Space-age swashbuckler and all around nice guy

The 3 wishes Al makes in the movie are  1. Prince Ali (amorous he) Ali Ababua 2. We’ve managed to avoid drowning 3. Genie’s freedom

Yes, that’s established. This motherfucker’s argument that Al only made 2 wishes is based on how he’s questioning the legitimacy of wishes 1 and 2. Both of those are real wishes that are reasonably fulfilled during the runtime of the movie.

The first wish, making Al a prince. This dumbshit talks about how in order for him to be a prince he has to have a country to rule. C’mon, man, no you don’t. Princes don’t do any ruling, that’s a king’s job. Princes are born, kings are coronated. All that stuff about him not being a “real” prince does have some merit, however, in that he was not born a prince. But, considering the big parade, the Prince Ali thing, all that, that does a pretty good job of making him appear to be a prince for the sake of courting Jasmine. This guy does talk about how “fulfilling” the wish is done when he marries Jasmine, which is how I interpret the last scene of the movie before the credits, with the two of them on the magic carpet together riding off into the horizon, I see that as their wedding. By the end of the movie, Al is, indeed, a prince. Technically you could call him a prince consort or something but that’s all details.

This guy’s point about Genie granting wishes while still fulfilling the first is bullshit too, he can grant more than one wish at a time, just so long as it’s no more than 3 total. The genie explicitly states 3 wishes while he’s explaining the rules, though he talks about a fourth too. ("There are a few provisos, a couple of quid pro quos”) 1. “I can’t kill anyone. So don’t ask.” 2. “I can’t make anybody fall in love with anybody else. MWAH you little punim there!” 3. (Peter Lorre voice) “I can’t bring people back from the dead. It’s not a pretty picture. I DON’T LIKE DOING IT” 4. “Three wishes to be exact. And ixnay on the wishing for more wishes. That’s it. Three. Uno, dos, tres. No substitutions, exchanges, or refunds.” “Other than that, you got it.” Nowhere in those rules does it say “as long as I’m granting one wish, I can’t grant additional wishes while that wish is being worked on.” Nowhere! Wish-granting actions can be simultaneous for multiple wishes, there’s no reason why they can’t be. So that little “gotcha” crap this fuckstick thinks he’s so clever for putting out amounts to jack.

(for what it’s worth, I also believe that there is a fifth rule, that you cannot wish for the rules to change, but that’s not part of the point I’m trying to make here)

Okay, that should do it for why the first wish is totally fine. Second wish!

The second wish, saving Al from drowning. Now, I’ll admit, on my first watching, I didn’t really think this one should have counted, either. It’s true that Al never said “I wish” and there’s a precedent for the genie doing something nice for Al without it being necessarily a wish, which is when he got them out of the ruins of the Cave of Wonders. However! While this complete bumbling moron thinks that that exact precedent is evidence for why the genie cheated Al out of a wish, it’s really evidence for why the genie had to use the second wish on getting Al out of trouble. Allow me to explain:

There’s an important scene in the movie to explain it. Immediately after they’re out of the cave and they reached that little Oasis, the genie believes that he had already granted one wish. “You are down by one, boy!” to which Al retorts “Ah, no, I never actually wished to get out of the cave. You did that on your own.” The genie, unable to counter this point, says that he feels sheepish. Then, AND THIS IS IMPORTANT the genie says “Alright, you baa-d boy, but no more freebies.” And then Al agrees “fair enough.” This is an agreement, an oral contract between Al and the genie. Genies are magical creatures bound by contracts, it’s what they’re all about! A human finds their lamp and frees them, that genie is bound by whatever magical laws that exist to grant that human three wishes. Genies have obligations, and it’s why the next agreement they have, that Al will use his third wish to set him free, it’s why the genie bugs Al about it later in the movie, resulting in them getting in a little argument leading to the lamp falling into the hands of Iago, who later brings it to Jafar. They had an agreement, they even shook hands on it! However, while the genie is a magical creature bound by magical law to follow through with contracts, Al is a human, and is under no such obligations. That’s why they even have an argument at all. So, the genie is bound by the first agreement, that Al agreed to, that he will no longer grant any “freebies”, that is, do something similar to how he got Al out of the cave without it counting as a wish. He literally cannot do this anymore because he said “no more freebies” and Al said “fair enough” it’s as impossible as not granting Jafar’s wishes for him. Besides, Al never raised a fuss about it later, instead making a point about how he can’t free the genie yet because he needs more time to be a big impressive prince, so it can be safely assumed that Al understood what happened.

I will grant that he’s right about how none of it matters anyway because by the end of the movie Al wishes for his freedom, so the genie is thus freed from his obligations to follow orders granting wishes and, presumably, a lot of the other obligations genies have to follow. (as a side-note, after you finish the Agrabah stage in Kingdom Hearts, Aladdin wishes for the genie’s freedom, and requests that the genie help Sora, Donald, and Goofy on their journey. The genie says that he’s done taking orders from others, but a favor, well, that’s different. The genie is then available to Sora as a summon, not because the genie has to, but because he wants to. This is consistent with my personal views on the obligations of freed genies)