The Phenomenon of Disney's Aladdin
I attribute seeing the Aladdin film as being the moment when I decided to pursue making art as a career. I later read articles in the Disney Adventure's magazine about the animators who worked on Aladdin and I knew I wanted to be a professional artist. The Disney Adventure's magazine also had several Aladdin comics, cast interviews and images about the making of the movie. In a time before the internet and DVD special features this was a great source for more info about the movie. Aladdin is also the only movie I saw over ten times at the theater. Yea, you read that right. I went to see Aladdin at least 15 times. I saw it about eight times at full-price and then I saw it even more times when it went to our local discount cinema. Shows there only cost about $1.50 then. Sigh, those where the days.
Disney's marketing machine pumped out tons of additional Aladdin related products. I had a bunch of the Aladdin toys including a Genie figure with interchangeable heads for all his zany expressions. The Abu figure wasn't articulated and just had this one pose like one of the pieces from the "Barrel of Monkey's" game. That kind of annoyed me that a rather important character was treated like a prop. The magic carpet had wheels under it. Kinda odd but it let you make the characters roll across a table top on it.
I also had the Aladdin Sega Genesis game. It was fun platforming goodness. I remember a few rage-quitting parts of it, but overall it's a great game. The game's animation was very fluid and the characters looked great as they moved. And unlike the sucky Super NES version of the game, in the Genesis game Aladdin has a sword. Yea, in the Super NES version of the game Aladdin's only weapon is...apples. He tosses apples at his enemies. Oooh, scary. I bet those three-hundred-pound palace guards with their big swords are just terrified by a skinny guy throwing fruit at them. He'd be dead no question.
The Aladdin animated TV series demonstrates Disney's knack for marketing on the success of a wonderful full length feature by carrying the theme over into a cheesy cartoon series. Don't get me wrong, I really liked the tv show. This one wasn't as bad as some of Disney's other based-on-the-movie cartoon series. It actually had some interesting characters and story lines. The animation wasn't that bad even though it wasn't feature film quality of course.
As for the other characters, Scott Weinger returns as Aladdin (I guess the Full House producers didn't mind him moonlighting as a voice over actor). Jasmine was the same lovely Linda Larkin for awhile but then it never seemed to be the same person voicing her in any given episode. As mentioned no Robin Williams for the Genie but they did get the amazing Dan Castellaneta (Homer Simpson) to do a pretty good impression of Robin Williams doing a Genie impression who then did impressions of other people. Okay now I'm confused, moving on. The Genie lost most of his omnipotence for the show. Because let's face it, any problem the characters would face would be nothing if they had a free-agent genie to do whatever they asked just cause they're all pals now. There was a ton of famous people giving voice overs for the show. Including several Star Trek alumni like Kate Mulgrew and Rene Arberjonois as well as other stars like Tim Curry, Keith David and Hector Elizondo.
Plenty of new characters were added to the cast for the animated series. There's the chubby, bumbling thief Abis Mal (get it- abysmal) voiced by Jason Alexander, (aka Seinfeld's George Castanza). Also added was Haroud Hazi Bin who was Abis Mal's African sidekick with the real brains. He was voiced by the glorious James Avery (aka the Shredder from TMNT cartoon and uncle Phil from Fresh Prince). James is awesome. There was another cool villain voiced by the late Jonathan Brandis (Lucas on Seaquest) who kinda served as Aladdin's arch rival. There was also an Egyptian cat lady, but the less said about her the better.
Mechanikles was "the greatest of the great Greek geniuses!" His ploy was to make all kinds of robots that ended up terrorizing Aladdin and his rag tag band of misfit friends. The robots we're often designed in the shape of various insects and arachnids such as his sidekick beetle-bot Scooter. His robots were all "steam-punk" looking constructions. A bit anachronistic technology for the time period but hey it's Disney and they don't worry about such things as history. They're too busy makin' it baby!
His nefarious credits include the aforementioned desert-ironing centipede, a tiny dragonfly "toy" that almost killed the Sultan, and a gigantic rhinoceros beetle AT-AT walker that nearly crushed a village.
I was always fascinated by robots so I guess that's why I liked Mechanikles. I wanted them to come out with toys of the big robot insects so bad. Any show that even mentions robots made a big impression on me as a kid. For instance, there's one episode of the Cosby show where one of Vanessa's friends enters a bunch of homemade tiny robots in the science fair, while slacker Vanessa only did a crappy solar system model. That 20 second scene left a lasting impression on me. I thought that when I got to school I would be taught how to make my own robots. Sadly that was not the case. But, I digress.
Whether it was in movies, toys, games, comics or a campy animated TV series the Aladdin franchise totally ruled the early 90's. -Dan |
Search X-tropia.com
|
I was 12 when Disney's Aladdin hit theaters so I was totally on-board for the whole phenomenon. Join me as I go over all the different spin-offs, products and tv series that came as a result of the movie's success. I love Disney movies and this one came after the huge successes of The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. I feel these three movies were a contemporary golden age for Disney animated films. Aladdin remains to this day one of my all time favorites. 
"The Return of Jafar" was the first sequel to Aladdin and it was released straight to video. Clearly it's a less-budgeted affair than the blockbuster Aladdin, but it still is a good movie. One thing that bothered me was that at the end of Aladdin the movie it looks as though Aladdin was made sultan. In the sequel he is reduced to being the Sultan's new advisor. Anyway, what Return of Jafar really did was set up the Aladdin animated series. If you liked the parrot Iago in the first movie then you're in luck because it's basically his show from here on out. 
Some of the voice actors from Aladdin are the same in the series. They couldn't afford Robin Williams for the Genie, but you do get good ole Gilbert Gottfried making Iago come to life with his particular brand of squint-eyed sarcasm. Okay, he's annoying sometimes, but that's his act and he does it well. That's what made him famous so you gotta appreciate it. An interesting side note some people don't realize is that Gilbert doesn't really talk like that all the time as I once imagined. I have seen footage of him where his eyes are wide and he sounds like a real person. He was actually quite charming but not as funny.
However, the most interesting new character to me was Mechanikles! He was voiced by the talented Charles Adler (of Tiny Toon Adventure's Buster Bunny fame). Charles voice fit perfectly with this character.
Mechanikles was a text book obsessive compulsive personality. He referred to Aladdin and his friends as a group of "hygienically challenged savages." He obsessed with cleaning and at one point wanted to iron the dessert by burning it into glass. I actually kind of relate to him. He keeps checklists of everything on his agenda and he freaks out about keeping things clean and tidy. "Stop it I just alphabetized those scrolls!" Yea, he's bad ass.
The Aladdin animated series lasted for three seasons. There was a third movie sequel released direct to video called "Aladdin and the King of Thieves." Big selling point for this one was ROBIN WILLIAMS VOICES GENIE AGAIN! They really pushed that in all the advertisements. They even put "staring Robin Williams" on the movie's cover. He was funny in it but not as memorable as the first movie. Still I liked it, and it tied up some loose ends of the story.