How Aladdin Changed Animation (by F*cking over Robin Williams)

Loved this video and wanted to congrats on the Hugo Nom! Absolutely deserved.

Audrey Zarr

Great video. Picked up a BRAND shirt because I think the idea is low key very funny.

Shoeboxjeddy

now 2M views!

#spoilers

William Beamish

Legit devastated that I can't reasonably use this magnificent "petty asshole" image in my paper on the fall of the Disney renaissance... Thanks for putting the sources in the description btw !

2 days to get to 1 million views. Nice job.

Callen

Fan for a while, brand new patron. Found your work when an NPR podcast pointed me to the Hobbit series and our opinions and frustrations with the first movie were point for point identical. I’ve since watched most of your work and shared some with friends. You have a sexy brain, thank you for creating!

Excellent, as ever. Though I hate you a little for reminding me how much I miss Robin Williams, his wisdom and his huge heart. Damn you, you brilliant woman.

Rich Stoehr

Now, as I do so often, I ponder how the masterpiece The Emperor's New Groove fits in relative to other Disney movies.

JBay

i had this image of Pocahontas secretly recording John Smith's racist ranting, and then releasing it on social media.

Don Bright

Finished it and WHY, CAN'T, I, STOP, CRYYYYIIING!!!!!

Gabe

I am only 8 minutes into this, and I love it so much. You give me so much life, thanks for this.

Gabe

This is why I love Lindsay Ellis videos--they all have heart.

Eric Mulder

This was excellent, Lindsay! It is sad to see inspiration and heart be the lesser of a reason to make a movie. Like you said there are exceptions, which are great. But the industry is certainly worse off for it.

Sean Fineran

The more I hear & see about Robin Williams the more I love him & the more I’m sad I’ll never get to see him old. If anyone wants a sweet sad movie The Fisher King is with Williams as a homeless man falling in love & it working out

Arrogant cum trucks

Wow, this is like a reverse ”Leaving Neverland”, sort of. Poor Robin!

Emanuel Alfredsson / Lemanic

Video unavailable 😢

As someone who loves both Shrek and basically everything by Lindsay, can someone explain it?

Xylem

This video got me excited for the Aladdin remake just like watching LOTR got me excited for the GoT finale tonight

Christina Rodriguez

I have no context for Meg Ryan outside of Anastasia so it always worked for me. (dances to Batty Rap on a loop)

Princess Weekes

You could add that voice actor Billy West throwing shade at Katzenberg use of celebrities

Adrian DeZendegui

I fanboy squee when I saw this on Patreon, Avengers didn't do that

Adrian DeZendegui

The video still doesn’t seem to be working for me :(

Hayley Nystrom

If this is not the final version of the video, one small suggestion: the part about voice acting being the territory of character actors and c list celebrities is repeated almost verbatim in the first 2 min. Guess you could cut one of them.

Wonderful as always, although I feel like getting Billy Joel and Bette Midler for Oliver & Company isn't quite like-for-like comparison with the films around it. Wasn't the gimmic there that they'd cast famous singers then had them write the big song their own character sings? It would be more like if Elton John had been cast in The Lion King and sang Circle of Life in character while playing a cartoon piano. Might be relevant/interesting to mention the celebrity musical aspect, but I realise there's only so much time and the importance of keeping to the point the essay is making!

quarridors

Sometimes I wonder if the frenetic energy he carried in his persona still managed to influence excellent animated films, whether subconsciously or not, such as spider-verse. I wonder how he would feel about animated shows like Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Over the Garden Wall, Tuca and Bertie, Bojack, Steven Universe, etc. While it's a shame that Disney went against their promise, I think Williams influenced the animation world in positive ways that I don't think he ever realized.

Great work as usual, Lindsay.

apocalypsethen

Hurrah! The Mentor of Meaning is back with smack!

Kurt Stallings

Eddie Murphy was pretty good in Mulan though

Gordon Stearns

This is great to wake up to :D

Great video! Glad the hiatus is over. I never quite thought about the impact of Aladdin, especially considering how prevalent it was during my childhood - almost every animated movie I can think of from the 90s, and a good chunk from the 2000s heavily rely on their star power. And it's amazing thinking of how meaningless it is for kids, but how its aimed specifically at parents, who might take their kids to see some gutless movie about Oprah Winfrey as a camel because "Oh, hey I know that lady".

Honestly, it seems like when Disney stopped selling their animated movies on its A-listers and went back to (mostly) B/C listers, they funneled all that Phenomenal Marketing Power into the live-action remakes, which seem to be devouring the Disney animation department like some wretched, self-referential ouroboros. Like, 80% of those damn things are just yoinking early 2010's tumblr fancasts and then funneling real billions of dollars into them. "Hey, remember how you loved Emma Watson as a character who liked books? Well, here's Emma Watson, as our most famous character who likes books! Never mind that it's completely superfluous; we didn't recast James Earl Jones as Mufasa so Lion King's gonna be REALLY good, guys."

