Genie



Genie is the tritagonist in the Disney's 1992 animated feature film Aladdin, The Return of Jafar, Aladdin and the King of Thieves, and its 1994-96 spinoff television series. He is the magical friend of Aladdin.

He has been voiced by the late Robin Williams, Dan Castellaneta and currently, Jim Meskimen.

History
Like most popular depictions of genies, Disney's Genie was originally a slave. Though he possesses "phenomenal cosmic powers", he is bound to an "itty-bitty living space" and can only use his powers when the owner of the lamp (his master) makes a wish; he occasionally does things without granting a wish, but never anything that greatly affects the world around him. He is also bound by three laws; he cannot kill anyone, he cannot make people fall in love with each other, and he cannot revive the dead. It is possible, however, that he can do the third one, but as he puts it, "It's not a pretty picture. I don't like doing it!" Each master has three wishes, and cannot exceed this amount by wishing for more wishes. The lamp comes into the possession of Aladdin during the course of the first film, and he remains in servitude until Aladdin uses his third and final wish to grant Genie his freedom at the end of the film.

As well as largely driving the plot in the first movie, the Genie serves as a comic relief element in each of his appearances. He is shown to have shapeshifting abilities, which allow for many and varied sight gags. The Genie's supernatural disposition permits him to break the fourth wall, as well as parody real-life people and popular culture completely outside of the boundaries of the universe in which he is contained. Robin Williams is responsible for most of these because he improvised many of the lines in the film. The Genie's true name, if he has one, has never been revealed; he answers to being called "Genie", and never says that he has a real name. Along with the character of Iago, Genie is one of the most well recognized of characters from Disney's Aladdin franchise.

Concept and Creation
John Musker and Ron Clements created the Genie with Robin Williams in mind, even though Disney studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg suggested names such as John Candy, Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy, Williams was approached and eventually accepted the role. Williams came for voice recording sessions during breaks in the shooting of his other two films at the time, Hook and Toys. Unusually for an animated film, much of Williams' dialogue was ad-libbed: for some scenes, Williams was given topics and dialogue suggestions, but allowed to improvise his lines. Aladdin Platinum Edition, Disc 2: Diamond in the Rough: The Making of Aladdin. It was estimated that Williams improvised 52 characters. Eric Goldberg, the supervising animator for the Genie, then reviewed Wiliams's recorded dialogue and selected the best gags and lines. Goldberg and his crew then created character animation to match Williams' jokes, puns, and impersonations.

Personality
Genie is kind hearted, cheerful, energetic and somewhat crazy as a result from spending centuries trapped in his lamp. He dreams of freedom and is hurt when Aladdin says that he can't set him free. Genie cannot disobey the commands of his master, and while he calls Jafar "Señor Psychopath", he grants almost all of his wishes; the only one he doesn't grant is getting Jasmine to fall in love with Jafar. Genie likes to travel and leaves to see the world upon gaining his freedom but he feels that his true home is with Aladdin and Jasmine, presumably because Aladdin was the one who freed him.

Powers and Abilities
Genie is one of the most powerful major character in the Disney universe shown so far. As shown in the first movie, he could easily break the laws of nature, shape shift into virtually anything, break the fourth wall, warp reality at a whim, lift the palace of Agrabah with no problems, give other people his power, undo the works of any magic, and escape a magically sealed cave. However, he had three limits to his abilities (And also refuses to accept substitutions, exchanges, refunds and wishing for more wishes); he cannot kill, he cannot make people fall in love, and he cannot raise the dead (though he states that he can indeed perform resurrections, but simply does not enjoy doing so as the resurrected are implied to be turned zombies in which he describes as "not a pretty picture"). Aside from these three limitations, he was virtually-omnipotent.

After getting his freedom, it is unclear of these limitations still implied, although he stated that he had suffered a reduction in power due to his new freedom, describing his current powers as now being "semi-phenomenal, nearly cosmic power" as opposed to his previous "phenomenal cosmic power". Due to his weakened state as opposed to Jafar's full power, the now-genie Jafar defeated him during the "You're Only Second Rate," musical number as well as deflecting all of his magical attacks. However, he still has an unlimited amount of magical knowledge, and all his shape shifting abilities. He also has high magic power, but was unable to undo certain forms of magic; a weakness with disastrous consequences in the television series, such as when he had trouble turning Jasmine back to normal after she was turned into a rat by a magic mirror, or his inability to break a spell cast by Sadira that brainwashed Aladdin into thinking that he was a dragon-slaying knight. It was revealed in Return of Jafar that he can also flawlessly imitate the voices and appearances of others, as seen when he shape shifts into Aladdin in the ultimately failed attempt to distract Jafar while the real Aladdin grabs the latter's lamp.

Eventually though, Genie was shown to have regained his strength in "Aladdin and the King of Thieves" (1996) (possibly being that his powers regenerated after he fully adapting to no longer being confined within the lamp) where he had no problem with anything he tried. Genie is perhaps the 3rd (possibly 4th) strongest character to be shown in the series, with the only characters shown to be stronger are Fate, Chaos and Jafar.