Once upon a time, the human kingdom and the kingdom of the fairies lived wary of each other. A young human and a young fairy however would meet and fall in love. But as the years pass, the young man succumbs to the greed of humankind and double-crosses the fairy. When the young man becomes the new king, the fairy succumbs to darkness and is determined to get her revenge on the king's young daughter. And that fairy's name...is Maleficent...
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In order to properly discuss this movie, some context must be provided. In 1959, Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty was released. It used the 1697 fairy tale of the same name by French author Charles Perrault as the basis for its story, and the 1890 ballet adaptation of the same name composed by Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky as its musical score. Though it was not initially successful, today it is regarded as a great Disney classic, with most of the praise going to the film's villain, Maleficent. She is regarded as one of the greatest villains ever made, and for good reason. She is loud, bombastic, powerful, conniving, and plenty of other things.
Personally I find it to be a rather...uneven movie. While the character of Maleficent is great and the three good fairies memorable and good in their own right, the rest of the characters are extremely boring. Princess Aurora and Prince Philip are so BORING and dull with nothing interesting about them whatsoever. Side characters like the kings don't do much either. The story is simplistic in its execution, but it is saved by the good elements like Maleficent and the interesting art style of the movie. But I can see why it was met with critical mixed reactions, despite its legacy today.
As such, we now have this movie, directed by relative newcomer Robert Stromberg with Angelina Joile as the titular character and Disney Villain, while Elle Fanning (Super 8) plays the princess Aurora. There were a lot of unknown variables with this one, unlike the various movies where I had a general idea of what it may be like. Much like the animated Sleeping Beauty, I found Maleficent to be a rather unbalanced movie. Jolie does wonderfully as Maleficent, and the characters are great, but most of the story leaves much to be desired and is chalk full of a mishmash of confusing moments, unnecessary scenes, and a few good scenes here and there. Not even the interesting characters can salvage the story much. In some weird way, I find it to be a reversal of the animated classic.
In order to properly discuss this review, I must discuss it in comparison to the animated Sleeping Beauty. Though it is best to talk about the movie on its own merits, there are some cases where it is simply not possible, and this is one of them. I'll try to keep things separate as much as I can, but no promises.
First I shall talk about the characters and compare them across both movies. First we have the titular Maleficent. As discussed she was an awesome villain in the animated one. Here we see something new for her: Backstory, motivation, and humanistic emotions. In the animated, Maleficent did was she did because she was evil. That's it, nothing else. And to be fair, that was all she needed back then. Here though we see Maleficent used to be a young, beautiful fairy of the moors who loved life, and loved the young Stefan before he became an adult and king (Sharlto Copely, District 9). She became scorned when Stefan stole her wings and betrayed her in order to ascend to the throne and grab power. As such she took over the fairy moors and turned it into her dark domain, and took it out on the king's daughter by placing the curse with the spinning wheel. As the years pass however Maleficent becomes sort of a shadowy guardian to Aurora and the two form a special bond as Maleficent begins to doubt her actions and becomes capable of love again. Some may argue that this is a bad idea as it lessens the mystery and love of Maleficent's character, but I personally don't mind. It's nice that we got to see a different side of the story. Angelina Jolie surely must have studied the old Maleficent because she did excellently in this movie, channeling the old one while giving her a softer side. One of the strongest points of the movie for sure.
Next we have Princess Aurora, and BOY there is a world of difference here. The animated Aurora is, without a doubt, one of the worst female princesses in Disney history. Apart from having the personality of cardboard, she does absolutely nothing in that movie but look pretty, smile, sing, pine for some guy she just met, and of course fall asleep. It is extremely telling when you consider the other two Disney Princesses with her around that time. Sure, Snow White and Cinderella aren't much to call home either, but they at least DID something in their movies. Animated Aurora is such a pointless waste of space that this scene from the animated movie sums up how I feel about her:
Now, Aurora in this most recent movie...well sure it may be too much to expect that she will become a butt-kicking superheroine, but she is much stronger. If the animated Aurora is very boring, live action Aurora is...a little boring. At the very least she doesn't just wander around forests and just smile a bland smile. She is innately curious about the fairy moors and yearns to join them. While she does meet Prince Philp and seems to fall for him, it is not her primary goal, focus and relationship. She helps bring out the humanistic side of Maleficent, whom Aurora considers as her fairy godmother and true friend. Most of the time she does just stare a blank stare at CGI fairies, her goal and her friendship make up for that. In other words, she actually has a personality in this movie, and it is most welcome. Most welcome indeed. Though I do have a small nitpick: Aurora doesn't exactly look like a "beauty" in this movie. She's pretty and cute certainly, but a "beauty"? Probably not.
