Jafar, Grand Vizier to the Sultan of Agrabah, is attempting to retrieve a magical oil lamp containing a genie from the Cave of Wonders. After seeing a petty thief's failed attempt to enter the cave, Jafar and his parrot, Iago, learn that only a "Diamond in the Rough" can enter the cave.

Jasmine, the Sultan's daughter, frustrated with her life in the palace, flees to Agrabah's marketplace. There she meets street rat Aladdin and his monkey, Abu. The two discover they have a lot in common. When Aladdin is detained for thievery, Jasmine orders him released, but Jafar lies to her that Aladdin has been executed.

Disguised as an elder, Jafar releases Aladdin and Abu from prison and leads them to the Cave of Wonders. The tiger-shaped head of the cave says to touch nothing but the lamp. Aladdin and Abu enter the cave, where a magic carpet guides them to the lamp. Abu's attempt to steal a ruby backfires and causes the cave to collapse, but the carpet flies them to the entrance. As Aladdin delivers the lamp, Jafar tries to kill him, but Abu bites Jafar in the arm and gets the lamp back as he, the carpet, and Aladdin fall back into the cave just as it closes.

In the collapsed cave, Aladdin rubs the lamp, unexpectedly unleashing a genie, who reveals he will grant Aladdin three wishes—with the exception of murder, romance, revival of the dead or multiplication of wishes. Aladdin doubts there is a genie, thinking he may have suffered head trauma, so the Genie launches into a song of "Never Had a Friend Like Me", then finally convinces Aladdin by freeing him, Abu and the Carpet from the cave. Genie realizes he used magic without actually granting a wish, to which he says Aladdin will get no more magic help unless he expressly states "I wish". While contemplating his wishes, Genie admits he would wish for freedom, since he is a prisoner to his lamp. Aladdin promises to free the Genie as his last wish. After talking about Jasmine with the Genie, Aladdin decides to use his first wish to become a prince so he can woo Jasmine.

Aladdin returns to Agrabah just as Jafar tries to trick the Sultan into arranging a marriage between himself and Jasmine. When Aladdin parades into the Sultan's palace as "Prince Ali", Jasmine rejects Ali as a suitor. Despite the Genie's suggestion that Aladdin to tell the princess who he really is, Aladdin keeps up his act as a suave prince, and takes Jasmine around the world on the magic carpet. During the trip, Jasmine believes Ali to be the peasant man she saw earlier, Aladdin, and demands the truth from him. Aladdin instead fabricates a story that he sometimes dresses as a commoner to escape palace life. The couple kisses as Aladdin returns her home.

Afterwards, Aladdin is captured by Jafar and thrown into the ocean, but the Genie rescues Aladdin as his second wish. Aladdin returns to the palace and exposes Jafar's plot; and Jafar flees after noticing the lamp in Aladdin's possession, realizing who Aladdin is. As Aladdin gets doubtful about revealing who really is, Iago steals the Genie's lamp and brings it to Jafar, who becomes the Genie's new master. Jafar uses his first two wishes to become Sultan and the most powerful sorcerer in the world. Using his new powers, Jafar forces Jasmine and her father to bow, exposes Aladdin as a street rat, then exiles him and Abu to a frozen wasteland.

Aladdin uses the magic carpet to return to Agrabah, where Jafar has imprisoned both Jasmine and the Sultan as his slaves. Jasmine distracts Jafar with a seductive act as Aladdin tries to steal back the lamp, but Jafar confronts him. He imprisons Jasmine in a large hourglass and turns himself into an enormous cobra. As Jafar traps Aladdin in his coils, he boasts to be "the most powerful being on Earth", which causes Aladdin to shout out that the Genie is more powerful. Faced with this realization, Jafar uses his final wish to become a genie. However, Jafar discovers that genies are not free entities as he is sucked into a black lamp, dragging Iago with him. The Genie flicks the lamp into the Cave of Wonders.


