Of all the movies I have lined up in this marathon, Maleficent was the one I was most dreading, it wanted to make a villain more sympathetic, it completely changed the story from the original, and if I look at the timeline, I actually think this is the movie that got the Disney Live-Action remake trend started. I mean we glare at Alice in Wonderland a lot, but I think if this movie failed then the trend would not have really begun, because after this movie, every year had at least one live-action adaptation or remake or sequel. I pin the blame for all of them on the success of this movie, so it should not be any surprise that this is the movie I was the least willing to watch. At the very least, Alice in Wonderland had a potential hook to it, and wasted it but that's already been talked about, the very concept of Maleficent irritates me.
You know that Maleficent's name sounds very close to "Malevolent" right? So, why was THIS the villain they wanted to give a tragic backstory to and make sympathetic? The character whose name is literally an off-shoot of a synonym for evil, is the one they thought could be redeemable? It boggles my mind, like I know the whole "What's in a name?" line, but like, this is a very glaring issue for me, you don't name someone "Maleficent" and make them a hero, unless you're doing some serious subversion like Nimona did. I guess this is also a subversion, but it's not a very good one. I mean, why not just have Maleficent be a nickname, a name given to her by her enemies, give her any other name? You're more than willing to change the names of the other fairies, why not change hers and still make her name technically be Maleficent? And you really want to know the most infuriating part of this movie? It's actually okay.
Yeah, I was shocked, this movie is... okay. Like, as a movie it is competently made, the writing is fine, couple nitpicks with the story, but like overall I can't say it's a bad movie, just a bad concept. I think if they made original characters for this movie there would be less stigma around it, and I could see it working a lot better. A lot of my problems are that these aren't original characters, like change everyone's name, change the title to "The Real Evil" or "The Dark of Light" or something and I'd be absolutely down. Maybe that would have hurt revenue somewhat, but even then I could see it being a big cult movie if it didn't do so well.
I think what really got to me was the three fairies in this one, terrible parental figures really piss me off, so making the fairies into squabbling, incompetent disasters just annoyed me a lot more. It also didn't help that Maleficent "The Mistress of All Evil" was essentially just a trickster in this movie. All throughout the movie, all she does is just play tricks on the fairies, like you're a powerful fairy and you just play tricks on people? Granted that is pretty accurate Fae behavior but that isn't really accurate Maleficent behavior. It just reiterates my point that I think this movie would have been a lot better if these were original characters and not caricatures of iconic characters that we know and love. Also just gonna say it, Angelina Jolie does not give half the performance that Eleanor Audley gave in the original, the scene where she curses Aurora just feels off and not as powerful.
I also kind of hate what they did with King Steffan, not the whole "Make him the real villain of the story" part, I understand that, but the whole... "Make him a villain" at all part. I mean, this is a villain redemption story, on some level, why did it need a real villain? Like, if Maleficent can be redeemable, why can't the king? Is it because we hate royal hierarchies? I don't know, it just doesn't sit right with me that there had to be a "real villain" in this story at all, like I'm totally not on his side, the movie does a good job of making him the bad guy, but like... maybe I didn't really want a bad guy.
I should talk about the rest of the movie, but honestly there really is not a lot to talk about. It's just okay, kind of generic, but ultimately okay. I really do feel like if Disney made the bold choice to make this an original I.P. it could have lead to a decently big franchise, like imagine it, a dark fairy who was wronged by humans, growing attached to the child of the human that wronged her and bridging the two worlds into one, frankly I'd love to see other stories that could spawn from that, imagine that as the premise for a TV series, or a series of novellas, or a comic series. I think they did hamper the potential of this movie by tying it to the Sleeping Beauty property. I'm not a big fan of the original Sleeping Beauty, I think it is that era's equivalent of Frozen, but if I had to pick I think I do prefer the original, it's an iconic fairy tale and it didn't need all of this. Overall though, I can't say this is a bad movie, as a movie it is perfectly decent, but as a concept, I hate it.
Also, this movie did not need a narrator!
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