I’ve been curious about Maleficent ever since it was the only trailer I saw to involve only female characters. I was also hoping it’d be full of special effects. Beyond that, I wasn’t expecting much, and the few snippets I saw of people talking about it were saying stuff how her backstory would be a woman scorned thing. Then when I looked up the movie to see it, I found it had a 50% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
I was pleasantly surprised by what I actually saw.
Firstly, the trailers:
We had a coma story or something that seemed like it had a healthy mix of genders.
The musician thing that revolved around the guy naturally and did manage to have a chunk of the interviewee chatter be women.
The new Annie movie that looks adorable.
And some kid and some robot.
If you were an anthropologist analyzing our movie industry from these trailers, you would have no idea they’re a mess of outdated prejudices. I’m going to see a more standard movie next and see how it compares.
As to the movie itself, I loved the designs of the characters from the very start. Young Maleficent has demonic flourishes that manage to come off as “wild creature” perfectly – you can see how people would be scared of her without her actually being inherently terrifying, but turn smoothly into a more evil look when she starts covering herself in black and cackling. The love story isn’t simply about betrayal in love but is used as the springboard for actual actions – she trusts Stefan, so he has the opportunity to drug her and chop her wings off, so she’s mutilated and swears revenge. And while involving a baby in that revenge is obviously wrong, she’s not murdering everyone she comes across, so we avoid the trope of women just being insane with emotion. She thought of a good way to hurt him and then she did so, then she realizes that involving a baby was, in fact, wrong.
There isn’t a big deal made about the patriarchy, it’s just there in the background being bad. The disrespect she faces from the original king is because she’s a fairy of the fairy enemy kingdom, not because lolwomenz, there’s generally no point made about how it’s extra unnatural for her to be powerful while female, and it’s just so nice to avoid an obligatory scene where someone states women are just less than men. It’s something valid in moderation, but it’s exhausting when it always shows up, especially in fantasy, and turns the real message into “you will never, ever escape sexism no matter what you do”. Here it’s an underlying division, just like the distinction between fairy forestland, full of plants, and human-settled land, full of manufacturing. (The human kingdom also comes in shades other than white!)
The “love’s true kiss” thing is explained as a meanspirited joke, then subverted by it being Maleficent’s love for Aurora that saves her.
And Stefan totally dies and Aurora doesn’t even care! I was expecting some sort of reconciliation where she’s all “no birth daddy who I never knew is important because blood is all and if you love me you have to spare this asshole and forgive!” and nope, she’s fine skipping off with Adopted Mommy.
The only real plot hole is the three fairies. They need to raise Aurora to explain why Aurora needs constant intervention to survive to sixteen, but this story had all fairies living in one place and all humans living in another and then one human attacked the fairy leader and hacked off her wings, so. They’re supposedly at the coronation to foster goodwill, when Stefan knows Maleficent is alive and furious and shouldn’t want anything like that near him while they knew he hacked off her wings to become king so why would they want to? Then for some reason the king doesn’t blame them for what happens in the least and decides to entrust the three with his kid instead. Explaining why the fairies would possibly be there in the first place really required a chunk of exposition (some element of a long-standing treaty between the two kingdoms is all I can think of, and it’s still pretty shaky. Or maybe having there not be a perfect division and having there be some domestic fairies in the human area who are very different from the wild fairies.) followed by some reason Stefan thinks he can keep the fairies from turning on him – the idea they can’t break oaths seems like it’d be workable. Maybe he thinks they were in cahoots and threatens to kill them, only for them to swear they’ll protect the kid.
So then I went to find out why the reviews were so negative, and here’s the funny thing. The audience rating is 75%. The critics’ is 50%. The top critics’ is 44%.
Why?
Well, apparently they object to a “revisionist” take. That word gets a real workout. Plus the original Disney tale was a masterpiece of storytelling. Maybe it was – I can’t remember it myself. And showing Maleficent fix damaged trees twice without fanfare is vile eco-friendly propaganda, plus what about the menz? WHY ARE THERE WOMEN WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ? It was so great how Maleficent was a one-dimensional villain, they enthuse, and changing that ruined her and also made the dad a one-dimensional villain and that’s unacceptable, if he had to be evil they should’ve spent the movie developing why, why must feminism be so terrible and mean. (He wasn’t even one-dimensional, so I guess they were just mad there wasn’t a concerted effort on the movie’s part to explain how nothing was his fault.) Similarly, the fact the prince is barely in the movie is a problem because obviously he is super important and the part where half his scenes are him being carted around unconscious followed by not actually being useful can’t possibly be a clue he’s not meant to be the real hero and didn’t need more screentime.
