad" also counts as a comedy. I guess Deadpool and Deadpool 2 were also fine. Maybe other people are tired of comicbook / superhero movies, but really I'm personally only tired of the "Marvel Formula" (and Deadpool / The Suicide Squad strays pretty heavily from the formula). Going back a bit further is "Jumanji"...
There's a lot of flicks / comedy films out there. Nothing is quite as good as Airplane but I'd say Knives Out is on-par, maybe even better than Clue (1985).
I don't really like the "Despicable Me" series, but my nieces really wanted to watch "Minions: Rise of Gru" and I actually enjoyed that one. (My nieces love this series, so I can say that I've watched all of it and its mostly trash. But Rise of Gru actually got me to laugh)
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I'm no critic. I enjoy just a basic flick now and then. Honestly, I'd rewatch "Knives Out" more than any Adam Sandler movie from the 90s or even Austin Powers. 90s era comedy just didn't mesh well with me, despite me growing up at that time. I do have a soft spot for the dry 80s stuff with Leslie Nielsen, and I guess I really liked Jackie Chan's action/comedies through the 90s and 00s.
I dunno, if I think "90s comedy I enjoyed", I think of Men in Black or Aladdin? Nothing in the list that this author wrote.
I agree that it won't obsolete actors as GP says, but it will absolutely be cheaper and easier. The expense of acting doesn't come from the craft being expensive or rare. It comes from the market power that results when the strongest connection we feel to a performance is inseparable from the performer (ie their face). There's a reason that editors and cinematographers don't have fans outside of film nerds,and it's not that because their craft is trivial or that they don't contribute to the film. Technology costs can be reduced, but market power is what allows them to collect tens (or hundreds!) of millions of dollars. Commoditization via deepfakes turns them into just another employee.
You can look at voice acting as an example. Before Robin Williams' performance in Aladdin started the trend of recognizable celebrities as voice actors, there was a thriving community of voice-only actors in big-budget movies, hired for their craft instead of their brand. And yet, you probably can't name a single one, despite being able to name plenty of actors from non-animated films of the era. They were also inherently replaceable, as memorably parodied by the simpsons: https://youtu.be/g5ffaTv4ajg
It's notable that the studios switched to celebrity actors precisely for the brand that they brought from their non-voice roles.
Deepfakes are pretty much identical to this animated case, allowing it to be extended to physical movies. The recognizable portion of a performance becomes a few model files instead of an actor's face, and the job of a (replaceable) human actor is to play the role of the performer, not just the character.
I think we all need to have a talk about what a "heavy" plot is. You don't NEED a villain for a plot to be heavy - I would argue that Encanto's focus on internal, emotional stakes is far heavier (and darker!) than most movies with clear-cut heroes and villains. It also resonates with people in a much more personal way - the vast majority of people can't identify with Aladdin's battle against Jafar (As fun as it is), but I know several people who were on the verge of tears watching Encanto because they could identify with Mirabel's struggle with her place in her family.
A long time ago I saw a rather good behind the scenes of Aladdin.
I was quite surprised to see that after writing the script they had stand-in actors do the entire script, which they then did animatics (storyboards times to the recorded audio) to, after which they edited the story. Only then did final actors record. Then redo animatics and editing before doing final animation.
Imagine my surprise watching the documentary on Hayao Miyazaki, where he has a 100 animators working on final animation, while he is still storyboarding, undecided on the ending of the movie and hasn’t even casted the voice actors!
There's one context I am aware of that "rub" and "genie" go together, and I would certainly expect Google to suggest something with Aladdin pretty high. There is that song with the lyrics "I'm a genie in a bottle, you have to rub me the right way", but I expect Aladdin to overwhelm the results. Not getting Aladdin seems to be a big failure.
