Platform Nostalgia: Disney’s Aladdin

Platform Nation: Despite involving a genie, a talking and fully autonomous parrot, and a flying carpet, Disney’s Aladdin was a fairly straightforward film. It followed the hero’s journey—the monomythic structure—pretty much exactly. Al starts out in the known world, stealing food on the streets of Agrabah with his pal Abu. Jafar’s initial deceit to free and use the two is our hero’s call to action, garner supernatural aid and pushing through the threshold into the unknown with the imprisoned genie (appropriately and simply named Genie). It all leads downhill to when Al just about literally dies and then exiled and almost dies again, both times coming back before finally atoning by defeating Jafar and returning to the known world of being a street rat, albeit with a princess in his arms.