
Where Williams was all about the frantic energy and spontaneity, Will Smith is more concerned with sheer charisma and swagger. Williams may not have been thrilled with that but it was almost unavoidable for the film: Williams as the Genie is a tour de force that the entire story bends over backwards to accommodate a stand-up performance by one of the industry’s most recognizable figures.įor the live-action remake, it was a far smarter move for Disney to not try and replicate Williams’s oft-imitated style and let the role be a platform for another star with a familiar and easy to recognize image. instead, Disney put Williams’s name front and center and made it the definable part of the movie. When Robin Williams was cast for the original film, he had agreed to take SAG scale for his salary – a low amount, certainly far lower than what he could have commanded in the early 1990s – in exchange for the film downplaying his involvement. It makes sense why Disney would want such a huge star in the role of the Genie. Genie's Design & Will Smith's Acting Are Weird This can be seen in many of the other cheap-looking shots in both trailers. Aladdin, as with most of the Disney live-action remakes, cannot exist in the form the studio wants it to without massive amounts of CGI, and Ritchie may not be the most equipped director to handle that.

use effects for action scenes but the emphasis is on practical stunts and making sure whatever is used only highlights the stylized approach without overwhelming it. Knowing all this makes it all the more curious that Ritchie of all directors would be the choice for a live-action Aladdin. Relevant for Smith is the fact that he’s not necessarily known for being an effects-heavy film-maker.
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That’s one of the reasons King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is one of his weaker movies: it’s trying to be both A Guy Ritchie Movie and a superhero-style origin story in the Marvel mold. Ritchie can make a great Hollywood movie but not so much with the seemingly set in stone Hollywood style of blockbuster cinema. showcase him in his prime, blending retro with modern and finding the perfect balance for the material. His Sherlock Holmes films and remake of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. His best work comes when he gets to play around with the fluidity of action scenes in a highly stylized manner, tied together with lots of sharp editing. Guy Ritchie is not a director known for his subtlety. Related: Aladdin's Disappointing First Look Highlights The Disney Remake Problem Agrabah in Aladdin is, for better or worse, a fantasy inspired by 1001 Arabian Nights, so trying to make it look hyper-realistic, as is Guy Ritchie’s trademark style, but keeping a giant blue Will Smith at the center of it is something that not even the best CGI can make feel natural. It never aims for realism in a way that, for example, the animated version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame did with its Parisian setting.

Aladdin as an animated film is a very cartoonish story, one that plays around with breaking the fourth wall and deliberately drawing attention to its anachronistic nature. They took a cartoon and made it look as much like real life as they could, to the point where even the talking animals proved convincing. Turning The Jungle Book into live-action wasn’t necessarily straightforward – these things seldom are – but at least that film had a specific visual style it wanted to commit to. The uncanny valley nature of blue Will Smith is one of many moments in the trailer that feels somehow very cheap and incredibly expensive at the same time. Smith is not the only problem the new footage features, but it remains the most prominent and the sheer strangeness of it highlights a problem the movie and Disney cannot ignore: The genie looks bad. For fans of the original concerned that Aladdin might not be able to pull off the translation to live-action, the new trailer did not inspire any hope. Indeed, the image of large shirtless Will Smith with blue skin, a pointy black beard and long ponytail atop a bald head has already become Twitter’s favored meme of the week.
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The latest Aladdin TV spot prominently features Smith in blue form, and the reactions were, to put it mildly, not great. Related: Aladdin Trailer Breakdown: How The World Looks In Live Action

The first reveal of Smith as the (non-blue) Genie proved underwhelming, with many wondering if we would ever see the character as he appears in the animated film. The casting of Will Smith as the Genie was divisive but made sense in the grander scheme and offered some real star power to a movie whose ensemble is mostly made up of unknowns. Eyebrows were raised at every turn, from the unusual choice of director to the casting to the questions over how Disney would handle a story set in the Arab world. Aladdin is the film of this trio that has been on the shakiest ground since its announcement.
