“We were really inspired by a line in the original movie where Jafar very misogynistically says, ‘You’re speechess, I see. To help address that imbalance and further flesh out Jasmine’s more empowered character, “Aladdin” composer Alan Menken, in collaboration with the songwriting duo of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, wrote a song for Scott to perform, a soaring power ballad called “Speechless” in which Jasmine expresses her desire to unleash her voice. “We felt like we had a real opportunity to make Jasmine really be a strong female leader in this movie that maybe she wasn’t so much in the original movie.”Īccording to a 2016 study by linguists at Pritzker College and North Carolina State University that analyzed the gender breakdown of dialogue in numerous Disney movies, male characters delivered some 90% of the lines in the original “Aladdin.” (Much of that disparity was no doubt accounted for by Robin Williams’ famously motor-mouthed performance as the Genie.) “We watched the original movie and said, ‘In these times, does it feel outdated?’ And there are times relationship-wise that it does feel a little out of date,” said producer Dan Lin. With the “Aladdin” remake, those discussions began early in the development process, as director Guy Ritchie, screenwriter John August and the rest of the creative team looked for ways to blow some dust off the story and make it feel more in tune with today’s audiences. You can have both, girls, and the two aren’t mutually exclusive.” It’s showcasing that you can lead and you can have love. She’s trying to protect her kingdom against this evil dictator. In this movie, she’s more ambitious and she looks outside herself. “In the original movie, as great as it is that she’s fighting for the choice of who she wants to marry, that’s where her ambition kind of stops. “It doesn’t feel like we’re shoehorning something in,” she said. Scott sees the character’s evolution as a natural progression. This is a Jasmine for the era of female presidential candidates and the #MeToo movement, reflecting broader societal shifts in gender norms and expectations over the past 27 years. Whereas the original film’s Jasmine was mainly concerned with choosing a spouse, Scott’s version dreams of breaking with archaic patriarchal traditions and ruling her kingdom of Agrabah. In fact, Scott’s new take on Jasmine stands apart from the original version in ways that go beyond simply the storytelling medium. ![]() It’s more a case of being able to create this human version of her. “You have to have a healthy respect for what came before, but I still see those things as separate. “Jasmine was my favorite, so I can’t really reconcile those two things,” Scott said. Now the actress and singer finds herself bringing three-dimensional life to a character she once pretended to be as a child, images of whom countless girls have had plastered on their walls and bedsheets. The 26-year-old Scott wasn’t even born when 1992’s “Aladdin” hit theaters, one of a string of hits that fueled Disney’s ’90s animated renaissance. “At the end of the day, that’s what girls will gravitate towards: that person, that human.” “I just gravitated toward the characters as opposed to the princess side of it,” Scott said on a recent afternoon in a Beverly Hills hotel suite, wrapped in a white bathrobe at the end of a long day of interviews to promote Disney’s new live-action remake of “Aladdin,” in which she plays Jasmine. ![]() ![]() Growing up in England, Naomi Scott, like so many other young girls, fell in love at an early age with Disney’s animated heroines - particularly Mulan, Pocahontas and Jasmine from “Aladdin.” But while those three are officially part of Disney’s juggernaut princess line of media franchises and toys, alongside the likes of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Belle and Ariel, it wasn’t their ostensible princess-y trappings that enthralled Scott.
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