After Aladdin realizes that he cannot keep pretending to be something he is not, he decides to keep his promise and wish for the Genie's freedom. Seeing Jasmine's love for Aladdin, the Sultan changes the law to allow her to marry whomever she deems worthy. The newly free Genie leaves to explore the world while Aladdin and Jasmine celebrate their engagement.

• Scott Weinger as Aladdin: A poor but kind-hearted Agrabah thief. Weinger sent in a homemade audition tape with his mother playing the Genie, and after several call backs he found six months later that he had the part. The character's singing voice was provided by Brad Kane, who would also perform the speaking voice before Weinger was cast.

• Robin Williams as The Genie: A comedic genie, with nigh omnipotent power that can only be exercised when his master wishes it. Clements and Musker wrote the part of the Genie for Williams, and when met with resistance created a reel of Williams' standup to animation of the Genie. When Williams watched the video, he "laughed his ass off" and agreed to do the project.

• Jonathan Freeman as Jafar: The power-hungry Grand Vizier of Agrabah. Jafar was originally envisioned as an irritable character, but the directors decided that a calm villain would be scarier. Freeman was the first actor cast, and spent one year and nine months recording his dialogue. He later readjusted his voice after Weinger and Larkin were cast as he felt "Jafar had to be seen as a real threat to Aladdin and Jasmine". Animator Andreas Deja tried to incorporate Freeman's facial expressions and gesturing into the character.

• Linda Larkin as Princess Jasmine: The princess of Agrabah, who is tired of life in the royal palace. Larkin was chosen nine months after her audition, and had to adjust her pitch to reach the voice the filmmakers were looking for the character.Lea Salonga, who was performing Miss Saigon on Broadway at the time, supplies the character's singing voice.

• Frank Welker as Abu: Aladdin's kleptomaniac pet monkey with a high-pitched voice. The animators filmed monkeys at the San Francisco Zoo to study the movements Abu would have. In the three years it took to record the film, Welker did not meet Weinger or Williams. Welker also voiced Jasmine's tiger Rajah, and the Cave of Wonders.

• Gilbert Gottfried as Iago: Jafar's sarcastic, foul-mouthed pet parrot sidekick. Iago's animator Will Finn tried to incorporate some aspects of Gottfried's appearance into Iago's design, specially his semi-closed eyes and the always-appearing teeth.

• Douglas Seale as The Sultan: The pompous but kind ruler of Agrabah, who desperately tries to find a suitor for his daughter Jasmine. Some aspects of the character were inspired in the Wizard of Oz, to create a bumbling authority figure.

• Jim Cummings as Razoul: The Captain of the Guard. He was named after layout supervisor Rasoul Azadani.

• Bruce Adler as the Merchant. Bruce provided both the character's normal voice along with the Merchant's singing voice.

• The Magic Carpet is a sentient carpet who is able to fly. Animator Randy Cartwright described working on the Carpet as challenging, since it is just a square shape, who expresses himself through pantomime – "It's sort of like acting by origami". Cartwright kept folding a piece of cloth while animating to see how to position the Carpet. After the character animation was done, the carpet's surface design was applied digitally.

Script and development

In 1988, lyricist Howard Ashman pitched to Disney the idea of an animated musical adaptation of Aladdin. After Ashman wrote some songs with partner Alan Menken and a film treatment, a screenplay was written by Linda Woolverton, who had worked on Beauty and the Beast. Then directors John Musker and Ron Clements joined the production, picking Aladdin out of three projects offered, which also included an adaptation of Swan Lake and King of the Jungle – that eventually became The Lion King.

