![]() ![]() Unlike the Disney films, Aladdin isn’t an orphaned "street rat" in The Arabian Nights. The setting and the characters’ ethnicity begins to shift west to Arabia and the Middle East when the story is told on the big screen in the early 20th century. In the both Galland’s text and Richard Burton’s popular 1885 English translation, Aladdin lives “in a city of the cities in China.” Illustrations of the tales from the Victorian era depict the story and its characters as Chinese. Galland added several new stories told to him by a Syrian named Ḥanna Diyab from Aleppo “Aladdin and the Magical Lamp” was one of them. In 1712, French scholar Antoine Galland translated an Arabic version of the tales into French. The stories circulated for centuries, with new folk tales and renditions being added to the mix over the years. In 947 Arab historian Al-Masudi, for example, describes a large collection of a thousand tales from all over the ancient world that he calls the Persian Hazar afsana (A Thousand Stories). The Arabian Nights aren’t just from Arabia.ĭating back as far as the 10th century A.D., these tales have origins in North African, Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Indian, and East Asian cultures. Some of the most famous tales are not only of Aladdin but also Sinbad the Sailor and Ali Baba. Night after night, cliffhangers compel the curious king to delay Scherherazade’s death to find out what happens next. To save her life, she spins a story every night (“Aladdin” is one of many) for her husband, leaves out the ending, but promises to finish it later. The heroine, Scherherazade, is married to a murderous king, who kills his new wives one day after wedding them. Aladdin is only one of 1,001 tales.Īladdin is part of a centuries-old stories-within-a-story called The Thousand and One Nights (also called The Arabian Nights). But how much does the big screen Aladdin resemble its source material? (The Walt Disney Company is majority owner of National Geographic Partners.) 1. ![]() The movie became a classic, spawning a Broadway musical and a live-action remake that hits theaters this weekend. Scott went on to tell Entertainment Weekly in the same interview that she endeavored to play the character with the same strength and feminist attitude that made her so beloved in the animated version, explaining: "She has this beautiful arc and progression, and she goes from asking for what she wants to really just taking it, and displaying that she is a leader, and that’s what I loved the most.In 1992, Disney’s animated Aladdin hit the big screen, and audiences fell in love with the adventures of an orphan-the “Diamond in the Rough”-who crossed paths with a flying carpet, a powerful genie, and an independent princess. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the actress said, "Having a Disney princess that looked something like me, I think was really powerful." ![]() Indian isn’t middle-eastern, Hollywood," one such protester wrote on Twitter.īut Scott felt differently about the role of Jasmine in her own life. "All these Arab actresses on the planet and they cast half-white, half-Indian Naomi Scott as Jasmine. She’s British and Indian, according to Vogue, rather than Arabian, which led some people to speak out on social media, according to The Evening Standard. Scott’s casting in the part was not without controversy. Power Rangers followed in 2017, before Scott won the part of Princess Jasmine in this highly-anticipated film. A few more shorts led up to a 2015 appearance in the movie The 33, the story of the Chilean miners who were trapped underground for 69 days, according to NPR. Though she’s been acting for roughly a decade, she first hit the public’s radar in the 2011 Disney TV movie Lemonade Mouth, according to PopSugar.Īfter a series of shorts, she won the part of Maddy in the TV series Terra Nova, which was unceremoniously canceled all too early, IMHO. Scott most recently starred as the Pink Ranger in the Power Rangers film that released in 2017, according to her IMDb page. But who is the lucky actress who landed the role as the iconic Disney princess at the heart of this movie? Naomi Scott is who plays Jasmine in Aladdin and the actress is certainly poised to take off with this powerful role as well as an upcoming part in Charlie’s Angels. The story of Aladdin lends itself easily to the new format, and its stars will undoubtedly be household names. A classic film from the Disney lineup is getting a live-action remake and will hit theaters this Friday, May 24. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |