Rylee Bowen "Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp"

"Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp" was so different than the story I remember growing up. For starters, this story doesn't end. They're so many parts and and the plot is so complicated. The story would have been a lot better if minor story plots such as the princess' first husband, the jewels and the slaves, the second palace, and the magician's brother were left out. They just distracted from the plot of the story and made it feel like the story was everywhere.

Aladdin was not a hero in this version. Honestly, he was so stupid it was painful. His only luck was found by being manipulated to steal for the wizard. In a sense, he only succeeded on account of how lazy and dumb he was. The story also had way more characters. They included characters such as Aladdin's family, multiple genies, husbands, and wizards, and Fatima. They seemed like they were added in right when Lang wanted to add more to the story, but he never introduced any of them before giving them a big action seen. If this story would have been longer, he could have made this work by giving his audience a little warning and forshadowing into the characters.

Aladdin's family played a very important role to the story. It was his mother that would sit in front of the Sultan every day for almost a week to inform him that her son loved his daughter. More on that... this story features a concept Disney has built a lot on... love at first sight. The princess is a minor character in this story. Aladdin falls in love with her when he spies on her as shes going to take a bath, which is pretty creepy. Then he basically buys her and when that doesn't work, kidnaps her. Alas, their marriage seems to be a happy one. Aladdin also risks her life to kill the wizard when he asks her to put poison in her own glass to give to him. Luckily it worked, but then he told his wife to go away. She is more passive than Snow White, and thats really saying something.

I get that this story came out a long time ago and it was released in a location that is very different than here, but this story was honestly so hard to read. There wasn't a single character that I found admirable. Everyone was selfish or weak. The one moment that I found that differed from this was the genie chewing out Aladdin in the end. He ultimately saved him from killing him and his family with desiring more, but he disobeyed Aladdin's ordered.

This story is also extremely dramatic. In the opening paragragh, Aladdin's father died because his song being "idle" and playing ball with his friends caused him so much grief... I also found it pretty interesting that the magician punched Aladdin, but he still thought he was his cool, famous, long-lost, uncle. A lot of things don't add up in this story.

Sorry this is so negative:) I'm hungry