Screen Arts 28/5

How Aladdin Changed Animation (by Screwing Over Robin Williams)

A video essay essentially on how before Aladdin, animated movies were sold on their merits, storyline and characters. For Aladdin however, the writers created the personality of Genie based off of Robin Williams stand-up comedy act.  Robin agreed to voice him, with the proviso that he wasnt used as a merchandising tool to promote the movie. Unfortunately for him, he was the biggest star to voice a character to date, and so Disney worked the grey area to get around this proviso. Due to the success of Aladdin at the time, Disney cartoons became more about the big name stars they could attract, than the story itself. It took many many years and a dismissal to heal the rift, at which point Disney began to return to the original method of focusing more on the story/character than what A-List stars it could attract. Despite this being an opinion piece, I found it interesting to hear about the controversy behind this film from my childhood, and the effect it had on animations at the time.