Last night, during a football game, Disney dropped the very first teaser trailer for Guy Ritchie's Aladdin, the latest in the studio's ongoing line of live-action remakes. At 90 seconds in length, you might assume this teaser's chock full of new footage - our first look at Will Smith's Genie, maybe, or shots of each of the film's main characters along with their names, or maybe a shot of Aladdin swooping through the sky on his flying carpet.
That assumption would be incorrect.
What an odd teaser! Let's break it down:
- The first 26 seconds is mostly just sand dunes
- The next 6 seconds is just a black screen
- A very dimly lit shot of a CGI Iago flying at night
- We see the Cave of Wonders and hear it speak, but it's hard to make out what the dang Cave of Wonders is actually saying
- A quick shot inside the Cave, featuring lots of treasure
- 8 seconds spent on the title treatment
- A quick shot of Aladdin (Mena Massoud) finding the Genie's lamp
- Two pages of credits, neither of which name any of the cast except Will Smith
And that's it! There's not really enough here to leave an impression, which kinda makes one wonder why they'd even bother. Months ago, in Las Vegas, we saw some behind-the-scenes footage from the set of Aladdin (this was clearly something that'd been tossed together quickly for the CinemaCon crowd), and even that left a bigger impression than this, the film's first teaser trailer.
Of course, it is just a teaser. But still.
Anyway, we still don't feel one way or another about this. What do you folks think? Like what (little) you see here? Not so much? Find this as strange as we do? Sound off in the comments below, and stay tuned for much more on Aladdin as we get closer to the film's May 24th release date.