Released in 1992, Aladdin was part of the Disney Renaissance era that started with The Little Mermaid. These two films, along with eight other animated features, were a return to what had worked for Disney Animation from the 1930s into the 1960s; well-crafted movies that were based on mostly well-known stories. Today these animated movies are considered classics, and as Hollywood does with so many classics, the studio has started remaking them.
With the rise of photorealistic CGI, Disney saw a chance to take its most beloved animated movies and bring them back as live-action films for new audiences. While it had toyed with the concept in the past, taking The Jungle Book and giving it the live-action treatment in 1994, and One Hundred and One Dalmatians in 1996, it wasn't until 2010's Alice in Wonderland earned $1 billion that Disney really saw that there was money in the remakes. Since 2014, there have been at least one of these live-action remakes almost every year; 2018 didn't get one, but 2019 made up for it with five of them. One of those five was Aladdin.
On paper, it seemed like Aladdin would have a hard time in theaters. Disney struggled to find an actor to play the titular role, and director Guy Ritchie, best known for his hard-boiled crime comedies hadn't had a hit since 2011's Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, and it was arguably Robert Downey Jr. who brought in the audience for that one. After casting Mena Massoud as the street rat who finds the magic lamp, filming for Aladdin was underway, and there was no turning back. Early looks at Will Smith's Genie had the Internet laughing and it seemed like Aladdin was destined to end up like the Dumbo remake -- a box office dud.
Instead, the movie proved not only to be a fun adventure for the whole family, but it was also a big hit, grossing more than a billion dollars despite lackluster reviews. Will Smith's charisma carries a lot of the movie, and Guy Ritchie's kinetic filming style works well in the world of Agrabah -- especially during the action scenes. Beyond that, the movie works well enough, but it doesn't hold a candle to the animated version. Still, when a movie makes a billion dollars, you can bet that Disney will want a sequel, and in this instance, it couldn't be making a bigger mistake.
To start with, Disney seems to have learned nothing from its other sequels to these remakes. Alice in Wonderland may have made a billion dollars, but its sequel, Alice Through the Looking Glass didn't even break $300 million. Maleficent, a live-action retelling of Sleeping Beauty from the POV of the evil fairy, made almost $800 million, but its sequel Maleficent: Mistress of Evil was met with less than stellar reviews and a box office gross half that of the first film. Audiences are interested in seeing these classic cartoons brought to the world of live-action, but that interest hasn't continued on to the sequels yet.
The second problem is that the story of Aladdin really comes to an end in Aladdin. A good movie needs to have the main characters go on a journey and learn to become better people. Aladdin does this: We see the street rat learn that what is important is being true to yourself and your friends, Princess Jasmine learns that you shouldn't judge people without getting to know them first, and Jafar learns that greed and power is a prison of its own making.
As with the animated sequels to 1992's Aladdin, you can tell more stories, but none of them will resonate with audiences in the same way. Aladdin and Jasmine have found one another and they get to live happily ever after -- that's the deal these kinds of movies make with the audience. Pushing out sequels only serves to take away from the power of the original. The sequels to the animated Aladdin were straight-to-video, which helped the first film from being tarnished by them, but this live-action sequel will be a theatrical release, giving it the same level of attention as the 2019 release.
Of course, it's totally possible that Guy Ritchie and the writers have an amazing idea for a sequel that will blow us all away. It wouldn't be the first time the idea of a sequel seemed like a bad idea only to be a truly great movie -- Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Toy Story 2 and Mad Max: Fury Road stand out as perfect examples -- but the theaters are filled with sequels that didn't work. Sometimes the best bet is to cash in your chips and go home. Maybe Disney should consider that with Aladdin.