What’s even weirder is the ones saying she’s now petty (or a “petty bitch” even), as apparently losing two limbs is something women need to get over already (others blame it solely on jealousy or seem unclear on why she’s mad at all), or referring to getting her wings hacked off as having them “clipped” (other words include “taken”, “stolen” or that it’s a metaphor for losing her power and nothing about being physically maimed at all). Numerous people framed it as a woman scorned issue and identify her as Stefan’s ex-girlfriend, when we’re explicitly told she’s fine with the fact Stefan leaves her originally and see she has no animosity toward the queen. And they didn’t like how she was weak and a victim and this ruined her – even though it’s after that point she starts slinging around most of the magic. The rape metaphor just keeps on giving!
Plus the fact that, like Frozen, it doesn’t have a boy kissing a girl in romantic love is also a drawback. Apparently it’s okay to do it once as a twist and shock everyone, but only as long as we remember that the way it really works is boy kisses girl and Frozen was just doing it as a clever joke on how things are supposed to work.
At least in my quick check I didn’t hit anyone complaining that generic vaguely medieval kingdoms have to be white as driven snow, so I guess progress is still crawling forward.
Still waiting on the Princess Ozma movie where her story is a thinly-veiled trans narrative and ends with Dorothy going to live with her in the palace as princess consort and the inevitable wave of critics who’ve only seen the movie wringing their hands over how following the plot of books written in the first decade of the twentieth century is progressive revisionism.
Before this I would have said you’ll just get a story about the boy who stays a boy and why must everything suck, but we actually might get that now!
Was it a thinly-veiled trans narrative in the original? Baum must have been quite ahead of his time.
I don’t really know what was going on in Baum’s head. I can say that there’s a lot of peculiar gender-identity stuff in his stories, and that Ozma is a trans icon because her story (transformed as an infant to hide her true identity, raised as a boy, finds out the truth and is at first ambivalent about being changed back and worried about losing the ability to do “boy things” but ultimately happily settles into being a girl) resonates strongly with a lot of trans women. I think any modern retelling would necessarily have that subtext.
Hm, cool. I’m personally worried that, though a trans narrative would be possible, Disney wouldn’t be able to get away with an overtly gay couple. If they keep the gender-switching, they’ll probably gender-flip Ozma. But I suppose we’ll see; maybe by the time it happens, social norms will have shifted enough.
And again, it’s more a romantic friendship than an explicit gay couple in the books, but between all the kissing and hand-holding, the complete lack of male love interests, and the fact that they have an official arrangement to live together…. yeah, there’s only one way that’s going to come off, especially if they’re aged up like adaptations tend to do.
Well, so far they’ve managed to hold off from screaming ELSA ISN’T A LESBIAN and the primary ship there was with her sister, so – maybe! Disney seems to have figured out they get positive attention ever time they do a first of some kind.
That may be because Disney already had 2 open lesbians in 1 episode of Good Luck Charlie. But sadly if you think they got positive attention for it all you have to do is look at the way One Million Moms reacted or go to a YouTube clip of the episode and see the most ridiculous asinine “debates” I have ever seen.
YouTube comments and hate groups aren’t really representative of the general population, you know. If you were to judge by them, you’d think miscegenation was still a huge taboo in this country, for starters.
The bigger indication that it didn’t get a lot of positive attention is that I’ve never heard of it, and I try to keep up on these things.
“Well, apparently they object to a “revisionist” take.”
Hahaha… Wait, what.
I kinda thought that it is a long-standing tradition in fiction to take fairy tales and twist them around, turning villains into heroes, heroes into pawns of greater villains, explore the potential implications if you were to treat the tales realistically, turn the whole thing into something different, etc.
There was even a meme among web writers back in the day to write a story about a knight, a dragon and a princess. You know, the basic plot is knight saving the princess from the dragon, the derivative stories are about princess saving the dragon from the knight or about the whole plot being a political machination, or about dragon being in love with the princess, or about both dragon and knight searching for the princess to get on with the plot and such.
Did I miss a memo saying that you can’t do it anymore or something?
Fairytales are history and only man-hating eco-nuts want to rewrite history to lie about the fact what really happened is some guy with a sword killed a dragon. It’s only okay when you do joke stories, serious stories are lying about the facts of guy, sword, dragon.
I don’t like using “no john you are the sexists”, but turning “This dude cut off my fairy bits and presented them to the crown as a symbol of loyalty” into “She was betrayed by a MAAAAAAAAN” is really stretching when the literal interpretation where she’s pissed she can’t fly works absolutely fine.
