Will Smith promised us blue, and damnit, we got blue.
When first-look images of Disney’s live-action Aladdin surfaced in December, Smith’s Genie looked more like a transracial genie, and the original animated film’s fans weren’t amused.
But Smith assured us this was only his human disguise, not his final form. Basically, the actor reminded us of the virtue of patience. All we had to do was wait, and all would be revealed.
That reveal date happened to be the night of the 61st Annual Grammy Awards, during a commercial break when Disney gave us Trailer #2, a special look into its live-action film coming this spring.
He is blue—da ba dee da ba die, da ba dee da ba d—
Focus, Tonja.
“You really don’t know who I am—genie, wishes, lamp—none of that ringin’ a bell?” asks the zestful Genie in our first CGI-animated look at Smith’s version of the iconic character previously voiced by the late Robin Williams.
To be clear, the genie reveal doesn’t even come until the end of the trailer, but of course, it’s the star of the show. And for a showboating character like the Genie, I’m sure he’d be proud of that.
The trailer also gave us a peek at one of the film’s biggest musical numbers during the parade in Agrabah (“Prince Ali, fabulous he!”), that epic moment when Aladdin takes Prince Jasmine’s hand to take her on a magic carpet ride (Y’all call this a date? Yep.), and Aladdin’s dangerous journey to retrieve the lamp for Jafar’s scamming ass.
Which, now that we’re here—I’m still shook at how much of a glow-up Jafar has received in this live-action version. Yeah, yeah, Genie is blue... but Jafar is red hot.
Here’s another picture of him (“him,” being actor Marwan Kenzari), for reasons:
Aladdin releases in theaters on May 24.