Movie Review: Maleficent

Or: How did you fail me? Let me count the ways.

Before I start, I should state I'm going to be spoiling pretty much the entire movie in this review. Because when I'm frustrated with a movie (or excited with one, let's be honest) I can get a bit carried away in my discussion of the topic. (Indeed, after this movie, I actually went and spoiled an old Hitchcock movie for a friend because I got caught up in my rant on disappointing movies. Hint: if you ever want to watch the movie "Suspicion", don't get me started on how I feel about that movie and how of all the movies I've seen, it was the one that let me down the most because it was *GREAT* until about the last 5 minutes and then it RUINED EVERYTHING because of STUPID STUDIO EXECS and wasn't Hitchcock's fault at all, he had a brilliant ending planned but nooooooooo. Can't have THAT. Mumble mumble spoilers mumble mumble.)

So. Don't read on if you haven't seen the movie unless you don't mind spoilers.

Now. Maleficent.

I was extremely excited by this movie (which is part of the reason I feel so let down now). The trailer looked great; I *adored* the single "Once Upon a Dream" that was released from the teaser; I have a strong partiality towards fairy tales redone, and those retold from the villains point of view are usually a lot of fun (Wicked, for example, is great fun. And things like the 100 Kingdoms books. Or Ella Enchanted.) So I went in with high expectations. Indeed, prior to seeing the movie, I made a point of re-watching the original Sleeping Beauty (which I also love, but hadn't seen in ages -- it's a gorgeous movie! They don't do animation like that anymore - hand painted backgrounds with incredible detail, drawn stills based on live models....) and listening to Tchaikovsky's original Sleeping Beauty ballet (on which the original movies score is based -- "Once Upon a Dream" is based on a waltz in it, for example.)

First off: technical stuff. The score was disappointing, especially as the first thing that drew me to the movie was the gorgeous creepy take on "Once Upon A Dream." Alas, that song appeared only in the final credits. I didn't notice any other references to the original scoring during the movie, and the scoring that was there was just... I want to say standard modernish fantasy music with heavy inspiration from Harry Potter that was neither creepy, moving, or in any way special or memorable. And while we're going with look and feel, the CG was not great. The moors were supposed to be a realm of magic and wonder, they certainly could have tried to make them a bit more impressive. The original art from the 1959 movie is so beautiful -- this was... not so much.

Now for the main issue: the plot. The plot did not know what it was doing.  It starts off decently enough: there is a kingdom where all the humans live, and a separate realm for all the fae creatures. A young Maleficent falls for a young Stefan (an ambitious and curious child) but they grow apart as they age. However, when Stefan finds out he could succeed as king if he kills Maleficent, he uses their former connection to establish trust, drugs her, and -- while he can't bring himself to kill her -- cuts off her wings to bring home as a trophy, to prove he has what it takes to rule and as a promise that he'll try and take over the fairy realm, like the current king wants. Which is a *terrible* and *horrifying* thing, but completely reasonable as a premise (and as the review here states, is a thing that while children might be shocked by this betrayal, adults, unfortunately, won't be.) So far, so good. However, this is where things start going wrong.

This movie *could* have gone the "she's protecting her realm from invaders" route. Or the "misunderstood and not actually doing anything that evil" route. Or even the "gradually starts making choices that lead her down a darker and darker path until she's completely corrupted" route. But no. Instead, rejected, mutilated, and heartbroken, she does a complete 180, takes over the fairy realm and instantly establishes herself as an evil and terrifying queen (modifying and darkening the landscape around her), and, of course, curses Stefan's firstborn child to die. [Now, a minor note here: in the first scene of the movie, it establishes that the moor where the fae live does not need a ruler and everyone lives in harmony! As she grows, Maleficent graduates to a protector of that realm (being the strongest fairy) but as soon as she gets betrayed, she immediately seizes power and none of the others put up any fuss about this. And at the end, when things are supposedly back to their happy state at the end, she randomly declares that Aurora is going to be joint queen of that realm and the human kingdom! Huzzah! Yeah... does not compute.]