The ending really got me...I normally close things down when credits come on, but this one I couldn't help but leave it there, because you achieved the heart.

Robin Williams was genuinely one of the greatest improv actors that has ever hit the big screen. I love the story where he would call Spielberg every week while filming Schindlers List and just do stand-up for 15 minutes at a time. If you want more information on how great of an actor Williams was, check out his Inside The Actors Studio interview as well as the Every Frame of Painting episode about Robin Williams. Thank you Lindsay for bringing back such warm memories of a great man.

Dave B.

GUH sorry I have been at a Thing all day and my attempts to leave a comment haven't worked - if you see "video unavailable" I don't know why - this one is demonetized but there should be no problem playing it, but opening it outside of the embedded player does seem to fix the problem.

Lindsay Ellis

I love the things I learn when I watch one of your videos.

...okay, you made me cry at the end, there. :'-( Well done.

The real question now is whether it's better to lose to a rug or to a bird.

CS Drennan

Yeah video unavailable for me too:(

Arrogant cum trucks

So sad it’s not working! I was saving this for tonight LOL

Leslye Headland

"I'm losing to a BIRD!" Never change. Also sob Robin Williams. :( :( :(

Vladimir Barash

Video is unavailable

Leslye Headland

“Video unavailable”

Nick Ulanowski

There was a time that my mom sat by Eric Goldberg at a con once. She was there to advertise her books and Eric Goldberg was there for the same reason. He was nice and cheered up my sister who was 2 at the time by drawing Bugs Bunny and impersonating him too.

Bardcraft

Much as I love the epic productions like the Hobbit trilogy and Authenticity, it's always nice when you go back to the meat-and-potatoes of in-depth autopsies of Disney under Eisner. Welcome back team!

Joe G

Thank you for another wonderful video (ah, confusing Ferngully memories). And for making me tear up at the end.

Lindsay Nelson

Peculiar audio burble near the end around 23:00. Apart from that, a wonderful piece to add to the LE collection

Hey, I wasn't expecting you back this soon! (Not sarcasm, babies take all of the time). And what a video. What you did at the end there, pairing the quotes from his interview with moments from the movie, I didn't realize what you were leading us to until I suddenly felt like crying. And fuck, it just hit all over again.

Crescent Minor

Video unavailable over here too :(

No, YOU'RE crying over a video essay about Aladdin, shut up.

Ellie

Hey welcome back!

Callen

I was waiting for that clip of Simple Plan when you showed the Beauty and the Beast direct to video sequel

Alyssa Bauer

Video unavailable?

Missy Curtis

Using audio of Enya's "Only Time" underneath the Katzenberg bits was a very good touch :`D

luvkirby4ever

Blue Sky's first film being released by Disney is Spies in Disguise, in which Will Smith is a spy transformed into a pigeon. I can't help but crack up whenever I pass by the poster at my local AMC, still in disbelief this nonsense is somehow a real movie.

Reuben

One little thing you might want to fix: it's a bit confusing seeing two Dreamworks trailers after a line about Dreamworks knock-offs.

Reuben

Getting video unavailable. And I'm not the only one. Never mind, I opened it in youtube instead of the imbed and it works.

Dominic

Excellent video! <333 One nitpick, the bit that starts 00:20 and the bit that starts at 1:55 (both about the kind of actors used in animation pre-Aladdin) sounds quite samey, like it's the same piece of script left in at two different points.

Paul Ganzevoort

Very excited 😊

Hayley Nystrom

Welcome back!

Jessica Marcrum

I’m having the same issue :(

Suse Zink Diesel

Was watching it and had to put it down to do something - video unavailable?

Petty a-hole is very on brand for Katzenberg.

Loved the video. So excited to have something new from you. Do you really need to include the picture of Weinstein? I appreciated Mikey's treatment of cancelled a**hole in his Baby Driver video.

What a heartwarming ending ❤️ Another amazing video

Kathrin Shawcross

Video unavailable — has it been taken down for some reason?

Max Barnash

So glad to see this. I really missed the essays (as a person and as a teacher who has often been using the videos in the classroom).

Save

I audibly gasped when I got the notification for this. Thank you for your work. 😭😊

Nick Oswalt

I am so glad you mentioned FernGully!

Mary Kimball

The thumbnail and the unsubtle disdain for Shrek in the first two minutes. "Chef's kiss"

Griffen Rosado

Christmas in May?? :^)