The live-action ‘Aladdin’ fixes past mistakes, and is better than the cartoon

With Aladdin, Disney overcomes the racist tropes of the original, creating a loving cultural celebration I’m proud exists for our generation.

When Disney announced that they were making a live-action Aladdin, Cartoon HD is an online streaming app that allows users to watch and download free Cartoon shows online.  I was immediately concerned. Aladdin is one of the movies that has aged the worst — and as a ’90s movie, it wasn’t something to be particularly proud of at its time, either.

I elaborated more on it in this article, but the combination of racist caricatures and blatant Orientalism make the original movie almost impossible to rewatch without feeling ashamed at how badly represented anything related to the Middle East has been, even in a funny, colorful movie as Aladdin.

The bar was low, yes. But the live-action Aladdin surpassed my expectations in a much more creative and interesting way than it had to. Play from Pause and playlists make Cartoon hd app one of the best cartoon apps online. We would have been happy with a mediocre movie that was simply a rehash of the original with a few fixes, but Disney went above and beyond.

It’s hard to make a respectful movie when the story itself is based on an Orientalist amalgamation of many very different cultures, but somehow Disney made it possible for me to overlook all of this. It delivered a celebration of Middle Eastern and South Asian culture that is really worth watching — one I’m proud to say I watched in theaters.

So, looking back at my original criticism, here’s how what I hoped would be changed was changed — and what surprised me.

Showing Agrabah in all its beauty

The first thing I was worried about was, of course, one of the opening lines of the film: “It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.”

Deep down, I think I was hoping that they’d do away with the line altogether, but the writers did exactly the right thing. They completely redid the introduction, having the now-human Genie start the film with the introductory song in a fashion that was very similar to the cartoon – but that said “It’s chaotic, but hey, it’s home”… and, unlike the original, was followed by a sequence that completely avoided caricatures. Instead, it presented a beautiful look into a Middle-Eastern market full of spices and fruit, streets full of people in beautiful clothes, and a palace with exquisite architecture… and it was breathtaking.

This Agrabah is colorful, it’s racially diverse, and it’s accurate. Well, at least as accurate as any Disney-fied moment in history, in a land that is a conflation of many different countries, can be. No longer are all the women dressed as belly-dancers — instead, we have beautiful bejeweled veils, and dresses that more accurately reflect the clothes women from a similar time in history would wear. There are wonderful nods to Bollywood in three different dance scenes, which themselves make the show stand out among all other Disney live-action films.

Finally, we get to see a western movie truly love Middle-Eastern and South Asian cultural elements, and pay them the attention they deserve.

(The only strange thing that stuck out to me was the suspiciously Christian wedding between Jasmine and Jafar. Come on, guys… you didn’t have to make it Muslim or Hindu if you didn’t want to choose one, but at least don’t make it so blatantly Christian when you have a chance to bring some diversity to the Princesses’ religions.)

A properly empowered Jasmine

We all wanted to see Jasmine have more agency in the story, especially given the personality she has in the original. In the cartoon, she is headstrong and ambitious, but never really shows interest in ruling… just in escaping her plight.

This Jasmine is just as headstrong, but is also three-dimensional, which makes her look less like a bossy princess and more like a smart, ambitious woman who deserves to become sultan. She studies, she has plans, and she calls Jafar out on his lies when he tries to control her father. Seeing her genuine skill being suppressed because of her gender is even more frustrating here, because you can actually envision what she could become if given the chance.

I was initially worried that they might be too heavy-handed in the feminist narrative without actually putting in the effort to deserve it, which is why I was wary of “Speechless” when it started. But by the end, Naomi Scott’s tears of frustration made me cry and I am fully on the “Speechless” train (caravan?).

I never thought I would see a female sultan on screen, and it spoke to me in a very profound way. I wrote an entire frustrated article about what could have been done with Ahmanet’s story in The Mummy remake, and my dream story was actually told beautifully — and less tragically — in Aladdin.

That’s not to say that Jasmine is perfect. She’s still naïve in the streets of Agrabah, and a little unapproachable, although it’s understandable given her history. She’s a real woman in a difficult position. And because the story no longer ends with her chained up and enslaved by Jafar (in what was probably one of the most disturbing scenes ever), but rather gives her the primary position of power, instead of having Aladdin “win” her, she can fall in love and get married, and loses none of her agency for it.

Source : https://www.hypable.com/live-action-aladdin-better-than-the-cartoon/