Disney has struck gold with its live-action remake films. “Beauty and the Beast,” “Cinderella,” “Maleficent,” and “The Jungle Book” have all been huge hits for the studio, proving that fans of the classic animated tales will clearly fork out money to see slightly different versions of the films with real actors. And next year, the studio has not one, not two, but three live-action remakes of classic films to satisfy fans, with “Dumbo,” “The Lion King,” and “Aladdin.” Thanks to EW, we finally have our first look at the latter, which surely looks…different.
“Aladdin” features a young, poor boy that falls in love with a princess and uses a bright blue genie fresh from a lamp to help him. And the live-action remake, directed by Guy Ritchie of all people, features the same story, albeit with some serious changes to the look of the characters. As seen in the first look photos, Disney has nailed the look of Jasmine and Aladdin, somehow finding young, relatively unknown actors to fill those roles. And while fans might cry out about the studio picking the lightest-skinned brown people to fill the roles, that’s a debate for another time.
The big change comes courtesy of Will Smith as the famous blue Genie. However, you can tell from the pictures that Smith’s character is anything but blue and looks very, very different to the character that Robin Williams made iconic in the ‘90s animated classic.
Right off the bat, it’s hard to see this design of Will Smith’s Genie character and not be a bit perplexed. What look are they going for? Well, according to Ritchie and Smith, this version of the Genie will be a new take on the character.
“I wanted a muscular 1970s dad,” the director says. “He was big enough to feel like a force — not so muscular that he looked like he was counting his calories, but formidable enough to look like you knew when he was in the room.”
He added, “I like the fact that our Genie has an ego and is a little bit vain and he cares about how he’s presented because he’s been doing this for a very long time.”
For Smith’s part, he said that he was hoping to bring something different, infusing some of his earlier characters from “Independence Day,” “Bad Boys,” “Hitch,” and yes, “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.”
“I started to feel confident that I could deliver something that was an homage to Robin Williams but was musically different,” he says. “Just the flavor of the character would be different enough and unique enough that it would be in a different lane, versus trying to compete.”
Smith added, “I think it’ll stand out as unique even in the Disney world. There hasn’t been a lot of that hip-hop flavor in Disney history.”
One thing that Disney wants everyone to know is that Genie will be blue in his floating out of the lamp form, but the effects and look aren’t ready for primetime just yet. So in the meantime, we have decidedly human-looking Will Smith as the Genie with “hip-hop flavor.”
“Aladdin” hits theaters on May 24, 2019.
Here are all the first look photos:
