Maleficent

Maleficent, Disney’s live-action remake of its classic animated fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty (1959) reimagines the age-old story from the perspective of its wicked villain. Angelina Jolie is perfectly cast as the titular character. With her Rick Baker make-up and Anna B. Sheppard costume, she looks every bit a real-life version of the wicked fairy witch drawn by Disney animator Marc Davis and voiced by actress Eleanor Audley. But this incarnation of Maleficent is not the Mistress of All Evil, as she refers to herself in the animated film, but the powerful protector of a fairy kingdom who is wronged by her childhood love, Stephan, when he steals her wings in order to become ruler of the human kingdom that borders her magical realm. Sleeping Beauty does not rank among the best of the classic Disney films, but Maleficent is one of the most memorable of the Disney villains. The idea of making her the central character of a big budget, live-action fantasy film feels like more than just a crass way of capitalizing on an old studio property. Much like the 2012, non-Disney blockbuster Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), there’s a wealth of compelling thematic material to explore in this contemporary remake.

Jolie makes the picture work. She looks fantastic as the character, especially when standing or sitting still like a glorious statue or moving slowly like an eerie shadow creeping across a landscape. Baker’s subtle make-up doesn’t obscure Jolie’s piercing, expressive features in her many close ups. She’s also given some memorable dialogue that she relishes as much as she clearly enjoys striding around in her magnificent black cape and horned headdress. The filmmakers have wisely maintained much of the original animated film’s iconography such as the endless pile of spinning wheels set ablaze after Maleficent curses the baby princess Aurora on the day of her christening, the thick walls of thorny bramble bushes she erects between her kingdom and the humans, and the forest cottage where three good fairies raise Aurora in secret. 

First-time director Robert Stromberg (a former special effects artist) and screenwriter Linda Woolverton (who co wrote Disney’s classic Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, as well as Tim Burton’s live-action Alice in Wonderland for the studio) make some smart changes to the story, which give the picture relevance to modern audiences. Unfortunately, these contemporary ideas and themes are trumped by Disney’s latest animated feature Frozen (2013), which puts a far more dynamic and insightful spin on the classic fairy tale / truelove narrative than this film comes close to. Frozen boasted a far more layered and well-crafted screenplay than Maleficent, which commits two cardinal sins of storytelling. The filmmakers do nothing memorable or interesting with any of the film’s secondary characters, and they miss the opportunity to capitalize on the potential of their invented backstory. The old adage that a movie’s hero is only as good as its villain applies to this picture in a special way. Usually it’s the villains that make these fairy tale movies memorable; the princes, kings, and even some of the heroines are often relatively dull. By making Maleficent the protagonist, her adversary becomes King Stephan. Yet even with their new childhood history and Maleficent’s complex feelings of betrayal and lost love for Stephan, he remains a week, generic bad guy—an unworthy opponent for the magnificent lead character. 

I could give the movie a pass on its lame antagonist, since Maleficent is both the hero and villain of this version of the story, but the rest of the excellent supporting cast is also terribly wasted in underwritten roles. The three good fairies were one of the most entertaining aspects of the original animated film, and in this version the impressive trio of Imelda Staunton, Lesley Manville, and Juno Temple play them. But you would have to look far and wide to find a blander threesome than these perfunctory characters. With Maleficent’s role as Aurora’s fairy godmother beefed up, these three surrogate parents have almost nothing to do in the movie. In fact, once they serve their purpose of removing baby Aurora from the castle, they all but vanish from the middle of the film until it’s time to serve their second narrative function when she turns 16.

Even more disappointing is Aurora herself. Though the teenage princess is played by Elle Fanning, (Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere, J. J. Abrams’ Super 8), an actress every bit as captivating on screen as the young Jolie was, this Aurora comes across as a generic, vapid cliché—a mere plot device rather than a flesh and blood character. Knowing how much time Disney’s creative teams spend on the script development process for their animated movies, it’s difficult not to feel frustrated and short-changed by this potentially powerful live-action incarnation of a classic tale.