I guess this means Robert Downey Jr will be the Genie? That sounds like a worthy succession. It's Guy Ritchie that intrigues me, though. The man's films have a very unique style: lots of eccentric characters on parallel storylines and high-speed situations. It will be interesting to see whether he can keep his style, or whether he will play this film straight.
No, just an assumption on my part, because RDJ is played like a god-tier eccentric in Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes films and I can see Genie acting like that.
I'm not sure about Guy Ritchie. His style is very frenetic and eccentric, but it's still different from the "sillier" parts of Aladdin. Maybe his King Arthur movie is great. That could change my mind. This is definitely odd because Disney doesn't usually hire directors that have such a unique directing style. You usually don't watch a Disney movie and say "I bet this is from the same director who made RocknRolla, Sherlock Holmes, and Snatch."
Or another Dr Strange (white Ancient One, black Baron Mordo). But seriously, that's an issue that's not going away easily.
This would be even bigger than that because the characters are all middle eastern and changing one of the characters white could open a huge can of worms. True, but most people think of the Disney animated film when they think Aladdin and in most forms of fiction (comics and TV shows), all the characters are usually middle eastern. It would be the Gods of Egypt argument all over again, with some people saying; "In the real story the characters are like this." and everybody else saying "I don't care, if it's not like the cartoon than i'm not watching it".
And there was two Jinn. The Princess was named Badroulbadour. Plus "Chinese" would be a loose term in the era the story came from and would include multiple ethnic groups, including Turkic peoples. Spoiler And Green Lantern was based on Alladin
Even though there are a myriad of "white" hued people in the Middle East? My dog's vet is Egyptian. He's white and has red hair. My friend's niece has blonde hair and green eyes; she's 100% Kurdish. That's to say nothing of Armenians who live in all the countries between the Med and Afghanistan. The fixation on skin tone over story and ability is just something I don't get. I want to be entertained. If the people who get the parts are Middle Eastern but not good actors, then is it worth it just to satisfy the color quota? BTW, I'm asking this as someone who's half Mexican, raised by the Mexican half, and spend much of my time with Middle Eastern people.
In the original story he was, or at least how he was interpreted. One version I had as a kid had illustrations showing the characters as Chinese. The characters still had Arabian names (though with Muslim communities in China with the trades is not far fetched). Aladdin had two Genies with different powers and didn't have limited number of wishes so no 3 wish limit there. Disney's Aladdin was mainly based on The Thief of Baghdad which turned the setting from Chinese to Arabialand and since forth everybody copied Disney as they usually do.
The bit was that the Sorcerer (Jafar in the movie is a combination of the OG stories two villains the sorcerer and the Vizier) journeyed across the world as a medieval Levantine Muslim would have seen it. From Maghreb to China to find the Jinn of the lamp.