Musker and Clements wrote a draft of the screenplay, and delivered it to studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg in 1991. Katzenberg thought the script "didn't engage", and only approved it after the screenwriting duo Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio rewrote it. Among the changes, the character of Aladdin's mother was removed, Princess Jasmine was made into a stronger character, Aladdin's personality was rewritten to be "a little rougher, like a young Harrison Ford," and the parrot Iago, originally conceived as a "British" calm and serious character, was reworked into a comic role after the filmmakers saw Gilbert Gottfried in Beverly Hills Cop II. Gottfried was cast to provide Iago's voice. Several characters and plot elements are also based on the 1940 version of The Thief of Bagdad, and many aspects of the traditional story were changed for the film – for instance, the setting is changed from "China" to a fictional Arabian city, Agrabah.

Design and animation

One of the first issues that the animators faced during production of Aladdin was the depiction of Aladdin himself. Director and producer John Musker explains:

“

In early screenings, we played with him being a little bit younger, and he had a mother in the story. [...] In design he became more athletic-looking, more filled out, more of a young leading man, more of a teen-hunk version than before.

”

He was initially going to be as young as 13, but that eventually changed to eighteen. Aladdin was designed by a team led by supervising animator Glen Keane, and was originally made to resemble actor Michael J. Fox. During production, it was decided that the design was too boyish and wasn't "appealing enough," so the character was redesigned to add elements derived from actor Tom Cruise and Calvin Klein models.

The design for most characters was based on the work of caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, which production designer Richard Vander Wende also considered appropriate to the theme, due to similarities to the swooping lines of Persian miniatures and Arabic calligraphy. Jafar's design was not based on Hirschfeld's work because Jafar's supervising animator, Andreas Deja, wanted the character to be contrasting. Each character was animated alone, with the animators consulting each other to make scenes with interrelating characters. Since Aladdin's animator Glen Keane was working in the California branch of Walt Disney Feature Animation, and Jasmine's animator Mark Henn was in the Florida one at Disney-MGM Studios, they had to frequently phone, fax or send designs and discs to each other.

For the scenery design, layout supervisor Rasoul Azadani took many pictures of his hometown of Isfahan, Iran for guidance. Other inspirations for design were Disney's animated films from the 1940s and 50s and the 1940 film The Thief of Bagdad. The coloring was done with the computerized CAPS process, and the color motifs were chosen according to the personality – the protagonists use light colors such as blue, the antagonists darker ones such as red and black, and Agrabah and its palace use the neutral color yellow.Computer animation was used for some elements of the film, such as the tiger entrance of the Cave of Wonders and the scene where Aladdin tries to escape the collapsing cave.

Musker and Clements created the Genie with Robin Williams in mind; even though Katzenberg suggested actors such as John Candy, Steve Martin, and Eddie Murphy, Williams was approached and eventually accepted the role. Williams came for voice recording sessions during breaks in the shooting of two other films he was starring in at the time, Hook and Toys. Unusually for an animated film, much of Williams' dialogue was ad-libbed: for some scenes, Williams was given topics and dialogue suggestions, but allowed to improvise his lines. It was estimated that Williams improvised 52 characters.Eric Goldberg, the supervising animator for the Genie, then reviewed Williams' recorded dialogue and selected the best gags and lines that his crew would create character animation to match.

The producers added many in-jokes and references to Disney's previous works in the film, such as a "cameo appearance" from directors Clements and Musker and drawing some characters based on Disney workers.Beast, Sebastian from The Little Mermaid, and Pinocchio make brief appearances, and the wardrobe of the Genie at the end of the film—Goofy hat, Hawaiian shirt, and sandals—are a reference to a short film that Robin Williams did for the Disney/MGM Studios tour in the late 80s.

Robin Williams' conflicts with the studio

In gratitude for his success with the Disney/Touchstone film Good Morning, Vietnam, Robin Williams voiced the Genie for SAG scale pay ($75,000), on condition that his name or image not be used for marketing, and his (supporting) character not take more than 25% of space on advertising artwork, since Toys was scheduled for release one month after Aladdin's debut. For financial reasons, the studio went back on the deal on both counts, especially in poster art by having the Genie in 25% of the image, but having other major and supporting characters portrayed considerably smaller. The Disney Hyperion book Aladdin: The Making of an Animated Film listed both of Williams' characters "The Peddler" and "The Genie" ahead of main characters, but was forced to refer to him only as "the actor signed to play the Genie".