I tried the query in Firefox icognito, logged in, and in Safari on iOS using the cell network not my wifi, and got identical results:
1: Youtube video from the "Aladdin" movie (didn't watch, so not sure)
2: Quora question about genie not giving three wishes
3: Movie Quotes - Aladdin
4: Etsy lamp product
5: Stock photo of man hand rubbing lamp
6: Amazon product
7: Genies in popular culture - Wikipedia
8: Iconfinder result
9: Genie - Disney Wiki
This seems rather different than the poster. It's got way more commercial stuff than I'd like (but how does Google know I'm not looking to buy a stuffed lamp toy or something), but the answer to their question would be in the Wikipedia entry, I expect. It might be hard to find the original story, though, since the search term "Aladdin" is probably overwhelmed by the movie.
> I wonder if the bulk of the The Princess Bride counts as a nested flic, since it's a bedtime story.
From the “Contribute” page[1]:
> Nestflix is a wiki dressed up as a streaming platform that catalogs fictional films and tv shows inside real movies and tv shows.
The Princess Bride scenes were neither film nor show, so it doesn’t count.
> Or Aladdin (1992), framed as a tale told by a peddler. I was disappointed that the story didn't come back to the peddler at the end, it felt like an unclosed parenthesis.
That was the original idea[2][3].
[1]: https://nestflix.fun/contribute
[2]: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/movies/2019/08/26/aladdin-watch-original-ending-proving-peddler-robin-williams-genie/2088293001/
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLdSUxsBHDM
The peddler has Robin Williams voice and is therefore implied to be the genie.
The new movie also implies the genie to be the storyteller, as Will Smith tells the story of Aladdin in the live action version. But this time, the storyteller is a sailor.
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Shaharazad was the first to tell the story of Aladdin in 1001 Arabian nights. So it always was a story inside a story. Shaharazad wants to delay her execution, so she keeps telling stories to the sultan.
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Princess Bride novel is written by fictional authors, who are providing historic and dueling commentary. It is clear that some of the later fictional authors have erased part of the story.
So it too is a book within a book (which translated into a movie within a movie, with grandpa removing some bits of the story to make it more palpable to the kid)
Olaf was added because they got Josh Gad and needed a funny man role.
Gad would have just finished up with BoM when they started doing voice recordings for frozen. Knowing nothing about the background, I'd bet gad was a pretty late addition to the cast.
Knowing Disney, they are trying to make Gad the new Robin Williams. If you look for the advertising around Frozen there is a TON of focus on Olaf even though his role is really minor in the first movie.
Same thing happened with Aladdin and the Genie.
The original intro song to Aladdin had the line, “where they’ll cut off your ear if they don’t like your face”. Here’s a a flashback to 1993: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-07-10-ca-11747-story.html
The real racism in that movie was portraying the king and his daughter as too stupid to realize that they could each get wishes from the lamp prior to Aladdin freeing the genie.
I haven’t seen these books since I was a kid. Does anyone know of, or where I can find the specific examples from each book, and what people find offensive? I’m really curious to the specifics here.
On this same topic, I recently rewatched Aladdin, on Disney plus and was surprised that it was prefaced with a ‘social justice’ disclaimer. They said they wouldn’t take it down, but warned it might be offensive.
Ok, so we prepared to ourselves be offended, and yet I wasn’t. The movie holds up, and was really enjoyable! I’m not really sure what the issue was? I guess the depiction of Arab people is the issue, but I couldn’t find anything particularly egregious.
Aladdin was obviously not intended to be racist and was probably made by people with good intentions. The same could be said of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Song of the South. But 1992 was a dramatically more racist and reactionary era than 2021, and the 1992 film really is unacceptably racist to show to children.
It is impossible to ignore that Jasmine/Aladdin both have light skin, European faces, and American accents, whereas Jafar and all the hostile guards or street merchants are grotesque Arab caricatures. Seriously - the only Arab “accents” come from bad guys, they tend to have huge hooked or bulbous noses and very dark skin, and they’re all psychotically violent. Most of the references to Arab culture are superficial and rely on stereotypes for cheap laughs (watch the opening scene with the merchant again).
My brother once refused to watch anything on TV but Aladdin for almost a year. He’s a grown adult now and can STILL recite half the movies...
