Maleficent, Part I: The Background
WARNING #1: This is not so much going to be a review as it is going to be a rant with review-like elements.
WARNING #2: This review-like rant will contain many revealed plot elements. If you don't wish to be exposed to revealed plot elements, do not read this review-like rant.
WARNING #3: In order for me to adequately express my feelings and thoughts about Maleficent, it will be necessary for me to utilize the full range of available English vocabulary. In other words, this review-like rant will contain bad words. If you don't want to see bad words, do not read this review-like rant.
Are we good? Excellent.
Fuck this movie. Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it. Fuck it and fuck everyone who was involved in its inception, and fuck everyone who encouraged it, and fuck everyone who had a hand in its lifeless and insulting production. And fuck me for believing in it even though I shouldn’t have. I haven’t seen a movie that made me this angry since the remake of The Wicker Man, and for essentially the same reason: the people who made this took something I love and defaced it, not because there was something wrong with the original, but because the original wasn’t Culturally and/or Politically Relevant Enough.
The Background
So let’s talk for a bit about the source material for these shenanigans: it’s theoretically based on Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty, but let’s get real, it’s based on the Disney film from the days of yore.
Disney’s Sleeping Beauty is a beyond gorgeous film - and since the point of animated filmmaking is ultimately to show off beautiful animation, it gets a lot of marks in its favor for that. It also has a simple-yet-elegant story that is easy for kids to follow, but just compelling enough to keep imaginative adults engaged. However, character-wise, I don’t think anyone would argue that it isn’t deeply flawed. The protagonist, Princess Aurora, is usually the first Disney princess who gets finger-wagged as a Bad Role Model for little girls, and it’s not hard to see why: she’s not very interesting and she spends her entire life watching other people do things while never doing anything herself.
The only character more boring than Aurora is her boyfriend-ish, Prince Philip. He has about fifteen lines, most of them are sung, and he spends the better part of his onscreen time (just like Aurora) being passive and reacting to things - though, yes, his reactions are cooler than hers and involve breaking into a castle and fighting dragons. The other main characters are the various royal parents, who also don’t do much except fret about their boring kids. Yawn.
What makes the movie worth watching, from a character standpoint, are the remaining elements: the good fairies and the villain. The good fairies are genuinely funny, big-hearted comic relief characters. The “pink/blue” fight from about midway through Sleeping Beauty remains, to this day, one of the most enjoyable animated sequences ever created. They’re also - and this will be important later - really good at being fairies. They are competent at the thing they are assigned to do: keep the princess safe from harm. They have powerful magic. They have individual, unique personalities. I consider them some of the best sidekick characters in the Disney canon. This will be important later.
And then there was the villain.
Ohhhhh my goodness there was the villain.
There was fucking MALEFICENT.
Anyone who has spent more than fifteen minutes around me knows that my favorite Disney film is The Hunchback of Notre Dame. A big part of the reason is its KICKASS AWESOME VILLAIN Judge Frollo. I have less overwhelming affection for The Little Mermaid, but I will never get tired of the scenes featuring Ursula. Dr. Facilier’s villain song “Friends on the Other Side” from The Princess and the Frog is one of the very few times I’ve applauded in the middle of a movie (helps that I have a mad crush on his voice actor, the perfect Keith David). In short, I love villains. If a movie has a great bad guy, my opinion of it instantly rises. If it has a boring bad guy, it leaves me feeling very unsatisfied, much more so than if it hadn’t had a bad guy. This will also be important later.
Maleficent was a great bad guy, probably around number three on my Disney list. She doesn’t sing, which usually makes me a little sad in animated films, but she doesn’t particularly need to. If you haven’t seen the film or don’t remember it that well, you shouldn’t have to take my word for it, so I’m going to show you. (THIS TOO will be important later.)