Williams and Disney had a bitter falling-out, and as a result, Dan Castellaneta voiced the Genie in The Return of Jafar, the Aladdin animated television series, and had recorded his voice for Aladdin and the King of Thieves. Following Jeffrey Katzenberg's departure from Disney, former 20th Century Fox production head Joe Roth, whose last act for Fox was greenlighting Williams' film Mrs. Doubtfire, Roth replaced Katzenberg and arranged for a public apology to Williams by Disney. Williams agreed to perform in Hollywood Pictures' Jack, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, and even agreed to voice the Genie again for the King of Thieves sequel (for considerably more than scale), replacing all of Castellaneta's dialogue.

Music

Composer Alan Menken and songwriters Howard Ashman and Tim Rice were praised for creating a soundtrack that is "consistently good, rivaling the best of Disney's other animated musicals from the '90s." Menken and Ashman began work on the film together, with Rice taking over as lyricist after Ashman died of AIDS-related complications in early 1991. Although fourteen songs were written for Aladdin, only six are featured in the movie, three by each lyricist. The DVD Special Edition released in 2004 includes four songs in early animations tests, and a music video of one, "Proud of Your Boy", performed by Clay Aiken, which also appears on the album DisneyMania 3.

The filmmakers thought the moral message of the original tale was not appropriate, and decided to "put a spin on it", by making the fulfillment of wishes seem like a great thing, but eventually becoming a problem. Another major theme was not trying to be what the person is not – both Aladdin and Jasmine get into trouble faking to be different people, and the Prince Ali persona fails to impress Jasmine, who only falls for Aladdin when she finds out who he truly is. Being "imprisoned" is also discussed, a fate that occurs to most of the characters – Aladdin and Jasmine are stuck to their lifestyles, Genie is attached to his lamp and Jafar, to the Sultan – and is represented visually by the prison-like walls and bars of the Agrabah palace, and the scene involving caged birds which Jasmine later frees. Jasmine is also depicted as a different Disney Princess, being rebellious to the royal life and the social structure, and trying to make her own way, unlike the princesses who just wait for rescue.

Theatrical run

A large promotion campaign preceded Aladdin's debut in theaters, with the film's trailer being attached to most Disney VHS releases, and numerous tie-ins and licensees being released. After a limited release on November 13, 1992,Aladdin debuted in 1,131 theaters on November 25, 1992, 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. As of 2013, it is the twenty-sixth highest grossing animated film and the third highest grossing traditionally animated feature worldwide, behind The Lion King and The Simpsons Movie.

Critical reception

Aladdin was well received by critics. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 92% of critics gave the film a positive review based on a sample of 51 reviews, with an average score of 8/10. Among the "Top Critics", it has a 100% positive review rating from ten critics.

Most critics' praise went to Robin Williams' performance as Genie, with Janet Maslin of The New York Times declaring that children "needn't know precisely what Mr. Williams is evoking to understand how funny he is".Warner Bros. animator Chuck Jones even called the film "the funniest feature ever made."James Berardinelli gave it 3.5 out of 4 stars, praising the "crisp visuals and wonderful song-and-dance numbers".Peter Travers of Rolling Stone said the comedy made the film accessible to both children and adults, a vision shared with Desson Howe of The Washington Post, who also said "kids are still going to be entranced by the magic and adventure." Brian Lowry of Variety praised the cast of characters, describing the expressive magic carpet as "its most remarkable accomplishment" and considered that "Aladdin overcomes most story flaws thanks to sheer technical virtuosity".

Some aspects of the film were widely criticized. Ed Gonzalez of Slant Magazine wrote a negative review, describing the film as racist, ridiculous, and a "narcissistic circus act" for Robin Williams. Roger Ebert, who generally praised the film in his review, considered the music inferior to its predecessors The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, and claimed Aladdin and Jasmine were "pale and routine".