Regardless, going to see this since it’s apparently not crap like
snow white.
I think it’s a jumble in part to the fact the actor said it’s metaphorically rape, including magic roofies, and there’s a big backlash against talking about rape as real so other people will insist it’s not an issue at all, therefore if something is rape that means it’s not real and didn’t happen, therefore she’s just being a petty bitch about getting dumped and the literal wings literally cut from her back doesn’t register.
What I don’t like is that (SPOILER) she didn’t turn into the badass dragon herself but had her crow man do it. Like yeah now we can kill the dragon without killing her, but dude. She could’ve played possum. I wanna see her go dragon!! (END SPOILER)
I can understand wanting the pure evil to stick around because she was glorious with unabashedly championing the cause and being distraught about the possibility of being “a disgrace to the forces of evil,” but I can’t see expecting that to happen in a Disney movie that makes her the protagonist. They’re not really about rooting for evil.
Ah, but if she could shapeshift herself, the lack of wings wouldn’t be an issue because she could just grow new ones (or transform into something that had them). And…the dragon didn’t die, so ???
You do know putting SPOILER and END SPOILER in parentheses right up against the spoilers doesn’t actually do anything to protect people from seeing the spoilers? Why do people on this blog keep fucking doing this?
ETA: I mean I don’t even particularly care in this instance because it’s about something that DIDN’T happen, I’ve just hit my breaking point on this BS for some reason.
It doesn’t look like there’s any useful code that can be used in the comments. I’ll try putting a long enough line of SPOILER at the bottom and asking people to copy/paste that one.
If she could turn into a dragon she couldn’t be maimed, and the plot requires that. I think the easiest explanation is that magic creatures can’t transform, only change size at most. The only creature we see transforming is a mundane crow, one still immune to iron even when in other forms.
Also an option is the idea magic can only be done to people other than the caster. So, you can learn to do a wide variety of spells, but you’re limited to natural abilities for yourself.
I was rather happy about as well, I agree that the fairies was the weakest link, though Maleficent trolling them was rather funny.
I don’t see how people see Stefan as such a bad character, I found him a good classical driven-mad-by-ambition, and really, he could easily have killed her.
Over all I found it to be a good story about not letting ambition and revenge lead you into ruin.
As you said, it is not being pissed at Stefan that makes her “evil”, it was harming an innocent.
Also Aurora being totally adorable and Maleficent not being able to resist her was wonderful.
and really, he could easily have killed her.
Yeah, he does have nuance, it’s just not nuance that ends with him a good guy. You could even say that his behavior after that point is driven in part by guilt – he’s terrified of her precisely because he recognizes what he did to her and expects retribution.
Testing.
testing
Honestly, I loathed the movie. The plot seemed riddled with plotholes. Why was Maleficent human sized with hawk wings when she’s supposed to be a fairy like the others? They look nothing alike. Why does she have those horns? If she can turn a crow into a man, dog, horse, dragon and so own, why couldn’t she turn herself into one? Why couldn’t she just give herself new wings? Why would the king entrust his daughter to the stupidest fairies in the world? I mean, they’re too stupid to function in most cases. Why were the magical creatures upset at Maleficent creating a fence? They hate humans. They want to be separate. Why are they mad at Maleficent taking power, but not Aurora? If Aurora and Maleficent won and had a happy ever after, how is the story about Maleficent being evil circulating?
Just…ugh. The whole thing made absolutely no sense as far as I’m concerned.
It seemed pretty clear that there had been a war the fairylands had gone through, if you look at all the ruins. There are several possible explanations: one is that Maleficent was the last of her kind with the rest of them (a presumably rare species) dead from that war. It’s also possible she’s a creation of the forest, made to protect the rest of them as was also evidenced by the fact that from a young age the other creatures already deferred to her. There could have simply been limitations on her magic, such as she couldn’t use it on herself, evidenced by the fact that we never see her use it on herself, she could have a magical immunity to it that the movie decided didn’t need explaining because I also think you’re forgetting it’s a children’s movie. Maybe a scene of her trying to give herself wings and failing would have been appropriate, but as it stands I thought it was fairly obvious she couldn’t do it because she simply didn’t do it. The king didn’t necessarily know they were dumb, he really only seemed to meet them at the birth of his daughter at which point he saw it as “these magical people can protect my daughter against magic better than any of my non magical people can because they are magic”. I don’t think the creatures were upset at the fence, they seemed way more upset at the fact that Maleficent’s energy clearly turned malevolent and dark and angry as opposed to free and light as evidenced by the fact their homeland got turned into basically eternal night and darkness after her wings were taken from her. They were never mad at Maleficent taking power, they were afraid of her suddenly dark and Malevolent (seewhatididthere) energy. The story about her being evil circulates because you know the humans who have been afraid and hated these magical beings still exist, right? Just because Maleficent and Aurora won doesn’t mean all the humans went OKAY ALL MY PREJUDICES ARE GONE NOW LETS HOLD HANDS AND SKIP THROUGH THE FOREST.