Did you see that? No offense to Scar, Gaston, and Ursula, because I really do love them all, but: hyena minions, big manly fists, and the reedy little voice of some teenage soprano? Is that really all you’ve got? Maleficent does not have time for such trifles, because Maleficent commands the powers of hell. She’s wonderfully animated. Look at those deliciously sick greens and those midnight blacks. Her voice is slow and precise and seductive. She spins. She stomps. She disappears at a whim. She turns into a BIG HONKING DRAGON, culminating in a nailbiting “final boss” battle. And yet she’s so delicate about it all, so intimate and almost loving about it. If you’ve seen the Japanese horror classic Audition, she’s a lot like Asami in the last twenty minutes: when she’s not delivering lightning-fast punches where the shock comes before the sting, she really draws things out, heightening the victim’s pain for no other reason than she is what she is and she enjoys it, that’s why. Think about what she says to Philip when she’s taunting him in the dungeon segment from that video above. The great beatdown of the new film from IO9 put it this way:
"Maleficent's plan is to keep the prince alive and well until he's too old for Aurora. To let him sit in misery for 100 years until she releases him as an old man. Prince Philip would be able to save his beloved, only to haveher wake to a shriveled, 100-year-old stranger. That is rough. That is chillingly cruel, but astoundingly brilliant. You had to admire this monster for her creativity."
Yes, indeed. Maleficent is not the most complex of the Disney villains (that’s Frollo), nor is she the most musically gifted (that's probably Frollo again, but possibly Ursula or Gaston), but she was never meant to be. She was what she needed to be for the story she was in, and it worked. She’s the personification of dark, twisted, ugly, and evil, dressed up to look really cool. She is, in a more kid-appropriate way, just like the great villains of horror classics: she offers a chance to tap into our own dark sides that is safe and controlled, and doesn’t make us a danger to ourselves and others. The fact that she gets vanquished at the end cements that “safety” aspect of the experience. We can love her as a character and abhor what she represents at the same time.
So that’s the Maleficent and the Sleeping Beauty of 1959: a decent film that did some things well and other things not as well, but one of the things it did unbelievably well was Maleficent. Fast-forward to the present day…
Stay tuned for Part II: The New Movie!
WARNING #2: This review-like rant will contain many revealed plot elements. If you don't wish to be exposed to revealed plot elements, do not read this review-like rant.
WARNING #3: In order for me to adequately express my feelings and thoughts about Maleficent, it will be necessary for me to utilize the full range of available English vocabulary. In other words, this review-like rant will contain bad words. If you don't want to see bad words, do not read this review-like rant.
Are we good? Excellent.
Fuck this movie. Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it. Fuck it and fuck everyone who was involved in its inception, and fuck everyone who encouraged it, and fuck everyone who had a hand in its lifeless and insulting production. And fuck me for believing in it even though I shouldn’t have. I haven’t seen a movie that made me this angry since the remake of The Wicker Man, and for essentially the same reason: the people who made this took something I love and defaced it, not because there was something wrong with the original, but because the original wasn’t Culturally and/or Politically Relevant Enough.
The Background
So let’s talk for a bit about the source material for these shenanigans: it’s theoretically based on Perrault’s Sleeping Beauty, but let’s get real, it’s based on the Disney film from the days of yore.
Disney’s Sleeping Beauty is a beyond gorgeous film - and since the point of animated filmmaking is ultimately to show off beautiful animation, it gets a lot of marks in its favor for that. It also has a simple-yet-elegant story that is easy for kids to follow, but just compelling enough to keep imaginative adults engaged. However, character-wise, I don’t think anyone would argue that it isn’t deeply flawed. The protagonist, Princess Aurora, is usually the first Disney princess who gets finger-wagged as a Bad Role Model for little girls, and it’s not hard to see why: she’s not very interesting and she spends her entire life watching other people do things while never doing anything herself.
The only character more boring than Aurora is her boyfriend-ish, Prince Philip. He has about fifteen lines, most of them are sung, and he spends the better part of his onscreen time (just like Aurora) being passive and reacting to things - though, yes, his reactions are cooler than hers and involve breaking into a castle and fighting dragons. The other main characters are the various royal parents, who also don’t do much except fret about their boring kids. Yawn.