Awards

Aladdin also received many award nominations, mostly for its music. It won two Academy Awards, Best Music, Original Score and Best Music, Original Song for "A Whole New World" and receiving nominations for Best Song ("Friend Like Me"), Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound (Terry Porter, Mel Metcalfe, David J. Hudson and Doc Kane). At the Golden Globes, Aladdin won Best Original Song ("A Whole New World") and Best Original Score, as well as a Special Achievement Award for Robin Williams, with a nomination for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. Other awards included the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature, a MTV Movie Award for Best Comedic Performance to Robin Williams,Saturn Awards for Best Fantasy Film, Performance by a Younger Actor to Scott Weinger and Supporting Actor to Robin Williams, the Best Animated Feature by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and four Grammy Awards, Best Soundtrack Album, and Song of the Year, Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and Best Song Written for a Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media for "A Whole New World".

American Film Institute recognition:

• AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs – Nominated
• AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs
  • "Friend Like Me" – Nominated Song
  • "A Whole New World" – Nominated Song
• AFI's 10 Top 10 – Nominated Animated Film
• AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals – Nominated Musical

Home media

The film was first released in VHS on October 1, 1993, as part of the "Walt Disney Classics" line. In its first week of availability, Aladdin sold over 10.6 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 moratorium on April 30, 1994.

On October 5, 2004, Aladdin was released on DVD, as part of Disney's Platinum Edition line. The DVD release featured retouched and cleaned-up animation, prepared for Aladdin's planned but ultimately cancelled IMAX reissue in 2003, and a second disc with bonus features. Accompanied by a $19 million marketing campaign, the DVD sold about 3 million units in its first month, but it was less than the number of copies, sold in that amount of time, by any other Platinum Edition released before it. The film's soundtrack was available in its original Dolby 5.1 track or in a new Disney Enhanced Home Theater Mix. The DVD went into moratorium in January 2008, along with its sequels.

According to an insert in the Lady and the Tramp Diamond Edition release, Aladdin was going released on Blu-ray as a Diamond Edition in Spring 2013. But this release is delayed because Peter Pan was released on Blu-ray as a Diamond Edition in February 5, 2013 to celebrate its 60th Anniversary. A new release for the Diamond Edition has not been announced since.

Controversies

One of the verses of the opening song "Arabian Nights" was altered following protests from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). The lyrics were changed in July 1993 from "Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face," in the original release to "Where it's flat and immense and the heat is intense." The change first appeared on the 1993 video release. The original lyric was intact on the initial CD soundtrack release, but the re-release uses the edited lyric. The rerecording has the original voice on all other lines and then a noticeably deeper voice says the edited line. Entertainment Weekly ranked Aladdin in a list of the most controversial films in history, due to this incident. The ADC also complained about the portrayal of the lead characters Aladdin and Jasmine. They criticized the characters' Anglicized features and Anglo-American accents, in contrast to the other characters in the film, which are dark-skinned, have foreign accents and grotesque facial features, and appear villainous or greedy.

Protests were also raised to another scene. When Aladdin is attacked by the tiger Rajah on the palace balcony, Aladdin quietly says "Good kitty, take off and go..." and the word "kitty" is overlapped by Rajah's snarl. Some people reported hearing "Good teenagers, take off your clothes," which they considered a subliminal reference to promiscuity. Because of the controversy, Disney replaced the phrase with "Down, kitty" on the DVD release.

Animation enthusiasts have noticed similarities between Aladdin and Richard Williams's unfinished film The Thief and the Cobbler (also known as Arabian Knight under Miramax Films and The Princess and the Cobbler under Majestic Films International). These similarities include a similar plot, similar characters, scenes and background designs, and the antagonist Zig-Zag's resemblance in character design and mannerisms to Genie and Jafar. Though Aladdin was released prior to The Thief and the Cobbler, The Thief and the Cobbler was started much earlier in the 1960s, its production being mired in difficulties including financial problems, copyright issues, and late production times caused by separate studios trying to finish the film after Richard Williams was fired from the project for lack of finished work. The late release coupled with Miramax (a Disney-owned studio) purchasing and re-editing the film, has sometimes resulted in The Thief and the Cobbler being labeled a copy of Aladdin.