Kids will rewatch more than adults will
My 2yo daughter reeeeally loves the Aladdin soundtrack, but the French version (we're in Québec). It took us way too many tries to get our Google Home to play the correct version with voice commands, even adding the language ("Ok Google, écouter Aladdin en français") wouldn't work. I now have a small note with the correct incantation posted besides the Google Home, because even forgetting a single word will play the English version instead. (For the curious, the correct incantation is "OK Google, écouter Aladdin bande originale française du film").
The spirit isn't the name of some "greek goddess", it's the concept of victory and the associated conscious and conceptual space.
I'm not dumb enough to say that Nike is a reference to a dead culture from thousands of years ago. I'm saying that the concept and conscious idea of victory expressed as a piece of culture has existed for thousands of years, in roughly the same way despite the different window dressing; like seeing it as a god or as a brand. It's the same spirit in a different frame.
It's the same as the idea of a rich man being framed as Mansa Musa, Bill Gates, Aladdin from the 1992 film and many more examples. They all have similar culture connotations in some sense that make up the spirit of the 'rich man' and if you kill all cultural representations of the 'rich man', people will make new ones regardless of who it is. They will be framed in a way that is culturally successful at the time. Bill Gates is occupies the spirit of the rich man, framed as smart guy business savvy leader with a touch of ruthlessness. A catholic priest from before lutherian protestant reform would have occupied the spirit of the 'rich man' though he would have been framed very differently to bill gates, draped in catholic finery and religious imagery. When people want to access the spirit of being rich they would seek a catholic influence instead of a SV tech influence. Ages before that they would have saught the culture influence of Mansa Musa and his billions in gold. It's still the same spirit of the 'rich man', with different frames.
The same way Nike and Nike are the same spirit of victory with different frames.
Jesus christ. Read some Paglia.
Mirroring what the sibling comment said, studios often spend almost as much on advertising as they do production. I've often heard studios "borrowing" advertising budget to pay named actors for production.
Disney's old plan was to hire past their prime actors. Starting around the 90s when Robin Williams did well for Aladdin, they started courting celebrities who are parents and want to make movies their kids can watch. Also, voice work is considered "easy" (voice actors will fight that connotation). No odd call times, make up, wardrobe, or flying to locations and staying in a hotel (Shrek had Mike Myers record some last-minute dialog inside a limo).
If you view most golden age and resurgence Disney it's glaringly clear. By and large the women are shoehorned into submissive, weak characters at the mercy of a white knight.
The thing is, this really wasn't just a Disney thing, it was largely a Hollywood thing in general. Strong(er), three-dimensional women in film narrative didn't hit major motion pictures with significance until the late 60s and into the early 80s.
The late 1980s was an unfortunate time for Disneys resurgence, because somehow there was also a revival of strong man/weak, beautiful woman tropes in Hollywood. So when movies like The Little Mermaid, The Princess and the Frog, Tarzan, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast came out they very much followed this template.
The plots of these and previous movies hammer home that the young women are meant as prizes for men who come and save them. It's in the stories themselves.
>Disney doesn’t tend to get enough credit as a tech company
I think more in the early days of film they were more highly regarded for this. Especially among animators. Disney pioneered a lot animation and filmmaking techniques. Though their acquiring and Hmmm 'lifting of source material and content' has always happened. Take a look at Disney's Aladdin vs the Popeye version, the story elements changed from the original story are eerily similar between the two.
There are about 20 Marvel movies, 11 Star Wars movies, and 2 Star Wars TV shows. This is not about watching them when they come out, it's about being able to watch the entire backlog whenever I want. (Assuming they make their entire backlog available, which they should.)
Also: tons of Pixar movies. And I still haven't seen The Lion King and Aladdin. Or pretty much any Disney movie other than Brave.
If it's not your thing, that's fine, but I've got two kids, and Netflix is a bit short on movies for the whole family that are fun for both kids as well as parents. They're great at stuff for just the kids or just the parents, but for the whole family is what Pixar and Disney are good at.
>According to Wikipedia, Aladdin grossed "$923.7 million, against a production budget of $183 million". So despite you and your nephew, Disney seem to manage OK.
