Maleficent – Disney Movie of the Month

It’s March, that means it’s time for a new Disney Movie of the Month. In January I looked at Aladdin – an Animated Classic – and in February I looked at A Bugs Life – a Pixar movie. So for the third Disney Movie of the Month it seemed like it was time to look at a live action movie and I chose 2014’s Maleficent.

Maleficent was released back in 2014 and is the live action reimagining of the 1959 animated Sleeping Beauty. Angelina Jolie plays the titular character who is given a more sympathetic backstory in this darker take on the original film. Maleficent is one of my favourite villains – more on that in a follow up post later this month. I originally saw Maleficent in the cinema about a week after it was released and yet I haven’t watched it since then. Until today.

I’d forgotten just how strong Angelina Jolie’s performance as Maleficent is. She clearly relished playing the moments when the story requires her to be a slightly camp arch villain, but she’s also faultless when required to convey some very strong emotion material. I was very pleased to rediscover just how wonderful Angelina Jolie’s performance was.

Maleficent is not a regular adaption of Sleeping Beauty, it is very much its own thing. It has moments for Disney fans to spot that reference the original – such as the forest of thorns, the speech when Maleficent curses Aurora and the dragon. But it also rejects a lot of the tropes of the Disney Princess format and I stronger because of that. However at times it also has a loyalty to the source material that can get in the way of the films full potential. For example Maleficent gives us an infuriating take on the three good fairies who are absolutely useless. As well as trying to shoehorn Prince Phillip into the story for literally no other reason than he’s supposed to be there. The movie could have been much stronger if Phillip and the three good fairies were just completely cut out of it.

I can’t really write about Maleficent without mentioning that there’s definitely some similarities with Wicked. Both movies take a green skinned villain from a popular fairy-tale and retell her story to make her a more sympathetic and feminist character. However they are both very different stories. I think Wicked may have partially been an inspiration for Maleficent, but I don’t think that Maleficent is a rip off of Wicked.

Part of the appeal of these live action remakes for me is seeing the way that Disney brings the animated original to life. I like that despite many changes elsewhere the design team chose to keep Maleficent’s look more or less the same. In the case of the original Sleeping Beauty the movie has a strong medieval aesthetic, when adapting it for live action the production team chose a cool dark gothic style that I think really suits the movie.

Another more technical thing that I love about this movie is the structure of the story. The pivotal moment in the story of Sleeping Beauty is when the dark fairy (Maleficent herself) curses the infant princess. The entire story hinges on that moment. So when it came to telling the story of Sleeping Beauty from the villain’s perspective Disney decided to restructure the narrative so that act one is building up to why  Maleficent places the curse on Aurora and how she becomes the ‘Mistress of All Evil!’ And then act two of the movie deals with redeeming her, as Maleficent faces the consequences of her actions. This structure would actually work well if Disney ever wanted to do a stage adaptation of Maleficent!

In conclusion, Maleficent is definitely worth watching. It’s not an adaptation of the 1959 Sleeping Beauty, it is an interesting alternate take on a well-known story that shifts the focus onto the villain and makes her a tragic hero.