What makes the movie worth watching, from a character standpoint, are the remaining elements: the good fairies and the villain. The good fairies are genuinely funny, big-hearted comic relief characters. The “pink/blue” fight from about midway through Sleeping Beauty remains, to this day, one of the most enjoyable animated sequences ever created. They’re also - and this will be important later - really good at being fairies. They are competent at the thing they are assigned to do: keep the princess safe from harm. They have powerful magic. They have individual, unique personalities. I consider them some of the best sidekick characters in the Disney canon. This will be important later.
And then there was the villain.
Ohhhhh my goodness there was the villain.
There was fucking MALEFICENT.
Anyone who has spent more than fifteen minutes around me knows that my favorite Disney film is The Hunchback of Notre Dame. A big part of the reason is its KICKASS AWESOME VILLAIN Judge Frollo. I have less overwhelming affection for The Little Mermaid, but I will never get tired of the scenes featuring Ursula. Dr. Facilier’s villain song “Friends on the Other Side” from The Princess and the Frog is one of the very few times I’ve applauded in the middle of a movie (helps that I have a mad crush on his voice actor, the perfect Keith David). In short, I love villains. If a movie has a great bad guy, my opinion of it instantly rises. If it has a boring bad guy, it leaves me feeling very unsatisfied, much more so than if it hadn’t had a bad guy. This will also be important later.
Maleficent was a great bad guy, probably around number three on my Disney list. She doesn’t sing, which usually makes me a little sad in animated films, but she doesn’t particularly need to. If you haven’t seen the film or don’t remember it that well, you shouldn’t have to take my word for it, so I’m going to show you. (THIS TOO will be important later.)
Click to viewDid you see that? No offense to Scar, Gaston, and Ursula, because I really do love them all, but: hyena minions, big manly fists, and the reedy little voice of some teenage soprano? Is that really all you’ve got? Maleficent does not have time for such trifles, because Maleficent commands the powers of hell. She’s wonderfully animated. Look at those deliciously sick greens and those midnight blacks. Her voice is slow and precise and seductive. She spins. She stomps. She disappears at a whim. She turns into a BIG HONKING DRAGON, culminating in a nailbiting “final boss” battle. And yet she’s so delicate about it all, so intimate and almost loving about it. If you’ve seen the Japanese horror classic Audition, she’s a lot like Asami in the last twenty minutes: when she’s not delivering lightning-fast punches where the shock comes before the sting, she really draws things out, heightening the victim’s pain for no other reason than she is what she is and she enjoys it, that’s why. Think about what she says to Philip when she’s taunting him in the dungeon segment from that video above. The great beatdown of the new film from IO9 put it this way:
"Maleficent's plan is to keep the prince alive and well until he's too old for Aurora. To let him sit in misery for 100 years until she releases him as an old man. Prince Philip would be able to save his beloved, only to haveher wake to a shriveled, 100-year-old stranger. That is rough. That is chillingly cruel, but astoundingly brilliant. You had to admire this monster for her creativity."
Yes, indeed. Maleficent is not the most complex of the Disney villains (that’s Frollo), nor is she the most musically gifted (that's probably Frollo again, but possibly Ursula or Gaston), but she was never meant to be. She was what she needed to be for the story she was in, and it worked. She’s the personification of dark, twisted, ugly, and evil, dressed up to look really cool. She is, in a more kid-appropriate way, just like the great villains of horror classics: she offers a chance to tap into our own dark sides that is safe and controlled, and doesn’t make us a danger to ourselves and others. The fact that she gets vanquished at the end cements that “safety” aspect of the experience. We can love her as a character and abhor what she represents at the same time.
So that’s the Maleficent and the Sleeping Beauty of 1959: a decent film that did some things well and other things not as well, but one of the things it did unbelievably well was Maleficent. Fast-forward to the present day…
Stay tuned for Part II: The New Movie!