That's not an objective way to look at things. If there were only 1 model of car being sold this year, you can bet it will sell with record numbers and produce more profit than any other vehicle in the past. The fact that records are being broken so rapidly is a bad thing; it means there's very few films worth watching, so everyone is going out to see the same thing.
It’s been well over a decade since the original Aladdin was released. This isn’t exactly complaining that people keep on staging Macbeth instead of newly written plays but it’s in the same direction. Critics and connoisseurs care far more about originality than casuals, who are always all about competent execution. Is the movie any good when judged as a singular work? Is it good if you’re not jaded by having watched a movie a day for years?
> He told us he didn't want to see it because they(Disney) were just taking a 2D movie that he'd already seen and are just doing the same thing again
Interestingly, the original Aladdin is no longer available for sale. Netflix, Amazon, Google Play, Walmart....whatever.
You either need to buy a disc from a garage sale, or pirate it.
> But when compared with some of his earlier “core” stories, such as the eerie “City of Brass,” the 1712 “Aladdin” comes across as lackluster and unexciting. Disney’s two screen versions, the 1992 animated feature and this spring’s live-action film, are actually much more satisfying.
It's also worth noting that regardless of the provenance of Galland's Aladdin, Disney's movie is basically a rip-off of the 1940 film The Thief of Baghdad, which combined the Thousand and One Nights elements with the plot of the earlier silent movie it was a remake off.
> Although it was a remake of a 1924 silent film starring Douglas Fairbanks, this film has been highly influential on later movies based on The Book of One Thousand and One Nights setting. For example, the Disney film Aladdin borrows freely from it, particularly the characters of the evil Vizier and the Sultan, both drawn with a marked similarity to the characters in The Thief of Bagdad. The villian Jafar is named after Jaffar. The thieving monkey Abu in the Disney cartoon is based on the boy played by Sabu.[12]
(from wikipedia)
Galland's Aladdin was set in China, so actually the entire middle-eastern setting comes from The Thief of Baghdad.
I think you're absolutely right, and this is part of the challenge of this sort of approach: can you take the sometimes brutal rejection gracefully. This is not new, although technology may exaggerate some of the trends that already exist. Notably, at least when it comes to an initial meeting ~80% of men are "below average."
This is frankly a trope of most of the action/romance movies out there. How does Jasmine initially respond to Aladdin? By telling him what a worthless scrub he is. How does Aladdin prove he's not a worthless scrub? By hard work, a good attitude, and persistence. Jasmine eventually sees the value he demonstrates.
There's more complexity here than what I've laid out. But, think on this: Tinder mostly cuts the process off at approach.
Any analysis is incomplete if all it look at is the protagonist without looking at the mirror image that is the antagonist. Each film is only as good as its villain, so what does a typical Disney villain look like and what gender/attributes do they have?
In Pocahontas the antagonist is the exploiter, the disrupter of natural order, and the destroyer, and male. In Hercules he is the manipulator and manifestation of evil. In Mulan he is represented as the mindless horde of destroyers. In frozen he is the liar, the cheater, the bully. In Aladdin it is the mustache-twirling, eye-rolling, leering, and old man.
There is a small minority of Disney movies that have a female antagonist, but they are all version of the same evil witch stereotype. Old, infertile, predator of children.
So what does this teach children about social behavior and crime? What about who deserve sympathy and who is redeemable? About conflict resolution and handling of blame?
Disney movies aren't the best places if we want to avoid stereotypes, and that include the newer movies like Frozen.
Disney is pretty much only a huge force from using public domain to make money, yet they routinely do things to avoid their IP from entering the public domain.
Some examples [1]:
- Frozen (2013) from Hans Christian Anderson’s Ice Queen (1845) - Revenue = $810.3 million
- Alice in Wonderland (2010) based on Lewis Carroll’s book (1865) - Revenue = $1.02 billion
- Snow White (1937) from the Brothers Grimm folk tale (1857) - Revenue = $416 million (10th highest grossing film as adjusted for inflation)
- Aladdin (1992) from a folk tale in One Thousand and One Nights (1706) - Revenue = $504 million
Then you have their lobbying:
"In 1998, Copyright was up for it’s last copyright term extension, from life +50 years to life +70 years. Disney’s Mickey Mouse copyright had accounted for up to $8 billion in revenue in 1998 when they were lobbying for copyright extension.
