Monday, 9 June 2008

Aladdin


In 1962 the Italian branch of the Walt Disney Company published the story Paperino e la grotta di Aladino (Donald and Aladdin's Cave), written by Osvaldo Pavese and drawn by Pier Lorenzo De Vita. In it, Uncle Scrooge leads Donald Duck and their nephews on an expedition to find the treasure of Aladdin and they encounter the Middle Eastern counterparts of the Beagle Boys. Scrooge describes Aladdin as a brigand who used the legend of the lamp to cover the origins of his ill-gotten gains. They find the cave holding the treasure which is blocked by a huge rock and it requires a variation of "Open Sesame" to open it, thus providing a link to Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves [1].
A Soviet film Volshebnaia Lampa Aladdina ("Aladdin's Magic Lamp") was released in 1966.
In 1982 Media Home Entertainment released Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp.
Currently the form in which the medieval tale is best known, especially to the very young, is Aladdin, the 1992 animated feature by Walt Disney Feature Animation. In this version several characters are renamed (for instance the Sorcerer is renamed "Jafar" and has become a royal vizier), have new motivations for their actions (the Lamp Genie now desires freedom from his role) or are simply replaced (the Ring Genie disappears, but a magic carpet fills his place in the plot). The setting is moved from China to the fictional Arabian city of Agrabah, and the structure of the plot is simplified.

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