Escape to the Movies: Maleficent - An Unusual Fairy Tale of Revenge

[Terminal Blue]

That's all well and good, but I think my... issue... with Maleficent (and this is just from the previews, trailers and what everyone said) is that they're inventing a backstory and motive whole cloth.

Wasn't any work of fiction made up whole cloth by someone?

I mean, you say Satan had a backstory, but he really didn't. Even his name just means "opponent" or "adversary", but opponent of what? In the oldest accounts, he and God seem to have been pretty much on the same wavelength. Heck, there's that weird bit in the book of Job where God is chilling out and Satan walks in and starts chatting to him, which ends in them basically making a bet about ruining this dude's life for the lulz, you would never see something like that in even the most melodramatic medieval passion play.

This whole "satan as the adversary of God" thing is something which has built up over centuries of what are basically rewrites on rewrites on rewrites as different people add their own spin to a figure who is now completely divorced from whatever original role or purpose they once had. Romantic Satanism is just another phase of that.

And I would say Malificent is a character in sleeping beauty, just a pretty broad strokes one. But she has dialogue. She participates in the story (in fact, she sets the entire plot into motion). She has far more going for her than Satan has had for much of Christian history, because as mentioned medieval Christians didn't really focus on Satan that much. It's only with the big panics over things like heresy and witchcraft that people start really thinking about Satan as any kind of entity with actual motives or influence.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

That's all well and good, but I think my... issue... with Maleficent (and this is just from the previews, trailers and what everyone said) is that they're inventing a backstory and motive whole cloth.

Wasn't any work of fiction made up whole cloth by someone?

I mean, you say Satan had a backstory, but he really didn't. Even his name just means "opponent" or "adversary", but opponent of what? In the oldest accounts, he and God seem to have been pretty much on the same wavelength. Heck, there's that weird bit in the book of Job where God is chilling out and Satan walks in and starts chatting to him, which ends in them basically making a bet about ruining this dude's life for the lulz, you would never see something like that in even the most melodramatic medieval passion play.

This whole "satan as the adversary of God" thing is something which has built up over centuries of what are basically rewrites on rewrites on rewrites as different people add their own spin to a figure who is now completely divorced from whatever original role or purpose they once had. Romantic Satanism is just another phase of that.

And I would say Malificent is a character in sleeping beauty, just a pretty broad strokes one. But she has dialogue. She participates in the story (in fact, she sets the entire plot into motion). She has far more going for her than Satan has had for much of Christian history, because as mentioned medieval Christians didn't really focus on Satan that much. It's only with the big panics over things like heresy and witchcraft that people start really thinking about Satan as any kind of entity with actual motives or influence.

You don't think I know that? There's a difference between, "creating a backstory using hints gleaned from the original work," and, "creating an entire cosmology and backstory for both Maleficent and the King because then otherwise we have no movie."

Why can't Maleficent just be evil? That would have been amazing, we could have had fantasy gender swapped There Will Be Blood up in this *****.

 

[AgDr_ODST]

Bob's review convinced me to check it out just for the hell of it. This movie sounds like such a crazy idea that I can't help but want to see it with my own eyes.

Oh, and I don't think Jafar would be the ideal candidate for a revisionist retelling; I think it could work for Scar or the villain from Frozen, though. Maybe Gaston as well.

I'm torn regarding the idea of Jafar getting his story rewritten.[footnote] Saw a great idea but I hate the ideas of either Aladdin being the villain or Jasmine falling for Jafar.[/footnote] I do think a Gaston rewrite could be excellent if it turned out that among other things, Beauty gets Stockholm Syndrome during her time with Beast who really is just a dangerous animal, and the 'castle' could either be an abandoned one that the beast moved into or a cave filled with some familiar junk that Beauty decides can talk so that the grim, depressing nature of her situation doesn't drive her insane. Gaston could be someone who has loved her since they were kids, but because of his slight social ineptness he picks on her and comes across as bully because he can't bring himself to admit his feelings.

I actually would enjoy portraying Beast as really just that, seeing as I'm not a fan of the "socially maladjusted guy who actually has a "heart of gold" archetype (it reeks of an idealization of loners) but if it were up to me I wouldn't have a good guy Gaston "picking on" Beauty, but rather hide his sensitive side with superficial machismo in an attempt to impress only to come around to that.

So Gaston in your estimation would be more or less the same as he is in the Disney movie, only its a front? I think that would work, would you retool anything else about the story to fit the reimagining? I was thinking either ramp up the villainy of the witch or make her into the victim of an attack by the beast that prompts Beauty to wander into the woods.

Yeah, it would pretty much be a front. As for what other aspects I'd retool, well that would probably be necessary; but I must admit I hadn't thought that far ahead, haha.