Disney’s Chairman, Michael Eisener personally met with then-Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott. The day Lott signed on as co-sponsor of the bill, Disney’s PAC donated to Lott’s campaign. Within a month Disney also gave $20,000 in soft money to the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Of the 13 initial sponsors of the House bill, 10 received contributions from Disney’s PAC. On the Senate side, 8 of the 12 sponsors received contributions" [2]
Protect $8B with some cheap lobbying. What a deal!
[1][2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/derekkhanna/2014/02/03/50-disney-movies-based-on-the-public-domain/#394c4cf41645
I'm...not certain this is false.
When I was a kid, I watched Disney movies. I had this whole alternate "Disney" universe constructed in my head. Cinderalla, Aladdin, Peter Pan, Sleeping Beauty, etc.
But importantly, they only existed in my head---and of course, on the screen.
Then I got to visit Disneyland. Suddenly Sleeping Beauty's castle is a real place, and I've been there. I've taken a pull on the Sword in the Stone.
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A couple years ago, long on knowledge about monads and short on portfolio, I found myself in need of a job in the Bay Area. I started working for Zirx, an on-demand valet company. Basically my job was to run around SoMa and pick up people's cars, and later return them to them. The rest of the time, I wandered the streets, waiting for my company-issued phone to summon me.
Imagine my surprise one day when, running from parking a car near 2nd Street, I saw Github.
"Oh," I thought. "I guess that's where that is."
Or Hipmunk, which was recessed behind a grate. Or that building right by the freeway on the east side of 2nd, that has five floors and about ten startups.
So, I don't know. To me---to an extent---San Francisco really is where the Internet is.
Even if you're a staunch ally of safe, conservative family entertainment for its own sake, Disney was pretty damn crappy for a while. Look at their animated stuff in particular for plenty of mediocre storylines and bland animation (e.g. The Aristocats, The Fox and the Hound, Robin Hood). Children deserved better!
Eventually some meaningful competition from the likes of Don Bluth started to push them in the right direction (Secret of NIMH, Land before Time, All Dogs Go to Heaven, etc.) and not too long afterward they were doing things like Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin. Quite an improvement, though I dare say the storylines have never quite caught up. (Of course, all of Bluth's stuff would later be undermined as it was sequel-ized to Hell and back, like The Land Before Time XXIV: Teach Your Kids Roman Numerals Edition...)
Right now, though, after seeing Pixar's homages to Ghibli, I'm anticipating the impact of recent works like Puella Magi Madoka Magica, which really pushed some boundaries in Japan. (If you're not familiar with it, I'll just say... imagine if Pan's Labyrinth had been actively marketed to little children as a happy family film and an homage to Alice in Wonderland... and then translate that willful deception and the profound darkness onto Sailor Moon.) If it does make a splash in the youth entertainment industry at large, that will be quite interesting indeed.
Multiple computer-controlled winch systems have been used for movie special effects for years. Here's a 2010 system test for a flying taxi, which shows the controller as well as the taxi.[1] Disney's Aladdin at Tuacahn Amphitheater has a magic carpet which flies out over the audience with two performers on it. That's done with four computer-controlled winches.
The robot simulator looks like it's using the same winches Kirby's AFX uses for theatrical work. That's not surprising; few companies make high speed precision-controllable winches rated for human safety.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkjM9leyQPc
Try to make a movie using say Aladdin and i'm sure you will get some very nasty letters from Disney about trademarks etc.
Yep. Way back in the day, I happened to setup the Open Source OGLE DVD player software. I think it was Mandrake Linux, running on some PC with a Matrox G400 card --the one with nice 2D, and great DVD support.
Insert disc, press T, then P, and you are watching the movie, no BS. Took maybe 5 seconds tops after disk mount.
Turned out to be popular, so I bought a real DVD player for the family, and we hated that thing.
