Physics in Aladdin

Aladdin is one of Disney’s most well know animated features. The movie was released in 1992 to critical acclaim. It is a story about a street rat named Aladdin who happens upon a magic lamp with a genie inside. The genie promises him 3 wishes with almost limitless possibility. Aladdin’s first wish was to become a Prince so he can marry a Princess that he fell in love with. The main villain, Jafar, eventually found out who Aladdin really was and stole his lamp. Aladdin ended up having to fight Jafar to save the city and the Princess. While the story of Aladdin is not very unique, it is very entertaining and well made. The movie has a lot of action scenes that defies physics but does not take the viewers out of the movie. There are moments when gravity seems to don’t work correctly, bodies stretching out of proportions, and a lack of deceleration and acceleration. The physic bending scenes are so well made that it seems almost believable. In this paper, I will talk about how some scenes are made to entertain movie watchers rather than be realistic.

The gravity or lack of gravity in this movie makes world of Aladdin to be a place of very low gravity and things won’t fall as fast as they should like in the real world. For example, the scene where Aladdin was chased by the royal guards, he grabbed a regular old carpet and jumped out the window. Aladdin was able to use the carpet to glide himself and his monkey pal, Apu, to safety. The guards that followed Aladdin out the window makes a dead stop in mid-air and then drop down after a short pause onto a wagon full of fertilizer, for a comical effect. As Aladdin descends, he used the carpet as a parachute to land on the ground slowly and harmlessly. Realistically, there is no way for the carpet to have enough air resistance for Aladdin to safely glide down. The carpet is way too small and it has no sides for it to trap the air like with normal parachutes. This is scene was very light hearted and funny, and if realistic physics were added to this scene, then everyone that jumped out of the window would have surely died or be seriously injured from the fall. Another scene where there was a lack of gravity, was when Jafar let go of Aladdin and let him plummets downward into an abyss. After falling for several stories, he hits a rocky ledge and gets saved by a magic carpet right after. Aladdin was only knocked unconscious from the impact, but in real life, a fall like that would have done much more damage to his body. In the parade where Aladdin was making his way into the city as a Prince, Genie grabbed the ankles of a nearby peasant and run him into other peasants, making a stack of people. The stack of people starts to tower over and around Aladdin, and for a while it seems that they can hold themselves together effortlessly as they shake Aladdin’s hand. A tower of people like that in the real world would absolutely fall over, but in Aladdin, gravity tends to be lighter for certain moments.

Aladdin is full of moments that defy the law of physics, and many of those moments are due to the exaggerations of the body when it stretches and squash. One of such moments was when the guards were falling after jumping out the window chasing after Aladdin. They were huddled together and one by one they drop in a comical matter. Each one of the guards experiences a stretch as if their lower half was being pulled by gravity first then their top half follows. It is as if gravity is literally yanking them down by the ankles. It is funny to see each guards taking turns getting what they deserve, but it isn’t fooling anyone into thinking it was suppose to be realistic. Another scene with exaggerated stretch was when Apu was trying to steal a melon with his body hanging from his tail. His tail acted like a bungee cord, letting him bounce up a down with significant stretch on his tail. When the merchant pulls on Apu, his tail stretch at about double its initial length. Even though monkeys can hold their own weight by their tails, they can’t stretch very much due to its being made of flesh and bones. Apu was also caught over stretching his mouth when he was about to bite Jafar. Jafar was about to stab Aladdin so Apu jumps onto his arm to try to stop him. His mouth opened at 180 degrees (something that even a snake can’t do) right before chomping down Jafar’s wrist. This exaggeration shows how much power went into Apu’s bite and even though it was not realistic, it helps express the pain that Jafar will experience. Stretching gives the character more expression and allows them to exaggerate beyond what live action actors can do. Live action movies can never express the extreme emotional ranges that animated characters can because they are bounded by real physics that prevents them from having their eyes popped out or jaws hitting the ground when they see something shocking.

A big offender of physics in this movie is the magic carpet and I will dedicate this whole section for it. The magic carpet constantly accelerates and decelerates with riders on it but never has a problem with keeping them on even when it stops on a dime. The magic carpet has a smooth surface and easily holds two people but it has nothing for the rider to hold to or buckle down with. In one scene, Aladdin is flying through the palace on the magic carpet to greet the Sultan. He swoops down towards the Sultan at high speed but stops immediately right before hitting him. Realistically, an act like this should have Aladdin flying off the carpet and into the Sultan. The carpet is magic, so maybe he can accelerate and decelerate anytime he wants, but Aladdin has no such magic that we know off. On to the scene when both Aladdin and Jasmine were on the carpet for the first time, they got onto the carpet and flew away at high acceleration with nothing to hold them down but their own weight. And it was made even more difficult to believe because the magic carpet was going upward which should have made the riding couple falls backwards. The scene should have looked like how if a person was to pull a tablecloth quickly away from under a vase. The vase, in this case, Jasmine and Aladdin shouldn’t have moved and the carpet should have flown off without them. Another instance of the magic carpet cheating physic is when Jasmine and Aladdin are flying and the carpet does a quick loop around them. In the scene, the magic carpet quickly lets them go, putting the couple into a freefall until the carpet catches them. When the couple was in a free fall, they didn’t decelerate in the direction they were going but instead, they just stop and fall straight down. They should have fell in a parabolic arch from where carpet flew out from underneath them. To add to the craziness, right after the magic carpet catches them, it goes upside down with the couple hanging on with no problem. The only way to make sense of the physic with it comes to riding the magic carpet is that the carpet can magically stick on to the riders so the riders won’t fall when the carpet breaks or accelerates immediately.

Aladdin is a movie full of magic and wonderful animation and it does its job quite well, which was to entertain. It features lots of physic defying moments because it sets itself up as a magical and comical story. Being physically incorrect brings a defining element to the movie because of how light hearted and fun it was. If this movie were to be grounded with real-life physic, then it wouldn’t be as magical or expressive. The bending of physic never bothers viewers because it was consistent to its world and was never jarring. Live action movies like Speed takes the viewer out of the movie when physically impossible things are happening on screen. When they present a realistic movie and then put in something that makes the viewer thinks if it is possible or not, it makes that part of the movie sticks out like a sore thumb and takes the audience out of the movie. Aladdin stays entertaining while being consistence throughout, so the audience never needs to ask if they are being tricked or not. To remake all of those scenes that I pointed out into something realistic would ruin the movie and take away the magic that it produced. The expressive stretching, the magical gravity, and the impossible speeds that the movie utilized made Aladdin one of the best animated movies ever made, technique wise and entertainment wise.


Note: Couldn't add images due to Blogger being on maintenance.


I didn’t follow my original outline and came up with a new one that I think works much better.

I. Introduction
a. Brief description of the movie
b. Brief talk about physics in the movie
c. The movie bends physics to make it more entertaining.

II. Gravity
a. Aladdin fall out of window; using a carpet to glide down
b. Aladdin falls from a cliff and get saved by flying carpet
c. Tower of people shaking Aladdin’s hand

III. Squash and Stretch
a. Guards falling out of a window
b. Apu’s tail act as a bungee cord
c. Apu’s mouth opens at 180 degree

IV. Acceleration and Deceleration
a. Aladdin being stopped on a dime
b. Aladdin and Jasmine accelerates greatly
c. Aladdin and Jasmine loses movement immediately

V. Conclusion
a. Physics in Aladdin are consistent in its own world; the movie was made to entertain rather than be realistic