The three fairies in this movie are perhaps the most different and radically changed. In the animated movie, Flora, Fauna and Merryweather serve as the guardians of Aurora and are really adept at magic and taking care of the baby. Their incompetence is mostly shown when they try to plan a birthday surprise, but we're left to assume that they raised Aurora with tender love and care. They help Prince Phillip in the climax by creating his weapons and contributing in the defeat of Maleficent. In THIS movie, Knotgrass, Flittle and Thistlewit are, for lack of a better term, idiots. They "try" to serve as guardians of Aurora but are very neglectful and don't know how to take care of her properly. Everytime they're on-screen they're often bickering with one another and partaking in comedic antics. They do diddely-squat by the end and serve to show how Maleficent is a much better person for Aurora. By all accounts, especially taking the animated in comparison, I should really hate these characters, but now, I absolutely found them wonderful. They made the movie memorable in another way and it was hilarious to see them show how incompetent they are when taking care of baby Aurora. Another key point is that they had no role in making sure the curse would be prevented, while Maleficent deliberately inserted the work-around of her spell.
King Stefan is another change that some may find a turn-off, but perhaps for the best. There's not much to say about Stefan in the animated movie...except for the fact that he was just there. He had some comedic banter with the other king, but that was it. In this movie his actions are the catalyst for the movie. He starts out as an innocent thief who falls for the young Maleficent. Overtime he began to fall to the same greed as humanity and use Maleficent's wings as a way to get him the throne. His character worsens when Maleficent enacts her curse and he slipped deeper and deeper into insanity, obsessed with nothing else but killing Maleficent and being uncaring to his wife and even her daughter. He's so detestable you can't help but cheer as he finally kicks the bucket at the end of the movie. I found it a nice change as we have a clearer cut villain while Maleficent is more of an anti-hero.
One sorta new-ish character is Maleficent's raven. The raven in the animated (identified as Diablo in supplementary material) is Maleficent's familiar and pet. Here, the raven is expanded upon as Maleficent's scout and servant. She also transforms him into a human, Diaval (Sam Riley, Control), who Maleficent can confide in and can sometimes be Maleficent's conscience and voice of reason. Not a whole lot to say except that he was interesting character that follows Maleficent through thick and thin.
And finally there is Prince Philip and...both of them are about the same. Dull, just there, kind of boring, has very few lines. Well at least live-action Prince Philip acknowledged that he wasn't quite ready to love Aurora just yet. That's a plus I guess.
The overall look for this movie can be seen in the two kingdoms. The moor is a bright and colorful place with sparkly creatures, fantasy creations and magic. The castle is a dark, dreary place with lots of gray, black and dull silver. There's also not much to say about the music beyond the great cover of Once Upon a Dream in the credits, and I felt that director Robert Stromberg did alright for his first time.
The biggest thing to talk about is the story, and boy do I have things to say on this one. I felt that there were a lot of unexplained plot points and pointless moments. For example, after Maleficent is betrayed, she can just suddenly take a stick and make it her staff? Why did the fairy moor creatures accept her new rule so easily? When did the three pixies escape and decide to go against Maleficent? Why didn't the three pixies even bother trying to help raise Aurora? Why did Diaval accept his role so readily? What happened in the human kingdom after Stefan is killed? There were really a lot of spanning shots where the characters simply look off into space or we see Aurora just smile and laugh with the moor creatures. Shots like these really made the story drag or just make it dull. Even the scenes with the pixies, as hilarious as they were, were ultimately pointless and could've been cut for time.
What do I like? The kiss scene, because like Frozen before it it played against your expectations. After Maleficent sneaks Prince Philip into the castle, she tries to get him to kiss and wake up Aurora, but to no avail. At this Maleficent becomes truly sorry for letting this happen to Aurora and she kisses her on the forehead. And it is THAT kiss that wakes her up. Quite an unexpected surprise and I appreciate that. Few moments here and there however don't make up for the story being so bland and mediocre.
Final Thoughts:
All in all, much like the animated movie, Maleficent is flawed. It has a few things going for it like Maleficent herself, Aurora and other characters, but the story just can't balance certain aspects properly. Again it's kind of like the animated Sleeping Beauty: Good story, blegh characters. Maleficent is a blegh strory, great characters.
I give it. 2.6/5
Trailer Thoughts:
Annie-This just looks...strange. They changed a lot of things to diffrentiate from the remake, but so far are going in the present day with an African-American Annie and an African-American Mr. Warbucks. To top off the weirdness, Cameron Diaz as Miss Hanngain? What?
Big Hero 6-This is definitely one of the movies I look forward to this, combining Disney with Marvel. After Frozen I'm very curious to see what's Disney's next major movie is going to be like.
Guardians of the Galaxy-Another movie I'm eagerly awaiting this year. July can't come fast enough.
Planes: Fire & Rescue-I REALLY do not care about this movie at all. If ever.
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