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Aladdin: New footage of Will Smith's Genie in live-action remake divides critics

Disney premiered the entire 'Never Had A Friend Like Me' sequence at CinemaCon

Jack Shepherd
Thursday 04 April 2019 08:34 BST
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Disney's Aladdin trailer

Footage from the upcoming live-action adaptation of Aladdin debuted at CinemaCon yesterday (3 April), with critics tweeting their reactions soon after.

The clip – the visual effects for which were unfinished – featured Will Smith’s Genie singing and rapping a new version of the track “Never Had A Friend Like Me”.

As with the trailer which appeared online earlier this year, Smith’s take on the magical spirit split viewers into two camps.

“Wow the updated #Aladdin footage from CinemaCon is so much stronger than the earlier BTS stuff,” wrote Variety’s Matt Donnelly, who added that the scene had “more personality” than previous clips.

Conversely, Barry Hertz of The Globe and Mail, wrote: “I’m going to be honest: it is pure nightmare fuel. It just looks... unnatural.”

Director Guy Ritchie previously said he wanted Smith’s character to look like “a muscular 1970s dad”, adding: “He was big enough to feel like a force – not so muscular that he looked like he was counting his calories, but formidable enough to look like you knew when he was in the room.”

A Disney executive described Smith’s Genie to the magazine as “part Fresh Prince, part Hitch“, referring to two of Smith’s most famous roles – a fictionalised version of himself in the beloved Nineties sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and “date doctor” Hitch in the 2005 movie of the same name.

“I started to feel confident that I could deliver something that was an homage to Robin Williams but was musically different,” he said.

“Just the flavour of the character would be different enough and unique enough that it would be in a different lane, versus trying to compete.”

Aladdin hits UK cinemas 24 May 2019.

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