For the sake of Aladdin's happiness, however, Abu is willing to put up with quite a bit of nonsense, such as being turned into an elephant to disguise himself as Aladdin's extravagant mode of transportation in hopes of winning over Jasmine and her father, the Sultan. The two share a mutual admiration for one another, and so much so on Abu's part that the monkey can become rather jealous when Aladdin's attention is given to someone else, as seen when he and the street-rat first meets the beautiful Princess Jasmine. When he and Aladdin noticed two starving children, Abu initially shows disgust towards the idea of donating his food, but he comes around fairly quickly, being both influenced by Aladdin's kindness and his own sense of morality.ĭespite his antagonistic traits, Abu is among Aladdin's most loyal and loving companions. Nevertheless, the monkey has redeemable qualities and, at his core, has a soft heart. Abu can also be quite greedy and selfish in this regard, as he constantly takes more than he needs. This can land him into quite a bit of trouble and appears to even frustrate Aladdin from time to time. Unlike Aladdin, who steals to survive, Abu is a talented kleptomaniac, with unshakable urges to steal whatever catches his interests, be it riches, food, or anything else. Abu was developed as somewhere between realistic and anthropomorphic he does not speak full sentences, but occasionally utters broken phrases and displays human emotions. To remedy the issue, Musker and Clements added a monkey sidekick for Aladdin, named 'Abu'-after the scrapped character from Woolverton's treatment. John Musker and Ron Clements, who joined the Aladdin project as directors, felt that Woolverton's screenplay was better suited for live-action, featured too many humans, and lacked characters that could take advantage of the medium of animation. In Linda Woolverton's version of the story, there was an elderly man called 'Blind Abu', named after a thief in the 1940 film The Thief of Bagdad.

These characters were dropped when the story oversaw major revisions.

In Howard Ashman's original story treatment for Aladdin, Aladdin's companions were a trio of human thieves (named Omar, Babkak, and Kassim) whom, when paired with Aladdin, acted as a vaudevillian quartet. After an adventure together, the two eventually became friends. Abu served as the group's pickpocket and actually met Aladdin after making an attempt to steal his money. In the episode of the Aladdin television series, ' Seems Like Old Crimes', it is revealed that, long before the events of the first film, Abu originally worked for a traveling circus of thieves, consisting of himself, a duo named Minos and Fatima, and Aziz.

4.2 Disney's Aladdin in Nasira's Revenge.

Aladdin old guy