The flying carpet ride scene from Disney’s 1992 animated musical Aladdin is such an iconic, memorable movie moment that it’s already been the basis for two complete sketches on Saturday Night Live: this one and this one. Then there’s this parody from Family Guy and this one from Robot Chicken. Yep, that Aladdin scene has been parodied up, down, and sideways. Can this sweet scene possibly be undercut in any other nasty ways? Sure it can. This is the internet, after all, where anything resembling a romantic notion is quickly and ruthlessly executed so everyone can gather around and laugh at the corpse. A remix called “A Whole New World With Realistic Audio” points out a logical flaw in the whimsical scene: There’s no way Jasmine and Aladdin would be able to hear each other during their big romantic duet. Alan Menken’s melody and Tim Rice’s lyrics would be all but entirely drowned out by the wind as their carpet whisked them hither and yon over Agrabah. Here, take a look-see.
“Do you trust me?” the scheming title character asks his royal paramour at the outset of the scene. Jasmine says yes, but her faith in Aladdin seems ill-considered at best. Once the wind is amplified to realistic levels, their lovey-dovey magic carpet ride becomes significantly less enchanting and exponentially more terrifying. As anyone who has ever tried to film outside on even a slightly breezy day can attest, microphones pick up every single gust of air that passes by. So if Jasmine and Aladdin were live actors, there’s no way that the audio from this scene would be usable at all. Occasionally, a fragment of the song might break through the din, especially when they fly lower to the ground, but mostly all that would be audible is one continuous, deafening WHOOSH! This being a musical, they’d probably be singing to playback anyway. But, then, how are they remaining so calm throughout all of this? Were they both heavily tranquilized right before filming? In the end, maybe Aladdin doesn’t lend itself to logic or realism. Here’s the scene with unrealistic audio.