A Whole New World: Celebrating Aladdin’s 30th Anniversary
It began in 1988, a year before the release of The Little Mermaid. During that film’s production, lyricist Howard Ashman pitched the idea of an animated adaptation of the folk tale, Aladdin.
And everything after that is history…
Unfortunately, the early draft he wrote himself and later with Linda Woolverton was rejected.
Then Howard and Alan Menken were asked to work on Beauty and the Beast.
However, after the directing of The Little Mermaid, John Musker, and Ron Clements heard about the Aladdin idea and decided to direct this project. Unfortunately, after that, Howard Ashman passed away.
Story
In April of 1991, Ron and John presented the story reel of the entire movie to chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, but he didn’t really respond much. Afterward, he said that he was not pleased with this version and asked to start from scratch.
At first, this was a scary problem because the movie was scheduled to be released in November of the next year. But they were able to restructure the story that pleased Jeffrey. But that meant they had to cut several ideas.
The first thing was to delete Aladdin’s mother and make the character of Aladdin more of a Tom Cruise character. Then they made Princess Jasmine a strong character.
Music
Before Howard’s death, he and Alan Menken wrote several songs for the early version of the story. But when the rewrites started, they decided to keep three of Howard’s songs. Then they brought in Tim Rice to collaborate with Alan on the rest of the songs.
This proved to be what Alan needed to move forward after Howard’s passing.
Voices
As is the case of any animated film, the voices play an important part. And Aladdin was no exception. All of the voice actors, including Scott Weigner, Linda Larkin, Gilbert Gottfried, and Jonathan Freeman brought something special to their voice acting in the film.
When John and Ron first came on board to direct the film, they immediately thought Robin Williams would be perfect for the Genie.
Photo: RICK DIAMOND/GETTY IMAGES
While they weren’t sure they could get him and his initial reluctance, Robin signed on for the film.
What Robin was able to do was do funny lines that he would come up with after reading the script. But he was also able to bring sincerity to the part.
Art Direction
Image Credit: Bottleneck Gallery
Another notable aspect of Aladdin was the style of the film. When animator Eric Goldberg came on to animate the Genie, he pitched the idea of basing the art direction on the style of caricaturist Al Hirshfeld.
This would inform the design of most of the characters and would make the film stand out from other Disney movies.
Release
After all that, Disney’s 30th animated film, Aladdin, had its scheduled November 1992 release. It would receive critical acclaim and it would be the top-grossing film of the year.
At the Golden Globes and Academy Awards, the movie would win both Best Score and Best Song A Whole New World, and Robin Williams would personally win a special Golden Globe for his voice acting in the movie.
Even after 30 years, Disney’s Aladdin will continue to be a fan favorite and will delight audiences with its humor and story. How’s that for a wish come true.
