Aladdin Central Messageboard

[Meesh]

Reddit is putting us out of the job

https://np.reddit.com/r/FanTheories/comments/5h9w9f/the_entire_movie_of_aladdin_was_simply_the/

Here's what I posted. Figured I'd bring the conversation here too.

I like the idea because the legality of becoming a prince in this movie always kinda bothered me too. But I have some thoughts. I say thoughts because they are arguments, but I can also kind of argue against some of them.

1. Jafar also wishes to be royalty (sultan) but instantly becomes so, so it IS possible. And it’s done in the same way that Aladdin becomes Prince Ali - by getting the clothes, riches, and people bowing to him. However, you could argue that his wording is different than Aladdin's - "I wish to rule on high AS sultan" vs "I wish for you to MAKE me a prince.” Logistics.

2. I don't buy the idea that Genie would subject an entire kingdom to suffer tyranny and its benevolent rulers to be physically tortured and sexually harassed. If Genie had been characterized as more of a traditionally genie (devious, borderline evil), then sure. He was shown that he can be tricky (especially in the series) But he wasn't *devious*.

3. If this theory were true, then why did Genie make Aladdin wish for him to save his life? We learned earlier in the movie (rescuing Aladdin from the cave) that Genie is capable of doing things for his masters without needing them to wish for it. If Aladdin surviving were really part of his first wish, the second wish would be unnecessary. The only argument I could give for this one is that Aladdin NEEDED to make a second wish in order to use a third wish, so Genie was trying to speed along the process to his own freedom. Which brings me to...

4. If Genie was trying to get Aladdin to be a prince so that he could be set free, then why was he pressuring Aladdin into setting him free before he actually became a prince? True, the night before Genie starts pressuring Aladdin, Jasmine announces that she chooses "Ali" as her husband, but he's still not a prince yet, according to this theory.

5. In the scene when Jasmine announces that Ali is her choice, the sultan announces that Ali would become sultan, not prince. You could argue that he didn't explicitly say that the *marriage* would make him sultan, but that's how I always took it.

6. If we are sticking with legalities, Genie states in the end, "Just say the word, and you're a prince again," hinting that he was legitimately a prince the first time.
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[imekitty]

That is definitely really interesting, but I think all of your points are valid and show that this is probably not the case. I think the most compelling are three, four, and five.

With three, yeah, if Aladdin were to die, then that would impede his first wish of being "made" into a prince, so Genie should've saved him as part of fulfilling his first wish.

With four, totally. Assuming that Aladdin's wish to be a prince needed to be fulfilled before he could be freed, of course. I guess we don't know if this is the case or not, though.

With five, marrying royalty does not necessarily make you a prince or princess, does it? I've seen him referred to as Prince Aladdin in children's books set after their marriage, and Disney certainly believes that marrying royalty automatically makes you royalty (as seen in TPatF), but this isn't actually true, right? You can become king or queen, but you can't just become a prince or princess.

And six is good, too. Obviously, the writers intended for Aladdin to have been "made" a prince right when Genie put him in those clothes. Isn't there a post written by one of them about this? It's somewhere on this site.

Plus, you can't really play with semantics/pragmatics too much when they're technically not really speaking English. :b What does he say in the Arabic dub?