The New Genie Sucks!

MegaSoulhero So, the Grammys happened over the weekend. Honestly, who even cares about the Grammys? Anyway, during that awards show, they released a some footage from upcoming movies. One of them was an SJW feminist TV spot for Captain Marvel, and the other one was a sneak peek at Disney’s upcoming live action remake Aladdin.

Not too long ago, they released images from the movie. I wasn’t very impressed by them. It just looked like cosplay and not something you’d see in a major film. However, the footage they released recently kinda caught my interest. The set designs look really nice, Naomi Scott actually looks beautiful in her outfit, and I’m glad we got to see a glimpse of the carpet. Although, I’m not really a fan of Jafar’s voice. He doesn’t sound very menacing. Just sounds like someone pretending to be evil. But I was able too look past that because I didn’t have much of a problem with the rest of what we saw. That was until the very end where we saw Will Smith as the Genie. At that point, I basically said “Really?” They had me, then they lost me. This part ruined it for me. I just couldn’t believe what I was looking at. When the images from the movie were released, people were complaining about Will Smith not being blue. He then responded by saying that he will be blue and CGI. We finally saw what he looks like in CGI and it looks really bad.

Now, I know that the movie doesn’t come out for another 3 months so the CGI is most likely not finished yet, but the overall design just looks terrifying. I will say it looks better than the Beast from the live action Beauty and the Beast, but that’s not saying much. This version of the Genie is just Will Smith’s face put on an animated character. Remember the last movie that tried doing that? Shark Tale! It looked bad there and it looks bad here. This is what I mean when I say that not every animated movie translates well into live action. The thing that made the original Genie so iconic was not just Robin Williams’ performance, although that was a big part of it, but also because of his cartoonish appearance. That’s something you can’t recreate in live action. It just comes off as creepy. Speaking of Robin Williams, despite knowing that it was his voice as the character, his performance was so great that he actually felt like a genuine character. So far from what we’ve seen of this new version, all I can see is Will Smith. I feel like that will be a distraction throughout the film. Most of the actors were cast poorly, but this really bugs me. The images we saw of Will Smith as the Genie before this were pictures of his human disguise. Honestly, I would’ve preferred if they had just had him look like that for the whole film. Not everything has to be accurate to the animated film.

The live action Aladdin movie might end up being good, but I still have worries. Like I said, I’m not a fan of Jafar, but Genie looks absolutely atrocious. What were they thinking? Still, the magic carpet looks amazing.

Comments

Godzilla 2 will take all of its money. - nicolasb5194 (2/11/2019)

After watching that special look, I now have nightmares. Nice. - visitor (2/11/2019)

Will. Smith. Will. Smith. - iliekpiez (2/12/2019)

A few months later, Will Smith has the best performance in the film. - TristGamer (7/8/2019)