Disney has come out with a couple of rather incompetent villains in the past. Jafar is not one of them. The evil Grand Vizier knows exactly what he wants, how to get it, and who he needs to manipulate to keep things going. He’s a sorcerer, but there are very definite limits on his power. Still, they're enough to hypnotize the Sultan into doing whatever he wants. Real power, however, is still annoyingly out of reach.
Jafar just wants one simple thing: complete and total domination of Agrabah. . .and maybe the rest of the planet later. The problem is, the surest way for the man to get to that power relies on the acquisition of a certain magical lamp which, of course, can only be retrieved by a certain poofy-haired young street thief. At the same time, there’s also the unfortunate matter of the marriage of the princess. If she ends up on the throne, Jafar’s present control over the bumbling Sultan will end, and Jasmine, to put it mildly, doesn't like Jafar very much. It’s the kind of thing that really ruins an evil sorcerer’s day.
It’s interesting how Jafar’s main qualities as a villain rely only partially upon his magical abilities. Before he gets his hands on the lamp, his only real uses of this power are to hypnotize the Sultan, to make a fast getaway when this has been found out, and to discover the identity of the "diamond in the rough." Jafar is without a doubt evil, and more importantly, he loves being evil. The point where we really hate him comes not when he’s taken over the kingdom or when he’s transmuted into a giant cobra, but after he’s told Jasmine that Aladdin is dead. All the special effects are nice, but it’s Jafar’s evil personality which keeps the character going.
Of course, you can't be completely evil all the time without getting a little on the funny side. It gets to be a little on the boring side when the villain is sinister and shadowy all the time. Fortunately, we do get to see Jafar in a couple of different guises, the first being the rotting old man with the crutch who Aladdin follows to the Cave of Wonders. Between his impossibly low stature and a real gruesome set of teeth, the disguise nothing short of incredible. Other forms include the giant black and red cobra and the red genie towards the end of the picture. All of them represent different aspects of Jafar’s personality, especially the snake.
Jafar was drawn by the immortal Andrea Deja and voiced by Jonathan Freeman. The Old Man and Cobra were done by Kathy Zielinski. He is based on the evil magician from the original Aladdin fairy tale, a character with considerably lower standards of villainy and not anywhere near as much ambition. In the end, it is Jafar’s inability to quit while he’s ahead that really destroys him. Any wrong turn Aladdin or the others might have made during the story would've resulted in his triumph. If it had been Gaston in this role, nobody would have had to work quite as hard. In the long run, A resurrection in The Return of Jafar was considerably less impressive.
Iago
There’s usually a pretty good chance that the arrival of a top notch villain will also herald the arrival of some interesting lackeys. In the case of Jafar, we get a rather small parrot with a relatively large mouth in possession of Gilbert Gottfried’s voice. The result of this combination is hilarity of the highest form. Its name is Iago.
Over the course of one feature film, two sequels, and sixty-some episodes of a cartoon series, Iago’s character has changed considerably from when we first met him in the original Aladdin film. Initially, he seems like an ordinary, though rather sinister macaw who’s taken a liking to Jafar’s shoulder pads. As soon as he starts speaking in full sentences, however, he’s instantly a sidekick of the highest degree. Thus, his job is to provide the comic relief to offset Jafar’s freaky machinations while being as funny as possible, something he excels at.
His main problems in lifeHis main problems in life are a sultan who likes feeding him dusty crackers and helping himself to a more luxurious lifestyle (a goal the series has fun with later) by getting Senor Psychopath on the throne. Why Jafar keeps him around isn't too hard to figure. Evil villains need someone to commiserate with every so often and Iago comes in handy with his perfect impersonations and his "fiendish little mind". It’s apparent that these two equally malevolent personages have been together for a good long while and they like each other. Iago lets Jafar beat him up and take advantage of him quite a bit, one of the quirks he’s has pretty much gotten used to, it seems. All part of the evil sidekick gig.
Iago’s personality is that of a villain. He’s sarcastic, insulting, conniving, malicious, and the bird is almost always either annoyed, panicked, overreacting or laughing at someone with a big,
Gottfried supplied laugh. Everything that comes out of his mouth is brayed at a decibel somewhere between yelling and yelling louder. His main plot function in the movie is to get the lamp for Jafar and thus spark the gargantuan climax, which he does. His ensuing dream lifestyle lasts but for a few short moments before he gets sucked into a lamp with Jafar to spend the rest of eternity together, something neither of them much likes, especially since Iago’s large mouth is actively working again when we last see them.
Personally, I wish the storyline had ended there, considering that the latter installments of the saga really wreak havoc on all characters involved. To put it bluntly, Iago becomes good. In fact, an entire movie was devoted to proving that beneath the feathers was a heart of gold. He joins up with Aladdin, actively helps the "gang" and has recently fallen head over heels for a relatively huge South American avian rain goddess named Thundra who refers to him as her little "giblet". Fortunately, not all of Iago’s personality was lost amidst the transition and he remains sarcastic, insulting, conniving, and ever so slightly malicious. He’s also picked up greed along the way, a nice addition, and most importantly, he’s still got Gottfried’s incomparable voice.
Iago’s supervising animator was Will Finn.