The concept of reference points in animation is common if you know, but it can surprise people who don't have a lot of experience or knowledge of the history of the medium. Even the greatest and most talented illustrators have to start somewhere when creating a character, and it's no different for the artisans who work for Walt Disney Animation Studios. In the early eras of Disney animation, reference points were often live actors or animals. In the cases of Bambi and Dumbo, for example, if you watch the 1941 film The Reluctant Dragon (a film that itself was bizarrely censored for one particular animated detail)you can see how animators literally watch the deer and elephants move so they can accurately capture those tiny details when designing the title characters.

However, as the world approached the 21st century, Disney animators began to look not only to real people, but specifically known real people when designing some of their movie characters. Indeed, one such example that you may not have known about before was when Disney animators were inspired by none other than Mission: Impossible man Tom Cruise as they followed up on the quest for the title character in their 1992 animated adaptation of Aladdin. year. . However, while Cruise was one of the most famous people in the world at that point in time (and still is today), it should be noted that if the Disney animators had their way, he wouldn't have been a thought in anyone's head. .

To unpack all of this, we need to bring in a little context and background. As has been the case for most of Disney's heralded renaissance era, we should begin with the late songwriter Howard Ashman. Ashman and his composing partner Alan Menken were brought into the studio in the mid-1980s to help revive a new version of The Little Mermaid. No doubt, the iconic and beautiful songs of that film played a huge part in its success, but it should also be noted that Ashman and Mencken were credited with writing the entire script of the film, not just the music. So naturally, since The Little Mermaid was an undeniable hit at the box office and with critics (it even earned Disney a few Oscars along the way), Ashman and Menken were brought back for future films, starting with Disney's 1991 masterpiece. Beauty and the Beast." But due to the long trail between when animated titles were approved and actually completed, along with Ashman's tragic death from AIDS in March 1991 (months before Beauty and the Beast hit theaters), Disney had already begun development on the next duet title: "Aladdin". While we all know and love Beauty and the Beast, it might surprise some people to learn that Ashman only worked on that film so he could put his passion into Aladdin.

For a number of reasons, the version of Aladdin we all know is a far cry from the one Ashman envisioned before he died. Key characters and songs from his take didn't survive the final cut; perhaps the most famous example is Aladdin's mother, who was enough of a presence to lead to a song that was given a second life in the Broadway musical, Proud of Your Boy. Not only has the arc of the film changed, so has the tone; the very design of Aladdin himself has also changed. For animators like Glen Keane, as noted in the Los Angeles Times profile back in the fall of 1992, it wasn't Cruise who served as the initial design inspiration for Aladdin, but another young big name A-lister of the era: Michael J. Fox. Keane also noted that his Aladdin was "short in stature, but with a big ego and a lot of dreams." However, then-executive Jeffrey Katzenberg was upset with how the production was coming along and demanded changes of all kinds, including making Aladdin more relaxed and a bit more mature by using "Top Gun" as a visual cue for the redesign. (We can argue about how Cruise and Fox from 1992 probably weren't drastically different as performers, of course.)

At the time, Keane noted that when he watched Cruise fulfill his need for speed, he saw "a confidence, a look in his brows that gives him intensity and at the same time a smile that has a kind of awkward look" that would help fill Aladdin in appropriate proportions. It's worth wondering how much of the end result looks like Cruise vs. Fox, of course, and because the uncomfortable intensity in the film seems much more embodied than Robin William's living Genie than from the titular hero. (Also, the Aladdin we see sometimes feels like a teenage Marty McFly compared to a slightly older but no less immature and juvenile fighter pilot.) What feels undeniably true is that, when you see this "Aladdin" he it feels much more modern than the setting in which his story takes place, allowing the audience to perhaps more easily relate to his struggles as an orphaned "street rat" in Agrabah.

The amount of changes an animated film can go through is often mammoth, and almost always in ways we don't realize until after the film's release. Disney is no stranger to such creative struggles, as directors like Katzenberg can often jump in and make a long list of demands that end up completely overhauling the film from top to bottom. In an ideal world, the audience doesn't even realize the bumpy road to the ending when they watch the movie. These days, you can peek behind the curtain if you want; Consider the recent "Into the Unknown," Disney's multi-part documentary series about the making of "Frozen II," which makes much clearer how that film's murky arc came to be. For Aladdin, however, its own creative success far outweighs the reality that it could once have looked very different, in no small part because the hero didn't seem confident and mature enough. Disney animators had, if you will, an impossible mission to undertake when they were forced to redesign Aladdin, and luckily they were up to the challenge.