Why was Maleficent human sized with hawk wings when she’s supposed to be a fairy like the others? They look nothing alike.
There’s a whole bunch of different fairy types we see, and they all look wildly different – fairies being a diverse bunch is even a folklore thing. The reason you don’t see anyone looking like Maleficent is she’s an orphan – she tells Stefan her parents are gone too.
I actually don’t think the fairies were upset about the fence in itself – but, the fence was only able to keep out the concerted efforts of the humans because Maleficent was around, so it being needed (and thus killing more humans and making them want to kill the fairies still more) wasn’t good.
If Aurora and Maleficent won and had a happy ever after, how is the story about Maleficent being evil circulating?
That’s easy, the same people who usually revise history – a third kingdom with an agenda. People who don’t like you will tend to twist events to make you look bad, and then the twisted story alters further based on how people think the world works, so first you have the evil queen who worked with a demon to kill her dad, and then the princess who was tricked by a demon, and finally the good princess who was rescued by a prince from the demon.
I didn’t really get into the characters much with this movie, but I liked the framework they had. One of my favorite moments was realizing that when Maleficent was repeating her curse and said something along the lines of “she will be loved by all who see her,” she essentially sealed her own fate for the movie. She watched Aurora and then loved her.
The one plot hole I remember was that Maleficent seemed extremely distraught when the sun (rose/set?) on the final day, while she was carrying the prince. She had already given up on removing the curse and was bringing the guy that she thought would break it, so it seemed strange for her to be rushing to make it “in time” when there’s no more time limit. If that was her just hoping to say goodbye, it didn’t come across.
Remember, she cursed Aurora so that she could only be awakened by true love, but Maleficent didn’t believe true love existed. If I’m remembering correctly, they dragged the prince along in more of a halfhearted attempt than anything else. Maleficent didn’t think he was really the solution, and so she was distressed when the sun set.
But if I’m remembering wrong, please correct me.
I think that was probably it as well, but it wasn’t handled well because first they get the boy and then try to ride out, but given Maleficent is sure the boy is useless, she should have prioritized speed. It’d make more sense to have them rushing there and then running across him after the sun set. But, doing it the other way means we see he’s come back to visit Aurora, and highlights his uselessness because of how much time they spend dragging him around.
Yes, I was also really pleasantly surprised with Maleficient, especially after being horribly disappointed with How to Train Your Dragon 2 (90+ rating on RT). The scene where her wings are cut off was very emotional, and anyone who doesn’t understand that she is literally crippled must be blind — she actually needs to relearn how to walk without her wings for balance, hence her staff!
Yeah, I heard warnings about the dragon one. I can’t say I’m surprised given how well they handled female chacters the first time.
They took the movie I consider as one of the most feminist in Disney canon (if you see the three fairies as main protagonists) and butchered into yet another story about a woman abused by a man. Yeah, thank your for THAT Disney.
Maleficent is the Mistress of all Evil. That’s why she is considered one of the greatest if not THE greatest Disney VILLLAIN! She is not yet another woman whose life was ruined by the abuse of some dude. She is the one who puts dudes into her dungeons for hundred of years because she gets a kick out of it! She is the one who controls all the powers of HELL and turns into a dragon. This movie is an insult to her, to the three fairies (who are three great Disney heroines) and on top of it it makes Aurora stupid. And you can say about what you want about Aurora’s lack of screentime in the original movie, but she was never portrayed as stupid.
And even if you ignore all that and see Maleficent independent from all this…there is nothing good about this movie. It is an insulting story about a woman who gets victimized by a man. Because we didn’t have enough of them already.
I do like the cartoon’s version a lot more (that “And all the powers of Hell” line? Love it!), but it would be kind of hard to have that Maleficent as a sympathetic protagonist.
