I'm battling with myself on this one. I absolutely love the original animated Aladdin to the point one of my daughters are named Jasmine. It's probably my personal favorite of all the classics. That said, I knew I'd be particularly hard on the live action version coming this year. While the first pics were a pleasant surprise, I've been impatiently waiting for an actual trailer to give this some real contrast. In comes this special look from last night. Now there's a lot more pluses for me here than minuses. The backdrops are amazing. From the deserts, to Agrabah, all the way to the Cave of Wonders, I was awestruck. Aladdin himself totally looks the part. Jasmine is absolutely gorgeous. Even the quick look at the flying carpet was amazingly on point. The bad part is the minuses here are really big minuses. Jafar didn't come off half as menacing as his animated counterpart, & that's a really big thing. To me your hero's story is only as powerful as the portrayal of its villain, & even though it was just a small piece, I wasn't buying in at all. Even worse though was the long awaited reveal of the often imitated, never duplicated Genie of the lamp. I have my fingers & toes crossed that this feeling will go away, but big blue Will Smith just took me right out of this. I've never had a major actor's appearance pull me out of something like this did. The bad part, is I'm not sure if even a recast would fix this problem. The more I thought about it, I'd almost say we needed a full CGI character just voiced. Maybe it's the fact that personalizing him doesn't really work. I'm not sure, but whatever it is, it's just not working with me. Sad it falls short for me in two of its biggest, most pivotal roles. What do y'all think though? Put it in the comments, like, & share