"Aladdin" is talked about a lot, but it's true! Every single time the kids wanted to watch that thing, it was something like 15 minutes of previews for all this other cool stuff, over and over.
That was the first DVD I ripped. Couldn't stand it. And once setup for that, I ripped 'em all, and also got the benefit of younger ones not destroying fragile media at some considerable expense all the time too. That and losing it, or swapping with friends...
For a number of years, I replaced that "real" DVD player with OGLE setup to just play the movie no matter what.
Was great OSS advocacy. Suddenly, a whole bunch of people knew who a "geek" and "hacker" was, what software was, how it can impact lives, and all sorts of other good things just because DVD media producers just HAD to annoy the crap out of people. Funny that!
Here's a visualization summary of entire movies in a "barcode" timeline format from the start of the film to the end.
[0] http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/movie-index
[1] 2001: A Space Odyssey http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3432026155/2001-a-space-odyssey-1968-prints
[2] Aladdin http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/5766889425/aladdin-1992-prints
[3] Beyond the Black Rainbow http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/39051819960/beyond-the-black-rainbow-2010-prints
[4] Blade Runner http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/4438993828/blade-runner-1982-prints
[5] Star Wars Episode IV http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/13255664875/star-wars-episode-iv-a-new-hope-1977-prints
[6] The Wizard of Oz http://moviebarcode.tumblr.com/post/3512965847/the-wizard-of-oz-1939-prints
It is a meme that movies have all settled on using a blue/teal and orange color palette nowadays, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. There is one prominent movie in the middle which is almost entirely orange and blue, which I believe to be Aladdin[1], but other than that and a couple around it, the color palettes seem pretty similar, although much darker, more saturated and perhaps somewhat choppier. This could be because they are animated films and thus don't need to create contrast with human skin tones, which are somewhere on the orangeish spectrum (according to TVTropes discussion of this phenomenon)[2].
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Walt_Disney_Animation_Studios_films
2: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OrangeBlueContrast
You are stretching on all of you examples.
The Men's Warehouse commercials are as I described before, they talk about looking good for a function - work but life also. This is the pragmatic men's marketing. It's not the 'expensive so it must be good' branding that is on a lot of female products.
When was the last Disney 'prince' movie? Aladdin? Lion King? Meanwhile, Disney has now deemed Mulan and Tinker Bell as a princesses, there is now an African-American princess (Princess and the Frog), they added another pretty, white princess (Rapunzel from Tangled), a Scottish princess (Brave) and Disney is adding a hispanic princess[1] (although light on the hispanic). Girls have been sold the knight in shining armor. Boy could care less about princesses they just want be an action hero.
Diamond advertisements that talk about 'investment' are for men, but there aren't many of those. It's all about 'forever', 'love', etc, which are emotional pleas to women.
And the Superbowl has A TON of women watching[2]. It's sexist to think otherwise. The NFL is openly courting women as a way to increase viewership[3].
[1] http://www.examiner.com/article/disney-s-princess-sofia-the-first-the-first-hispanic-disney-princess
[2] http://jamiedunham.wordpress.com/2013/02/03/marketing-to-women-women-watching-super-bowl-too/
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/06/sports/football/nfl-hones-message-for-its-female-fans.html?_r=0
I had a flashback to one of the coolest video games of the early 90s PC era, Aladdin based on the Disney movie. In place of a conventional "life bar", in the upper left corner there was an image of Genie, whose expression would change from happy to concerned to terrified as you lost health. I always thought that was innovative. At a glance -- in less time than it took for your eye to measure the actual length of a health bar and compare it to its potential full length -- you knew with remarkable precision how much more punishment you could take before dying.
So what's up with this game having a Grand Vizier named Jaffar and Disney's Aladdin having a Grand Vizier named Jafar?
Edit:
Did some digging around and apparently there was a fictional Grand Vizier named Jaffar in the 1940s film "The Thief of Bagdad." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thief_of_Bagdad_(1940_film)
So it looks like those two instances are a rip-off of a character in that movie.