Well this i kind of dissapointing. I was hoping to continue the discussion about re-imagining the story. So if you've got no more ideas for Beauty&The Beast...how would you retool Frozen's villain and which one, I've heard it said that the Prince is the villain while others say that it's Elsa even though nothing she does is intentionally or explicitly evil.

 

[NoeL]

Saw this movie a few days ago and thought it sucked. Poorly written and poorly presented. It COULD have been good, but it wasn't. The problems:

1) Maleficent's motivations weren't developed clearly enough. The writers needed to come up with a compelling reason as to why she'd make such a seemingly arbitrary curse as "She'll prick her finger and fall asleep before she's 16, and only true love will wake her! Mwa ha ha!", and while I don't think they necessarily failed there they totally failed to sell it to the audience. Even if the reasons are dumb (and they are here) a competent director/screenwriter could present them in such a way that the audience suspends disbelief and doesn't question the dumbness, but that wasn't the case here. I get that the opening narration was going for a fairy tale style where massive pills like "He told her it was true love's kiss, but it wasn't." can be shoved down our throats without much question (just like how no one questioned why Maleficent was evil in Sleeping Beauty - she just was) but when those pills are integral to the plot that stylistic choice doesn't really work. So when she finally comes round to hamming it up with the big curse it feels totally off. Taking control of her "kingdom" also made no sense. If it was a "Well, if he wants a kingdom so bad then I want one too!" it wasn't established at all.

2) The king and queen are fucking IDIOTS. Stefan drugs and mutilates arguably the most important person in a realm he's been at war with for years, watches her become a tyrant and turn the land into a fortress, and when three of her subjects come to the castle to supposedly wish his child well for the future he barely - if at all - questions their loyalty/motivations, lets them cast spells on the kid, and then entrusts them with her care! That's like cutting off Saddam's balls, and when three Iraqis come knocking at your door you greet them with milk, cookies and your first born son.

3) The second act interrupts the narrative, makes no sense, and drags on. This is where the movie takes a break from Maleficent's revenge and focuses on her realising her mistakes, and it's pretty much faffing about for half an hour with no direction at all. It's just bad writing again - they wanted to be like Frozen and subvert the "true love" trope, they wanted to make Maleficent more sympathetic by having her find love, but they didn't really know how to do it. There's no reason why she would curse the child only to immediately become her silent guardian. There needed to at least be a scene where she's happy with her revenge, and then make that change once she realises she's hurt/hurting an innocent child in the process. It's like they attempted to write something like this in by having the good fairies being incompetent custodians (particularly the cliff scene) but Maleficent never has that realisation. It's not like "Haha, those idiots are going to kill that baby for me! ... oh shit, they're actually going to kill that baby. D:" it's just "Oh deary me, look at those incompetent fools. *sigh* I guess I'll just have to step in then, by golly! Ho ho ho!" If her only plan was to get revenge then why would she bother looking after the child? Just to make the revenge all the sweeter by marinating it for 16 years?

4) Maleficent's powers are wildly inconsistent (or she's unbelievably stupid). She can create a wall of thorns surrounding her kingdom, can turn a crow into a man and back again effortlessly, but she can't magic herself a new set of wings? She has seemingly limitless power but never even attempts to reclaim her wings (maybe she thought they were lost forever but she didn't seem surprised when they magically reattached, so...)? Though iron burns her skin it doesn't seem to limit her powers, so why couldn't she turn the soldiers into mice or something? With the amount of power she was shown to possess I never felt for a second that she was ever in any danger, which made all the action scenes in act 3 boring.

5) By far the biggest insult in this movie: we're introduced to the Moors as a communistic utopia. There's no king, there's no classes, everyone is equal and order is maintained through cooperation and respect. Maleficent upsets this balance by instating herself as leader - a move that clearly upsets the rest of the population there, though they're too scared to rebel against her. You would think that after her redemption where she pulls down the thorns and steps down from her throne that the tyranny would be over and the Moors would return to their communistic paradise, right? Fucking NOPE! Aurora is your NEW Queen, you filthy peasants!

Oh, and the CGI sucked ass too.

 

[VoidWanderer]

The thing that gets me about this movie is, Who is it's audience?

It's not for kids or families
It's not for teenagers
It's not for males craving CGI transformers type of action
I doubt it's going to appeal towards women (not being one I couldn't say for sure, but wife has no interest).
It's not an art house type of movie

So I'm really asking, who is this movie made for?

Feminazis...

It felt like a feminazi propaganda film, than a re-interpretation of a timeless villain.

 

[RolandOfGilead]

Maleficent and Aurora didn't just "hang out" for crying out loud Bob, she went from a baby to 16?