One of the most common themes of almost any story, across all cultures and times, is containing a "bad guy." There is almost always someone in the story to for the main character to fight against and be victorious over, usually to end the story. Sometimes the bad guy makes you hate him, sometimes he makes you feel sorry for him, and sometimes you can completely understand the bad guy.
This week I read the Story Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, which is most commonly known by it's Disney adaptation in the movie "Aladdin." First things first, the original story is MUCH different than the movie version, exemplified by the fact that the original story takes place in China while the movie adaptation by Disney takes place in India. In the original story, the "bad guy" is a wizard who disguises himself as Aladdin's uncle in order to convince him to retrieve the lamp from the cave which he cannot enter. This wizard then disappears from the story after he seals Aladdin in the cave when Aladdin refuses to give him the treasure unless the wizard asks for it until the end of the story when he discovers that Aladdin is not dead. In the movie however, the role of the wizard and the Grand Vizir to the Sultan, two separate characters in the story, is combined into "Jafar" who is present throughout the movie. In this post, I am going to discuss the bad guy from the original story, the wizard.
In the original story, Aladdin does not overcome his opponent through his own merits. It seemed that every time that Aladdin was in a pinch, he would use the unlimited wishes he had from the genie, another difference between the story and the movie, rather than overcoming the wizard himself. In the story, the wizards motives and back story are not well revealed, making it hard to sympathize or understand why he does what he does in the story. This made for a very flat bad guy character; one that you did not understand their motive, you only reacted to his bad actions. I do not personally like these types of characters; I think that they are very unrealistic and in the real world, there are very few truly "evil" people that do bad things just because they want to. Every one has the capacity to make bad decisions and do bad things; I like characters who reflect that no one starts out completely evil and who show that, at least at one point, they are human and can feel compassion. The wizard from Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp did not show that to me.
Bad guys will always be prevalent in stories, especially stories containing some sort of hero and conflict, and in my opinion, it is better when those characters have back stories and can be at least partially understood. The wizard from Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp did not do that for me and I wish that he were more prevalent in the story.
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