
IAGO
This time last year the live-action version of Aladdin came out and my hopes weren’t very high. I was tired of the Disney live-action remakes and in a way I still am… except I REALLY LOVED Aladdin. In fact, oh god, I actually liked it more than the original. I’m sorry!
Hopefully I’ll catch ya in the cinema in a few years’ time for the sequel.
To celebrate the occasion, here’s some of my favourite ladies from fiction!
Row 1: Amy Pond (Doctor Who), Sephy Hadley (Noughts and Crosses), Gamora (Guardians of the Galaxy/MCU), Rose Tico (Star Wars), Elsa (Frozen/Disney), Melissa Chartres (The Last Man on Earth)
Row 2: Eowyn (The Lord of the Rings/Middle Earth), Quinn Ergon (Final Space), The Thirteenth Doctor (Doctor Who), Princess Bubblegum (Adventure Time), Jane Foster (Thor/MCU), Amy Santiago (Brooklyn 99)
Row 3: Brook Soso (Orange is the New Black), Nebula (Guardians of the Galaxy/MCU), Erica Dundee (The Last Man on Earth), Kitty Winter (Sherlock Holmes), Rose Tyler (Doctor Who), Briony Tallis (Atonement)
Row 4: Meredith Quill (Guardians of the Galaxy/MCU), Missandei (Game of Thrones), Rey (Star Wars), Donna Noble (Doctor Who), Carol Pilbasian (The Last Man on Earth), Esmeralda (The Hunchback of Notre Dame/Disney)
Row 5: Sansa Stark (Game of Thrones), Ash Graven (Final Space), Tiana (The Princess and the Frog/Disney), Sophia Burset (Orange is the New Black), Misty (Pokemon), Clara Oswald (Doctor Who)
Row 6: Bill Potts (Doctor Who), Mary Brown (Paddington), Mako Mori (Pacific Rim), Gwen Stacy (Spider-Man), Jackie Tyler (Doctor Who), Ursula Ditkovich (Spider-Man)
Row 7: Yaz Khan (Doctor Who), Mary Jane Watson (Spider-Man), Marceline (Adventure Time), Michelle (10 Cloverfield Lane,), Natasha Romanoff (Black Widow/MCU), Mantis (Guardians of the Galaxy (MCU)
Row 8: Eponine Thenardier (Les Miserables), Mabel Pines (Gravity Falls), Sandra Kaluiokalani (Superstore), Padme Amidala (Star Wars), Martha Jones (Doctor Who), Jasmine (Aladdin/Disney)
Row 9: Beru Whitesun (Star Wars), Nakia (Black Panther/MCU), Diana (Wonder Woman), Chummy Browne (Call the Midwife), Rosa Diaz (Brooklyn 99), Leia Organa (Star Wars)
If you’ve been wishing for a sequel to last year’s live-action Aladdin, you’re in luck. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney is developing a follow up to last year’s hit, hiring John Gatins (Flight, Real Steel) and Andrea Berloff (Straight Outta Compton, The Kitchen) to write the script. While no actors have been officially announced […]
Live-Action “Aladdin” Sequel in Development at Disney with “Straight Outta Compton” Writers — WDW News Today
Okay, I know I’m one of the very few who absolutely loved the new Aladdin but for me THIS COULD NOT BE BETTER NEWS. I was utterly obsessed with the Aladdin straight-to-VHS animated sequels when I was a kid. I probably watched them hundreds of times each. Obviously there’s no guarantee whatsoever that any new movie will adapt those old sequels but, I live in hope. Or most likely I’ll probably enjoy the new one anyway! IMMENSELY.
I loved the new Aladdin film an embarassing amount. I thought it was wonderful. So it was somewhat disheartening to learn that Mena Massoud hasn’t had an audition since, and even more disheartening to see that Billy Magnussen’s white prince character on the other hand is getting his own spin-off for no reason. Oh god Disney, the optics of that, what the heck?
But anyway, an awful lot of the reaction to all this seems to be “So? He wasn’t any good anyway” and that baffles me because he was! He was charming, funny, could sing well, could dance well… he felt like the animated Aladdin come to life, and I can’t be the only person that felt that way, surely?
Massoud was fantastic and thoroughly deserved to win the role, so I hope things get better for him from now on. In the meantime, enjoy these gifs, which I hope adequately display the dude’s range.
(Also? Robert Pattinson was in Twilight for god’s sake. Now he’s Batman. Just sayin’.)
