Tag: mozenrath

Because I brushed past it and we really shouldn’t ignore prime examples of Mozenrath being a creep. Because he was being an enormous creep during this.

The interesting thing is that they didn’t play up him being a creep as something to piss Aladdin off, this time. His exchange with Jasmine in this scene is just between the two of them. He regards her as a threat in her own right now.

Bear in mind that in Dagger Rock her presence was pretty damn incidental when he kidnapped Aladdin. This was between the two of them, and until Jasmine actually showed up at Dagger Rock, he refused to even entertain the idea that she would get involved.

He knows better now, and he now has a grudge against her that is completely separate from her association with Aladdin. (Which makes the chin-touching and the pet names that much more creepy, because he’s deliberately being physical and faux-affectionate as a means to get under her skin, to threaten her.)

That’s creepy. I seriously can’t comprehend how people ship these two, because that shit is creepy.

I have mentioned on numerous occasions that I don’t like how villains threaten Jasmine as a means of hurting Aladdin. Especially when it comes off as borderline hints at sexual assault. And it happens way too much in a show aimed at children. This is only different in that it’s not about Aladdin, for once. He’s doing it specifically to hurt her. To anger her. To scare her. Because she defied him and threw him into his own trap, defeating him in a fairly humiliating fashion.

And I don’t think the writers addressed this often or made it the focus of a single episode because they know that shit is creepy.

This is one of the very few villains in the show who develops grudges against main characters other than Aladdin for reasons other than being one of Aladdin’s friends. But recognize that this guy is a bad guy for a reason.

Which is actually pretty much back on the same wavelength as he started when he first met Aladdin. In fact, the dialogue when he presents his logic for making such a plan is almost completely identical.

“With the Thirdac in my coil, no other sorcerer could touch me.”

“Scirocco can reduce an entire kingdom to dust. Who would dare challenge such power?”

This is going to be a running theme in most of Mozenrath’s schemes (not necessarily all). This is not a kid who enjoys direct confrontation. He could arguably build an army large enough to march on any city he wanted, and the nature of the Mamluks would allow him to continuously replenish his ranks. The thing is that 1) He is not knowledgeable enough in military strategy to utilize the Mamluks to their full potential, and 2) That’s too much of a fighting chance.

Mozenrath, as a character, is pretty much never after a fight. He’s a bully. His go-to tactic is to scare people into submission. He relies on trump cards, and he’s actually kind of fucking terrible at strategizing without them. Without an ancient and magical equivalent to a doomsday weapon, he sucks, and the second his new toys stop working the way he wants them to, he either 1) stubbornly sticks around until he’s scared away and/or gets his ass royally kicked, or 2) he packs up and goes home because he’s out of his depth.

Whenever he deviates from this formula his defeats tend to be a lot more humiliating, I’ve noticed, but we’ll get to this again later, I’m sure.

In the series, Mamluk is a word used specifically to refer to a member of Mozenrath’s undead army and is never referenced anywhere else. However, the word (and its many spellings, I’m finding) pertains specifically to a caste of warrior slaves found in various places and times throughout Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, etc who in many eras took and held an impressive amount of political power.

This may or may not give further credence to my theory that the city in the Land of the Black Sand is a former military installation. I honestly couldn’t tell you if Disney did their research on this and designed the Land of the Black Sand in this way on purpose, or if they just lucked into it, but I’m impressed.

This actually makes the scene in Dagger Rock with the guards make more sense, giving us hints at why they know what they are. If the above theory holds true, then the Land of the Black Sand probably had a reputation LONG before Destane was ever there and might have been rumored to be haunted because a whole squad of Mamluks perished there, a natural disaster that likely ended their presence in this region altogether.

Here we have one of the clear reasons why Mozenrath is such a threat to a (mostly) unkillable Genie: He can turn his magic off.

This is the first glimpse we see of his dabbling into anti-magic items. I’m going to go out on a limb and say he developed this himself, though there is no explicit indication given either way. (EDIT: He confirms he made them in the next scene.) He could have just as easily stolen the technology or cornered the market (something we know he does with certain magical ingredients and objects later on in the series). I’m throwing him a bone here because as other instances have shown (the magic-detecting crystals, the collar for the Thirdac, his ability to MAKE another crystal of Ix), he’s pretty damn crafty.

So I’m letting him have this one.

And GOD the dialogue is terrible.

Interesting that he just sort of…materializes by the way. I dunno if that was just a way to make the scene transition more smoothly (because it negates the need to provide any depth or definition to the inside of the fortress), or if this is another way he can magic around. If I’m not mistaken it’s pretty much the only time it ever happens.

The fact that Mozenrath says “I should shred you for being late,” says he was expecting a Mamluk to be driving (because one was) but he ALSO has trouble seeing in the dark, apparently. Because Aladdin is so obviously NOT a Mamluk.

He should have had a clue because these things NEVER DRESS DIFFERENTLY. But whatever, dude. WHATEVER.

And I just need to pause for a moment to make fun of how bad this next snatch of dialogue is, because it still works? But it only works because it makes Mozenrath look like he’s trying to sound a lot smarter than he actually is.

This is not Jonathan Brandis’ fault. This line was just poorly written, and there was simply no good way to deliver it, period. But the way that he pauses between the last two caps just makes it sound that much more pretentious and gah, it’s bad.

I like to think that Xerxes learned “trouble brews” because Mozenrath’s been trying to awesome up his speech patterns to seem a little more imposing. He’s studying to be an evil overlord; this is core content pretty much.

What’s interesting is that some of the shots in this episode just look like they were darker repaints of the Marketplace in Agrabah, but some of the other glimpses we get of the scenery suggest something else entirely:

Like parts of it are in obvious disrepair, but others, like in the first shot, say that while the place is abandoned, it might not have always been that way. This raises some interesting questions, because other than Mozenrath, people obviously don’t live here right now.

And I highly doubt anybody did when Destane was still alive. Possible theory on what this place used to be, below:

A citadel is a fortress that protects/surrounds a single town, and Mozenrath’s home is identified in his originating appearance as a citadel. In essence, what we’re looking at here is the (very well preserved) remains of what was likely a military installation, with a working population in the city itself that provided food, shelter, trade, etc for its citizenry as a whole.

In my imagining this place used to train and house soldiers for a king’s army, an outpost of sorts. However, as I mentioned in my review of The Citadel, there is very likely an active volcano somewhere close by (which is why the sand is black), and the place was deemed unsafe for people to live in, and most, if not all, evacuated. Likely in a hurry.

Most (all but one) of the Mamluks Mozenrath has made are of soldiers because those are the only people that stayed.

If said volcano is still active (and spewing ash and chemicals into the air like it appears to be doing), then there’s probably other factors involved in Mozenrath’s slowly failing health (mentioned in “Two to Tangle”) other than the gauntlet.