![]() If life wasn’t already good enough for Al, Genie returns from his journey around the world, realizing that what he really wants to do with his newly earned freedom is to live a life surrounded by his friends. Jasmine’s father, The Sultan, is planning to make Aladdin his new royal vizier, the position once held by the sinister Jafar. Taking place one year after the events of the original film, Return of Jafar finds Aladdin and Jasmine still blissfully in love, the former street rat and his monkey now living in the palace. To accomplish both feats, Stones said that he, Zaslove, and the rest of the writing team, “came up with a convoluted story that explained everything and that ended up being The Return of Jafar.” Then of course, there was the fact that Iago was still in the lamp with Jafar, both tossed out of Agrabah by Genie in the first film’s climax after the wise-cracking magical being granted Jafar his final wish of becoming an all powerful genie - a last minute trick pulled by Aladdin, playing off the villains own egotism. To do that they would first need to turn Iago from a sarcastic, sleazy, conniving henchman, to a sarcastic, sleazy, conniving hero. Stones wanted, of all characters, the loudmouth, brash Red Macaw on the show. “I thought the best character in the movie was Gilbert Gottfried’s Iago.”Įvery Disney direct-to-video sequel, prequel, and mid-quel, ranked “I said, ‘I want the parrot in there,’” Stones recalled to Animation World Network of his initial pitch to Disney. But before the first scripts were written and lines were drawn, Stones wanted to bring one more character in to join the ensemble. ![]() Disney tasked Alan Zaslove and Tad Stones with bringing Al, Jasmine, Genie and Apu to the small screen, and both were more than up to it, having been the creative forces behind Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers and Darkwing Duck. The first of two sequels to the highest grossing film of 1992, The Return of Jafar also served as the pilot for the Aladdin television series, which ran for 86 episodes over three seasons. The company was releasing their first original, straight-to-video feature and their first sequel to a “Disney Renaissance” tentpole: The Return of Jafar. Nevertheless, by changing the story’s humor, Iago has been stripped of his personality in the new Aladdin - and, consequently, the remake loses some of its heart.Twenty-five years ago this month, Disney, what we know now as a corporate, cultural monolith that dominates the global box office and a major entity in the upcoming streaming wars, was venturing into new territory. Iago’s new voice actor, Alan Tudyk, is certainly not to blame since he does the best that he can with what he is given. ![]() Readers may argue that this is not an inherently bad thing, yet it is undoubtedly dispiriting when we consider that it was these eclectic characters and quirky bursts of humor that drew people to Disney’s classics in the first place. But the bottom line is that, by radically changing the form of their characters and movies, Disney have removed much of the humor from their stories. This might seem like a rational process - after all, monarchs and elders are often respectable figures. Yet the recent remakes have re-imagined them as quieter, stately, often somber people. Originally, Belle’s father Maurice in Beauty and the Beast, the King of Cinderella, and Aladdin’s Sultan were well-meaning, eccentric figures. This approach isn’t limited to the animal companions of Disney movies, but the human ones as well. In short, the Disney remakes refuse to accommodate the original’s irreverent humor, meaning that Iago’s beloved personality cannot be showcased. Indeed, the Cinderella and Dumbo remakes largely omitted the heroes’ lively, talking mouse companions and focused on the protagonist’s drama. Disney and its chosen directors also seem eager to ground each story so that is complements the remake’s human leads. However, this all changes during the remakes, since Disney uses lifelike CGI to realize these fictions. As such, Iago’s aforementioned pratfalls would likely not be as funny if he resembled a real macaw. For example, the cartoon Iago runs on a treadmill and later gets trapped in a stone door, and during these situations, Iago’s irascible - yet endearing - personality is revealed. Since they’re often heavily stylized there’s a greater suspension of disbelief, and this allows for even more outlandish characters, slapstick humor and wild, death-defying capers to prevail. The hand-drawn animation of Disney’s animated movies allow for magical beings and fantastical scenarios to be realized. ![]()
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