Miss Understood

Maleficent

When I was a kid, I remember growing up on the fairy tales retold by Walt Disney and his animated films. Stories like Peter Pan, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and Pinocchio. Throughout these films it was pretty clear cut who the villains and heroes were. Those days have come and gone I guess with Disney’s new film Maleficent.

In a far off kingdom there lives two kinds of people, humans and fairies. Due to the lack of understanding and ultimately fear of the fairy people, the humans have tried to take over fairy lands and drive the fairies out of the world. However, two children, one from each side of the ‘boarder’, have become friends…Maleficent and Stefan. As these children grow, their friendship grows until the day that Stefan is granted to live in the king’s castle. With Stefan in close proximity of the wealth and power that a king has, the opportunity to claim the crown from the dying king is one he cannot pass up. The price…his close friend Maleficent. Though he cannot bring himself to kill her, he decides to take her wings instead. Distraught with anger and hatred now for the humans, Maleficent vows revenge on Stefan for his betrayal.

With every film, I like to find the good things first because I don’t want to be negative all the time, except when the film REALLY deserves it. So here goes…The movie was beautiful. Knowing a lot about the original character, I thought that this would be a dark, kind of gothic type movie. I was pleasantly surprised that it was not at all. Admittedly there are times of gloom and gothicness, but for the most part it is a very colorful film. As much as I do not care for most of her roles, Angelina Jolie does a very decent job with the role. She provides Maleficent with a duality that most actresses cannot pull off. Jolie gives the audience a taste of the good and evil in Maleficent and during most of the film, she shows us the audience that fine line she walks between those two emotions. Though there isn’t much else for the other characters in this film, I will say that the other actors weren’t terrible, but mostly forgettable due to the fact that the screenwriter wanted you to know who this movie is really about, Maleficent.

So here goes with the negative…why did we need this film? Shouldn’t the real reasons that villains are villains be as black and white as the original fairy tales they come from? She is a villain because that is how she is written in the story, period. The other thing is the ideologies of the film made me kind of step back as well. These humans hate the fairies because they are different than they are. Are we as a species still that ignorant to still hate what we don’t understand? The other is the gender power in the film. –SPOILER- Aurora’s true loves kiss doesn’t come from the Prince, as told in the original story, but from Maleficent herself (a small kiss to the forehead, nothing of the homosexual nature). And at the end, Aurora doesn’t marry the Prince and live happily ever after, she becomes Queen of both worlds and lives out her days that way. So…I guess this means that Sleeping Beauty doesn’t need her Prince Charming and can rule the kingdom just fine without him. Which is fine and all, but if we as a species are afraid of things that are different, are we that inclined to accept a female ruler over everything? END SPOILER.

I guess in the end I did not like having my villains given a backstory. I fear that what comes next is Captain Hook’s backstory and how he isn’t as bad as J.M Barrie made him out to be and he is just a misunderstood sailor being bullied by an adolescent that won’t just grow up.

Verdict: Wait for Blu-Ray