They should have hired Guy Ritchie to direct it.

Rating: 1/10 (13 June 2019)

Live action Disney remakes are fascinating markers to compare the 90s to today. On the surface it's the same but digital. And the digital hindrance makes so many films fail out of the gate in believability, so here I saw 'digital' as shorthand for our actual complaint being insincerity and soullessness where even our myths are streamlined. Perfect since streamlining and mechanization is exactly what the film is about. For instance how Jasmine's feminism exposes our philosophical yearning for a post-identity world; this is not accusatory but anticipating. See how the film constantly rewrites Aladdin as an attack on identity structures. Jafar is the key. He is not a sly boomer chancellor but a disgruntled millennial and completely lost within his intellect, he is closer to a Silicon Valley tech CEO. His best friend is a parrot--hilarious they made it an actual animal, furthering his schizoid disconnect. He is the borg's worst soldier. He just needs the internet really badly. And like all millennials, he wants everything handed to him. Compare to Aladdin despite the lowest of low origins integrates seamlessly high and low which is the millennials true envy is authentic non-digital living--even in this virtual digital paradise where everyone is larping as scoundrels, princesses, and heroes, the failure to integrate manifests in Jafar as a woefully inept villain. A failure in his own story. "We are the same," Jafar tells him. The most powerful shot in the film shows the sheer joy on his face when he summons Will Smith, as if he's lost to Aladdin in five hundred Dr Strange-style iterations of this story, and could only win by cheating, looking inside the code, and pinpointing exactly where Aladdin would walk inside flowing sheets. (How this parallels Aladdin's thieving is a difference in scale. We know Jafar uses hacks with his mindwashing staff. He only wins by using the genies own sort of tricks--same as how he loses.) Most fascinating is its study in identity textures. The genie makes Aladdin a Prince, but not really? (Who exactly is this army around him? Where do they go?) And then his manifestation of Jafar becoming a sultan is even odder, as he seems to have actually been given the title when Aladdin was not. The genie, ultimate only in deception, is a master in persuasive tricks. He is even puzzled by the process constantly remarking on 'gray areas'. The hack is more law of attraction style voodoo. (How frightening is that forecasting the machine age?) Then this notion the genie can accomplish magic switches of identity that are not static to begin with, which is the entire story of the 21st century as compared to the 90s which was a genuine heroes journey, makes this about the Aladdin--Jafar dichotomy as disposable identity. The one has nothing and rises. The other has painstakingly risen. Both win, as the world will greet you with every choice, today's 'fate is in your hands, speak up, the i-self' keeps bringing home we are all powerful. The fact genie doesn't actually do a thing for either Aladdin or Jafar is the other clue. Often it's just authority imparting others to take his word for it. The shackles are in their heads. Then the scrambled morality of accusing Aladdin of being a liar. Really? He is painfully authentic. Not only does he not want wishes, he doesn't get any. He used a loophole to cheat out of the cave (humanity exploited the hack). He was never made Prince at all but given Prince-like clothes (the machine exploited the hack--remember that is its only function there are no actual wishes). He was forced to be saved (the machine exposes itself as a co-dependent reflection). Then I think the third wish is in the tradition of the other wishes, and that is that Genie was never enslaved to begin with. Rather this area where the streamlining mechanization meets its form is an illusion. Aladdin's final con, as it's about an urchin playing his way through life beating both the humans and the machines with his street wisdom; also clues in why Jafar does not get sucked into the lamp until he 'realizes' he's been duped. Moreover, the characters are constantly trapped by language itself, not by any rules in this fantastical reality. The film is saying none of their limitations were real to begin, not Jasmin, not Aladdin, nor Jafar, not the Genie. It's saying this fraudulence governs the modern power structure, but more, can be manipulated to any and every end. There is nothing more 21st century than the disposable nature of our governing reality. It is also why the Sultan bizarrely hands Jasmine the title of Sultan of Agrabah. Did she get ahold of the lamp herself? Rather Aladdin and Jafar had their turns, now it's Jasmine's next; which is actually practical. We are woeful to the machine and the upcoming streamlining where every castle would integrate will end in disaster if in the hands of the power, so the only hope is her empathy and pureness to combat the mechanization. Purity cannot be hacked. Bringing this back to the films function entirely opposite to its treatise on falsities: when the story is good, has heart and purpose it will never be fake no matter how fake it looks. It's also why the genie is fleeing.