Sequels and spin-offs

Aladdin was followed by Disney's first direct-to-video sequel, The Return of Jafar in 1994. The film saw the debut of a new character, Abis Mal, voiced by Jason Alexander, and all of the original cast, except for Robin Williams, replaced by Dan Castellaneta, and Douglas Seale, replaced by Val Bettin. The plot mainly focused on Jafar seeking revenge on Aladdin. However, this time, with Iago on Aladdin's side, Abis Mal becomes Jafar's new henchman. Shortly after The Return of Jafar, the Aladdin TV series was aired on television. The episodes focused on Aladdin's adventures after the events of the second film. In 1996, the final sequel to Aladdin, Aladdin and the King of Thieves was released on video. The story concludes as Aladdin and Jasmine are about to be married and Aladdin discovers that his father is still alive, but is the king of all thieves in Agrabah.

The Aladdin characters later made a crossover with Hercules: The Animated Series, and were featured as guests in the television series House of Mouse and related works to those series—Jafar was the leader of the villains in Mickey's House of Villains.

The film also inspired a Disney On Ice presentation, and two attractions in Disney's theme parks: "The Magic Carpets of Aladdin", a Dumbo the Flying Elephant-like ride at both Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort and Walt Disney Studios Park at Disneyland Resort Paris; and the show Disney's Aladdin: A Musical Spectacular at Disney California Adventure Park.

Video games

Along with the film release, three different video games based on Aladdin were released. A coproduction between Virgin Games and Walt Disney Feature Animation for the Sega Genesis was released in late 1993 and later ported to Nintendo Entertainment System, PC, Game Boy and Game Boy Color. That same year, Capcom released a Super Nintendo game, which was ported to the Game Boy Advance in 2002. In 1994, SIMS released an Aladdin game for the Sega Game Gear and Sega Master System.

The television series inspired another game by Argonaut Games, entitled Aladdin: Nasira's Revenge and released in 2000 for the PlayStation and PC. Also, in 2004 Vivendi Universal released Disney's Aladdin Chess Adventures, a chess computer game with the Aladdin license.

The Kingdom Hearts series features a playable Aladdin world known as Agrabah. In Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, the plotline is loosely related to the storyline of the original film. In Kingdom Hearts II, it is a mixture of Aladdin and The Return of Jafar. Genie is also a recurring summon in the series.

Musical adaptation

In November 2010 Alan Menken confirmed that a musical theatre adaptation of the show is in the works with a book written by Chad Beguelin. The show premiered at the 5th Avenue Theatre from July 7–31, 2011.Jonathan Freeman, who voiced Jafar in the film, played the role in the stage adaptation. Adam Jacobs and Courtney Reed played Aladdin and Jasmine. Additional actors included Seán G. Griffin as the Sultan; Don Darryl Rivera as Iago; and, playing Omar, Babkak, and Kassim – a trio of characters originally conceived by the film's creators but not used – Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Brian Gonzales, and Brandon O'Neill. The show was also directed and choreographed by Casey Nicholaw. Another production of the musical played at the Muny Theatre in St. Louis from July 5–13, 2012. According to sources, the show will play on Broadway beginning Spring 2014 at the New Amsterdam Theatre, taking the place of Mary Poppins. In January 2013, it was announced that the musical will have a pre-Broadway tryout at the Ed Mirvish Theatre in Toronto lasting from November 13, 2013 to January 12, 2014.Casey Nicholaw is expected to direct and choreograph, with Chad Beguelin writing the book and additional lyrics, Bob Crowley as the scene designer, and costume design by Gregg Barnes.