This brings us to the three 'good' fairies. I do not know WHAT was up with them. I think they were supposed to be comic relief? The fact that they showed up at all to the christening was a little odd, considering the fact humans tried to invade the moor and Stefan mutilated their realms protector. Are they just traitors to their species? I was prepared to snicker despairingly that the gifts from the fairies were beauty and a lovely voice -- clearly the most important things for a young lady to have! However, they swapped the second fairy's gift to "She'll NEVER be UNHAPPY or BLUE." What the hell??? That's a TERRIBLE GIFT. You will never be able to feel unhappiness. You have no control over your emotions! Plus, it didn't even WORK - I was wondering if Aurora was going to go through the movie in a state of clueless bliss because of it, but, while certainly clueless, she definitely had some moments where she was less than thrilled. And then the three fairies take charge of the baby and decide to do so without magic and are hopelessly terrible at it and it's a wonder the poor kid doesn't die.

Except it's not a wonder, apparently. After Maleficent curses the baby, she finds it right away, and instead of letting the three neglectful fairies do her work for her, or just taking care of things there and then, she decides to protect the child and follow her around as she grows up. She naturally grows to care for her (though I can't say I grew overly fond of Aurora) and eventually even tries to lift the curse (but fails). Aurora mistakes her for her fairy godmother and decides she wants to live in the fairy realm with her as they grow to care for each other. However, once Aurora finds out that Maleficent cursed her, she doesn't even give the woman she had JUST said she loved and wanted to live with forever and take care of her and be happy with a chance to explain, or ANYTHING. Nope, she just runs off, straight into the arms of her father. Her father, who has just been growing more obsessed about finding and killing off Maleficent as the years go by, even ignoring the death of his wife, the Queen who did not even merit a name (though according to IMDB she had one - Leila. It didn't ever came up in the actual movie, though.) He barely looks at her, and just sends her off to a tower while he prepares to try and kill Maleficent when she approaches.

I won't go through the entire climax. Maleficent decides to make sure that Aurora gets cured on her own, gets into the castle, Aurora awakens (see my positive notes, below) and as they go downstairs, Stefan attacks and there is a big fight. Stefan gets what is coming to him, dying a predictably Disney death by falling to his doom after Maleficent spares him, thus negating all responsibility on anybodies part. The ending is abrupt and saccharine and doesn't really track very well at all. In general people's motivations aren't well explored or understandable, and while I understand if you want to make this movie about Maleficent and make her the 'good guy' you have to make changes to the story, you can still make the other side more complex and interesting, and you can still try and make people behave in ways that make sense for *them* instead of doing things all over the map.

On the plus side: Angelina Jolie was magnificent. She was working with poor source material, but she *worked* it, and looked dead on as Maleficent. When she was on screen, my eyes were glued to her. Definitely the highlight - she was creepy, wounded, and lovely, even when I was let down her actions, she was still brilliant doing them. Whoever designed her look also deserves props - she could alternate between beautiful and terrifying while keeping all the same features - her horns made her look gorgeous in the right context!  I also liked that it was Maleficent that added the "true loves kiss" thing to the curse as a mocking note to Stefan, who supposedly give her a 'true loves kiss' when they were younger. She also got to use her awesome opening lines from the 1959 movie, and delivered them perfectly.

Additionally, I was quite pleased by the fact that Prince Phillip was understandably -- but considering how things usually go in movies, unusually -- reticent about kissing a girl he'd just met the once while she was sound asleep and thus completely out of it. And then it didn't WORK because you don't get true love after one conversation with a person. Seriously. Thank goodness for smashing THAT sort of trope. They handled the manifestation of the dragon well (though I wish it was closer to the original movie design) and they didn't suddenly hand Maleficent shapeshifting powers, they did it in a logical manner by giving that to the shapeshifting crow. The fact that they made the thicket around the castle a nest of cold-iron thorns was pretty cute, though easily circumvented. Indeed, I really appreciated that they made it clear that, like in the lore, fairies are weak against cold iron.  I also appreciated some of the small touches referencing the original movie: the cottage design looked like the cottage; the castle looked like the castle; the abandoned ruin which makes her headquarters in the original looked spot on.

So. To sum up. Disappointing CG, design, and score. Plot is patchy, doesn't track well, and doesn't create a new and interesting story from the original. The reason why people do certain things and make various choices is completely incomprehensible at times, inconsistent at others. It really doesn't say anything new. I would say that the ads were quite misleading, in fact - don't go in expecting Wicked. Nothing is all bad, there are some highlights, but overall, not worth it.

(Huh. Both my movie reviews in this blog were movies I felt strongly disappointed by (the other being the Hobbit). I should try and remember to review a movie I actually like at some point.)