Al­addin Live Ac­tion vs An­i­mated: A Di­a­mond in the Rough

WARN­ING: This ar­ti­cle will con­tain spoil­ers for both the an­i­mated and live ac­tion films. 

In­tro­duc­tion

Al­addin fea­tures one of two POC clas­sic Dis­ney princesses, Jas­mine. While the film has been crit­i­cized for re­ly­ing upon stereo­types of Mid­dle East­ern peo­ple, it is still a fa­vorite of many. 

In fact, Dis­ney ac­knowl­edges this in an into im­age to the an­i­mated Al­addin.  

Jas­mine is known for a head­strong, ad­ven­tur­ous char­ac­ter who wants to marry for love, not for an al­liance. Al­addin is a poor thief who steals be­cause he needs to eat (not for fun, like the guards seem to think), which can be seen in Al­addin’s in­tro­duc­tion song, “One Jump Ahead”. 

Al­addin meets Princess Jas­mine while Jas­mine is dis­guised as a com­moner, where they promptly fall in love (in Dis­ney fash­ion).  

The Con­nec­tion Be­tween Jas­mine and Al­addin

While two peo­ple be­com­ing in­fat­u­ated with each other in less than an hour is in­cred­i­bly un­re­al­is­tic (in my opin­ion), it is more be­liev­able in the live-ac­tion ver­sion. In the live-ac­tion ver­sion Jas­mine and Al­addin have a deeper con­ver­sa­tion with each other where they re­al­ize that they have the same dreams in life – mainly be­ing some­one else. In the an­i­mated ver­sion, how­ever, Jas­mine and Al­addin ex­change one line of a di­a­logue and that is them dis­agree­ing with each oth­er’s view on life.  

Sex­u­al­iza­tion of Char­ac­ters

As I’m sure you’ve no­ticed from the im­age above, there are also some cos­tume changes. For in­stance, Al­addin ac­tu­ally wears a shirt in the live ac­tion film. More im­por­tantly (in my view) is the lack of ex­treme sex­u­al­iza­tion of Jas­mine (and all other women in the film, for that mat­ter).

Jas­mine’s out­fit has sim­i­lar core as­pects – the pants, mainly –, but she is wear­ing more of a top and less of a bra.

In fact, even the girls in the bal­cony dur­ing “One Jump Ahead” are much less sex­u­al­ized. This was an is­sue that peo­ple that had with the an­i­mated film, so it ab­solutely makes sense that this was changed in the re­make.  

Jas­mine’s Per­son­al­ity Change

With Jas­mine’s wardrobe change also comes with a bit of a per­son­al­ity change as well. There is a scene in both films where Jas­mine has to jump over roofs us­ing a long reed. In the an­i­mated film, Jas­mine just does it, not even think­ing about the con­se­quences. How­ever, in the live-ac­tion film Jas­mine is afraid of jump­ing, only do­ing so when it’s ei­ther she jumps or she’s cap­tured by the guards. I don’t un­der­stand why this change was made in this film – it does­n’t af­fect the plot in any sense – but this change cer­tainly changes the au­di­ence’s per­cep­tion of Jas­mine and makes her seem less fear­less, which is a ma­jor as­pect of Jas­mine’s char­ac­ter. 

The live ac­tion film does add in a new per­son­al­ity trait to Jas­mine, though; Jas­mine is much more am­bi­tious. Jas­mine’s whole mo­ti­va­tion for re­fus­ing to marry any of the princes in the an­i­mated film is be­cause she wants to marry for love. In the live ac­tion film, Jas­mine re­fuses to marry be­cause she be­lieves that she should be Sul­tan in­stead of the princes.  

Side Char­ac­ters

How­ever, with an em­pow­er­ing up­grade to Jas­mine we also get a down­grade to all of the side­kicks; Ra­jah, Iago, Abu, and Car­pet all lose their per­son­al­i­ties.  

In the an­i­mated film, Ra­jah is very much a sup­port an­i­mal for Jas­mine. He com­forts her, helps Jas­mine leave the palace (even though it hurts him to see her leave), and he pro­tects her from peo­ple she is­n’t com­fort­able with. In the live-ac­tion film, Ra­jah just scares peo­ple. He does­n’t seem to feel any emo­tions aside from anger and his only role is to pro­tect Jas­mine.  

Sim­i­larly, in the an­i­mated film Iago is a very sassy char­ac­ter who al­ways has a fun com­ment. In the live-ac­tion film, Iago is de­moted to a par­rot. Yes, I know he was al­ready a par­rot but Iago just re­peats what peo­ple say, in true par­rot fash­ion. We lose all of Iago’s fun re­marks, which re­ally pro­pelled the story (in my opin­ion). 

Abu is my fa­vorite char­ac­ter from the an­i­mated film, mainly due to how tem­pera­men­tal and emo­tional he can be. In the live-ac­tion ver­sion, Abu moves the plot along in the same way (by touch­ing a red di­a­mond) but with no flare, which was very dis­ap­point­ing. 

Car­pet was a very in­ter­est­ing char­ac­ter in the an­i­mated story; he is very cu­ri­ous and also ap­pre­hen­sive about peo­ple. We can even see in some scenes that Car­pet im­i­tates what Al­addin is feel­ing. In the live-ac­tion movie, Car­pet is just a fly­ing car­pet whose role is to be Al­addin’s chauf­feur.  

Ge­nie’s Love In­ter­est

In the live-ac­tion film, we also meet a new char­ac­ter, Dalia, who is Jas­mine’s hand­maid. Now, I be­lieve that Dali­a’s role was to push for­ward some de­vel­op­ment within Ge­nie. Ge­nie has been alive for many mil­len­nia, so he has noth­ing to lose.

By giv­ing Ge­nie a love in­ter­est, Ge­nie now has some­thing to lose and thus starts feel­ing more things, like fear and shame (the lat­ter of which can be seen when Ja­far uses his wishes in front of Dalia) which make him seem more hu­man. 

Dalia is ac­tu­ally a re­ally in­ter­est­ing char­ac­ter whose can­did and blunt per­son­al­ity al­low her to plainly ex­plain some po­ten­tial con­fus­ing parts in the plot. 

Con­clu­sion

There are also many plot tweaks that are in­ter­est­ing but don’t change the story in any way (so we won’t be go­ing over them to­day), some mi­nor changes to other char­ac­ters, like the Sul­tan and Ja­far, as well as a new, em­pow­er­ing song for Jas­mine that re­ally push the story along in a way that feels bet­ter. 

Over­all, I feel that the live-ac­tion film is bet­ter at not be­ing as prob­lem­atic as the orig­i­nal in terms of rep­re­sen­ta­tion and that the plot moves it­self along a bit bet­ter, but I just wish that we had kept the per­son­al­i­ties of mi­nor char­ac­ters. What do you think? Is Jas­mine’s change in char­ac­ter war­ranted? Did Ge­nie need a love in­ter­est? And why would they change Abu?