Princess Jasmine is my favorite Disney princess of all time. So when the live action Aladdin came out, I was afraid of watching it. Disney has been doing a lot of remakes of their old films and even though they’re fun to watch, they’re also annoying. What happened to creating new stories? It’s difficult to […]
Stylish Princess — Superjay’s Creations
This is fantastic! I love it.
I was just talking about the Aladdin remake today and it occurred to me, perhaps with mild horror, that I might actually like it more than the original. Naomi Scott’s Princess Jasmine is a big part of that.
So I saw the new Aladdin! And the song “Speechless” has awakened something in me, I tell you. Granted, part of it is annoyance that I can’t find the original version, in all of its magnificent rage and anger, in full anywhere on YouTube. But the other part is awe because WHAT A SONG! I remember when ‘Let It Go” came out and I wanted someone to do a furious version of it so bad, and I think “Speechless” is that song! The original Aladdin has the hella creepy line “speechless I see, a fine quality in a wife” from Jafar to Jasmine, and this feels like her 27-years-in-the making rebuttal.
I’ve heard it being called a feminist anthem and I 100% agree with that, but it gets me thinking about how all the Disney princesses are endlessly pitted against each other in a war over who’s Most Feminist, and I think that’s missing the point. I don’t think you can really have a “Most Feminist” anything, you know? Feminism has a LOT of facets and nothing can be one thing to all people.
But! For me personally, Jasmine was the Most Feminist Disney Princess. I was still in primary school when the original Aladdin came out, if someone asked me what feminism was I’d probably have guessed it was a kind of fruit or something, but I loved Jasmine so freaking much. She was a princess I’d never seen before. I didn’t know the word “badass” then either but if I had that’d have probably been the description I’d have gone for back then. She didn’t do much fighting in the movie but her personality, her desire for freedom and agency, it appealed to me hugely. (She may have been the seed of my ‘a female character doesn’t actually need to grab a weapon to be strong’ philosophy.) I thought she was so, so cool. I even got my mum to hand-sew me a turquoise Princess Jasmine outfit but sadly all evidence of it has been lost to history I believe.
Anyway, just as animated Jasmine was the perfect hero for my six-year-old self, live-action Jasmine feels like the perfect hero for my adult self (and also other six-year-olds.) There are definitely some aspects of the remake I love more than the original -sacrilege, sorry- and Jasmine’s story is one of ’em. The sexism she faces in this one, it’s not just the sexism leveled against a woman in power, it’s the sort of subtle everyday stuff that all women get. One of the most interesting song changes is in “Prince Ali” where, “heard your princess was a sight lovely to see” has become “heard your princess is hot, where is she” and this is sung right in front of Jasmine, and that sort of mild, frustrating objectification will probably be familiar to, let’s say 50% of the audience.
When Jasmine is made Sultan at the end, everything I loved about her as a kid just sort of clicked into place all over again. Of course she should be Sultan! She’s compassionate and smart and unlike Aladdin she actually wants the job! My favourite moment that demonstrates what kind of a person she is happens in both versions, where she sees starving children on the street and instantly hands them an apple: children need to be fed so she’ll feed them, simple as that.
All hail Princess Sultan Jasmine, long may she reign. (Although technically she should’ve been a Sultana. Which, hey is also a kind of fruit! This is a surprisingly fruit-heavy tribute.)
aladdin trivia: 5/12
“production designer richard vander wende devised a simple color scheme for the film, inspired by its desert setting. blue (water) stands for good, red (heat) for evil, and yellow (sand) is neutral. for example, the villainous jafar is clad in blacks and reds, while the virtuous jasmine wears blue. another example is in the cave of wonders, where the lamp’s chamber is blue, and the ruby that tempts abu is bright red.”
#ok but like i thought people would talk about this more #how she from the second she saw prince ali thought it was aladdin even if jafar said he killed him #this movie is so clever because these three times are the moments she’s convinced it’s him #the first moment she recognizes his hair because let’s be honest, aladdin has a lot of it #the second time, the most obvious one, is when he pulls that ‘do you trust me’ line and move #and then my favorite which a lot of people don’t actually notice when watching the movie #THE DAMN APPLE MOVE HE SUBCONSCIOUSLY DOES TO BE ROMANTIC AND HER DAMN FACE WHEN SHE KNOWS IT’S HIM AND THINKS ‘I GOT YOU NOW, STREETRAT, YOU AIN’T FOOLING ME’ #honestly though bless this movie