Maleficent
SCORE: B+
This movie is not a kids fairy tale, more Brothers Grimm. By this I mean that it is a very dark film, thematically.
SPOILERS TO FOLLOW:
In a sympathy for the devil move, Maleficent is the protagonist in this live-action version. This is a good move because Maleficent as a character in the original 1959 film is a really two-dimensional character. She’s bad, that’s all a child needs to know. There are no gray areas.
This live-action film delves into why Maleficent is bad. And it’s a pretty fucked up reason, especially for a film produced by Disney. Stefan (the boring king in the animated original) now has a backstory with Maleficent, a sweet love story. That is until it turns out that Stefan is out for himself, willing to anything to get on the dying king’s side so he can be made the next king.
Doing anything includes raping Maleficent.
It’s not a sexual rape, it’s the olde tyme definition: to seize and carry off by force, to plunder. Instead of taking her virginity by force, he drugs Maleficent and cuts off her wings. He then takes them to the ailing king as a show of his willingness to kill the king’s enemies. Like I said, it’s a pretty fucked up scene.
The battle at the beginning of the film felt like so many things I’ve seen before, especially the Battle of Isengard from the Two Towers, mostly because there are tree-type people in this film, too. Don’t get me wrong, they’re really cool-looking, probably cooler than the Ents are, but it just feels like stuff we’ve all see already. But I guess that’s hard to get around these days.
Maleficent reminded me of the Morrigan in the beginning battle (and one of my own characters that I made up about 10 years ago. Great. Now when people finally see my character they’ll think that I’m ripping off Maleficent. Oh well.)
I liked the (sometimes literal) anthropomorphism of Maleficent’s crow, now named Diaval. He reminded me of a pooka from Celtic myth, changing from a crow to a wolf to a horse, always black in color. But he can’t change on his own. Maleficent changes him. He’s even the one to become the black dragon at the end of the film. A nice twist.
Speaking of twists, Disney plays the true love’s kiss in a different way in this film, sort of like what they did in “Frozen” with the act of true love. They play on different types of love. In “Frozen” it’s filial love, in “Maleficent” it’s parental love (would that be agape?). It’s a nice twist, but I saw it about 20 minutes before it happened, possibly because I was primed by the twist in “Frozen”, which I did not see coming.
Sharlto Copley is in “Maleficent” in a good role as King Stefan. The last time I saw him he was using ground-to-space missiles in a post-apocalyptic future (“Elysium”). He’s good again in this film, but he plays an asshole, so it’s hard to like him. Angelina Jolie does a very good job in this film. I normally don’t like her as an actress. Elle Fanning (Dakota Fanning’s sister?) does a good job as Aurora. It’s interesting to see her and Brenton Thwaites (Prince Phillip) played by actual 16-year-olds* because you realize that in the animated original, the artists drew Aurora and Prince Philip looking like they were in their 30s, even though Aurora at least is supposed to be only 16.
* In looking it up, when the movie was filmed, Fanning was actually about 14 and Thwaites about 22.