It's just more of an adult / documentary thing IMHO. They spent way too much trying to make some principled point rather than entertain. Same with 'Up'. I think perhaps they were catering to people who nominate Oscars or something.
My kids were bored. Gimmie Princess and the frog, Hercules, Aladdin, Little Mermaid etc etc any day.
That is true, but only as long as the machine continues to run.
It is like the genie (Robin Williams) in the animated film Aladdin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aladdin_(1992_film)
Quote from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103639/quotes
--------
Aladdin: You're a prisoner?
Genie: It's all part and parcel, the whole "genie gig":
[grows to a gigantic size]
Genie: Phenomenal cosmic powers!
[shrinks down inside the lamp]
Genie: Itty-bitty living space!
--------
As an irreplaceable cog, you may have "phenomenal" earning power, but you get trapped in a small (employment) space.
There's a bit of the whole Dreamworks vs Pixar thing.
Ok here we go...
Pixar consistently produces a form of the art that is simply higher than Dreamworks can even approach.
The thing about that is, that the two studios produce films for completely different markets. Dreamworks focusses directly on producing films for children (with a few outliers) and Pixar focusses on producing films for everyone (with a few outliers)
Pixar's process is more story focussed than other studios, A typical Pixar film usually has a 4 year production cycle in which the first two of those are spent primarily on writing and rewriting the story to get the "feel" right. Even then, they have no problem with changing the story at the 11th hour.
Case in point - WALL-E's ending was originally very different with WALL-E originally saving EVE from the trash compactors (essentially larger versions of WALL-E for irony). After the film was complete and was screened in Portland, Andrew Stanton changed the ending to what it is today. The story flows better.
Compare that to something Dreamworks. Dreamworks focusses on making films which are more technically proficient and aimed at children (Kung Fu Panda was astounding from a technical standpoint and dominated the "Annies" last year, which is the animation industries version of the Emmys).
Dreamworks are more focussed on the business side, rather than the entertainment side of the process.
That's also why Dreamworks films are typically heavily backed by merchandising and advertising blitzes, because of this focus.
So it's difficult to compare the two, it would be like saying a Michael Bay film is comparable to a Tarantino film. The fact is, they have different markets and so approach the filmmaking process in different ways.
Nobody in their right mind would try and compare the two film styles.
Lastly, before you try and judge Dreamworks' animation pedigree, Jeffrey Katzenberg co-founded the studio and he was responsible for the classic Disney franchsies between 88 and 94 like The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast (which I might add is the ONLY animation film EVER to be nominated for best film at the Oscars).
It still amazes me that analysts fail to see Pixar films for what they really are: Aimed at everyone, not just children. This is why the franchise aspect of the films is a little harder.
Here is the basic recipe for a Pixar film. The main character has to "grow" throughout the film while facing what are essentially adult problems - using animation as the vehicle for story telling.
Compare that to Dreamworks - who's style is heavily influenced by Jeffrey Katzenberg who is responsible for Disney's great run of films in the late 80's and early 90's (Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast & Aladdin) before leaving in 94 and founding Dreamworks with Spielberg.
Dreamworks animations are aimed directly at children because of this influence, the stories are often not as complex and the jokes are simpler. They're geared for pumping out 2 films a year instead of just the 1 and are heavily backed up by merchandising. Their marketing teams absolutely blitz the public and this is probably why Shrek 2 is still the highest grossing animated film of all time, even though several films from both studios are better.
Now if the NY Times really wants to make an article about Pixar's future success, they should perhaps write about how the next few films after UP won't be directed by Pixar's main stable of directors (Stanton, Lasseter, Bird and Docter) instead seeing a generational change with new directors handling old franchises.
As Brad Bird of Pixar said during their documentary The Pixar Story
"This is an anomaly, this place is really freakishly alone in this hit after hit aspect"
It's not really a case of if they will make a film that fails, it's when - I personally hope that it never happens, but I'm not that naive.
[???] : hoofbeats
Very fitting; never viewed it with an entrepreneurial POV before. Okay, I admit I voted this up because Aladdin is one of my two favorite movies. I may have revealed too much...