I’m going to admit, first off, that I have never liked the 1959 Sleeping Beauty. The characters are all weak except the three fairies and Maleficent, and it just feels like they didn’t enlarge the original fairy tale very well. Fairy tales need to be enlarged due to their short length, and Sleeping Beauty just felt padded out. It was also primarily an animation showcase.
Even Maleficent, despite the fact that she’s one of the few characters whose actions drive the plot, is a very one-dimensional villain. She proclaims herself the “mistress of evil”, and demeans her henchmen as “a disgrace to the forces of evil”. It’s kind of hard to even imagine trying to create a sympathetic backstory that would turn that character into a fully developed character.
I think the best approach would probably be to show her being turned into someone who simply has no remorse and no compassion for anyone, someone who has been so harmed by society and so angry she is willing to commit evil for the sake of it. The first half of the movie I liked; it provided an essential backstory that would have helped the original considerably. But after that I think they chickened out.
I think there was a point in the writing where someone realized they needed to make Maleficent a fully likable character, in order for her to be justifiably the protagonist. But they just make her so, so sympathetic that ultimately it’s a completely different character. They change the story so completely there’s no point even saying this is related to the original.
And I don’t think it’s quite fair to criticize all the hatedom for this movie as specifically anti-feminist (please I urge you DO NOT overreact to this statement). It ripping off the ending of Frozen is a legitimate point. It’s frankly unimaginative to simply repeat it a year later. I did like parts of this movie, the prince being useless I enjoyed because I felt it was a good satire on what a worthless archetype he was in the original, but ultimately it felt a bit too watered down, like it wasn’t as clever or as interesting a re-imagining as it should have been.
I liked your opposite take, however; it was quite interesting to see you like something a lot of people didn’t after all the times you’ve disliked something popular.
I think you made a slight mistake, Kirk; Farla is the one who wrote this post, not me. :-)
OR IS IT? *Dum-Dum-Dum!*
Now I know this is a decade old comment, but I’m replying to it anyway in case anyone else comes across this.
First off, did you even read the review? Your takes imply that you didn’t. That said, as the review pointed out, there’s more to it than just “man betrays woman.” Even if you swapped the roles or made them both the same gender, it’s still about being betrayed by someone you trust and desiring revenge. Would you like it more if it wasn’t about a woman and a man?
I personally am probably the biggest fan of the 1959 film and the original Maleficent that a lot of people will probably ever meet. That said, while I agree that this Maleficent and the original are basically different characters, there’s nothing wrong with that? There’s nothing that says these characters must be portrayed exactly the same all the time for forever. Believe me, looking at the lazy live-action remakes Disney puts out now, it’s so refreshing to go back and watch Maleficent and see them try to do something DIFFERENT for once.
Aurora also isn’t stupid, she’s a CHILD. The original film makes her look and somewhat act more like a woman in her early 20s when she’s supposed to be 16! She’s also been raised isolated in a forest all her life, it’s believable that she’s going to be on the naive side. I also just can’t find any instances of her being stupid? You didn’t exactly provide evidence/examples.
Lastly, you’re definitely reaching to call this movie insulting. While I can agree that for a time, Hollywood pumped out a bunch of “girlboss” movies without actually understanding what women want in a female protagonist, I’d hardly say Maleficent falls in that category. She has believable motivations and reactions to the events of the film, and isn’t seen as some undefeatable Mary Sue. As the review said, too, there wasn’t any instances of anyone pointing out that she shouldn’t be able to do something because she’s a woman, or attributing any of her reactions to her gender. That’s the stuff that gets insulting. She’s simply a woman who has powers and that’s that. While I do think the loss of her wings was intended as a metaphor, the story still works with that aspect removed, and like I said before, could still work if Stephan was a female friend rather than a male lover. I think you’re just mad because there was an evil man and thus, intentionally or otherwise, you’re kinda proving the “what about the MENZ” remark.
All-in-all solid film and solid og review (aka not the comment I’m replying to.)
Finally watched this movie last night. I wonder if people’s reaction to it is the reason as for why the Cinderella live-action film was so conservative an adaptation?
I did think her relationship with Stefan was of a romantic nature (even if it wasn’t consummated) and I did get a bit of “woman scorned” from the way she said “Oh” and the face she made when she heard that Stefan and the queen had a child (plus the way she said “true love doesn’t exist”). I mean, presumably, she could have tried to avenge herself on King Stefan at any point, but she chose to do it specifically on the day of his daughter’s christening?*
* Security in the palace is just awful, isn’t it?
That said, I don’t agree that this was her main motivation. She wanted revenge because she had been betrayed and maimed by someone she trusted, regardless of what other feelings were involved in the matter.