Episode 46 - Aladdin (Guy Ritchie, 2019) (with Myles Robey)

Aladdin (Guy Ritchie, 2019).

The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!

For Episode 46, Chris and Alex take a magic carpet ride through the pleasures and problems of the recent musical fantasy Aladdin (Guy Ritchie, 2019). Joining them for a discussion of exactly how (and indeed if) it adapts Disney’s highly successful 1992 cel-animated musical is the film’s VFX Editor Myles Robey, whose work also includes the Harry Potter franchise and feature films Skyfall, Muppets Most Wanted, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and the recent 1917. Listen as they examine the production pipeline of a Hollywood blockbuster, including Previs, Postvis and the development of “Sketchvis” approaches in Ritchie’s remake; the application of live-action footage as a visual effect within a heavily digital feature; the logic of location shooting and the ‘grounding’ of computer graphics; Aladdin’s connections to the Classical Hollywood musical and its spectacle of staging; and the relationship between Will Smith’s star persona and screen performance.

Suggested Readings

• Felperin, Leslie. 1997. “The Thief of Buena Vista: Disney’s Aladdin and Orientalism.” In A Reader in Animation Studies, ed. Jayne Pilling, 137-142. London: John Libbey.

• Van den Bossche, Sara. “Walking the Line: A Feminist Reading of Gendered Orientations and Voice in Disney’s Aladdin Films (1992/2019).” In On Disney: Deconstructing Images, Tropes and Narratives, eds. Ute Dettmar and Ingrid Tomkowiak, 67-80. Berlin: J.B. Metzler.