Skip to main content

A Misunderstood Maleficent, a Flaccid Fantasy


The great fantasy epic of 2019 is The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, which in addition to being a phenomenal technical feat, was an ideal demonstration of how to tell an archetypal story in a new way, how to marry richly sensational world building with intimate character development, and how to experiment with tone and dark subject matter while maintaining a singular invigorating spirit. As far as traditional high fantasy on film goes, it might be the best execution since the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It already stood in sharp relief to the embarrassing last season of Game of Thrones that preceded it, and continues to do so in the light of Disney’s attempt at an epic fantasy in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, which reminded me in some of its aesthetics and ambitions of The Dark Crystal, but bad.
Don’t let the title fool you though; much like its’ 2014 precursor, Maleficent, once one of the great Disney villains, isn’t evil at all -rather she’s a misunderstood anti-heroine frequently persecuted by humans. The first film, while not quite a Disney remake, was part of that same machine, telling the Sleeping Beauty story from the angle of Wicked -but with Maleficent. It was tiresome and tedious with heavy themes it was ill-equipped to handle, but because Angelina Jolie was kind of a perfect fit for the part, the movie was a hit. The interesting thing about this sequel then, was that it had no choice but to be original, to come up with a continuing story for this character and world. Though even then, it’s caught in the same cycles tread by Maleficent and other fantasy stories.
It aspires to great fantasy storytelling though. Mistress of Evil invests more in its world, its magical races, and its political landscape (or as political as it’s permitted to be as a Disney film) in an attempt to create a fuller world. A couple new kingdoms are created, one of which is the centre of most of the action (borrowing most of its visual character from The Lord of the Rings’ Minas Tirith). We meet Maleficent’s people, the Dark Feys, and their hidden world within some gargantuan cave, as well as new moor sprites and a dwarf (a typecast Warwick Davies). However all of these are as fundamentally hollow as the kingdoms and creatures of Warcraft. Apart from the Feys’ refuge, there isn’t much imagination to these fantastical elements, an air of cynicism overwhelming much of the movie –creatures designed to be marketable, environments conforming to the bland visual standard of Alice in Wonderland and Beauty and the Beast, and a series of increasingly safe narrative decisions in contrast to a couple admittedly riskier gambits in the first film.
Disney itself really is the main power holding the movie back. Mistress of Evil desperately wants to be Game of Thrones, right down to mining famous moments from the show (the Sept of Baelor trap, the Battle of Blackwater, almost the Red Wedding), but the necessity and the safety of the Disney brand neuters any dark or complex insinuation such evocations suggest. To invoke an additional Game of Thrones reference, it is the Theon Greyjoy of fantasy movies. The film pretends otherwise, in a number of instances leaning in the direction of a subversive outcome or a disturbing plot point, but ultimately is saved by Disney’s family-friendly prerogative. And it’s to the films’ detriment, which otherwise could have had potential. If it had had the courage to be a little uncomfortable, a little more nuanced with its character motivations so there isn’t a stock peacekeeper and warmonger on either side to equate the two and undercut the movies’ own themes of prejudice, discrimination, exploitation, and unity; if it could have had half the depth and boldness of that Netflix puppet show that blows this 185 million dollar studio blockbuster out of the water.
Adding salt to the wound is the continued refusal of this movie to give the audience what they want in terms of the character of Maleficent. A big part of the reason the scene-stealing witch of 1959’s Sleeping Beauty is so popular is because of how much she delights in her own villainy, how much malevolent (hence the name) glee she takes in scaring and manipulating people, giving herself the “mistress of evil” moniker. She’s a fun kind of evil to be sure, planting a curse on an infant over a mere snub, but every aspect of her personality and presence is shrouded in her badness and an unrestrained joy therein. That’s the character Disney fans want to see, not the derivative damaged outcast mother figure who is occasionally domineering and witty. At a point, Maleficent concedes to hiding her horns when meeting Aurora’s future in-laws -would the classic Disney character ever have submitted to that degradation?
Jolie still fits the part, but she’s not much interested anymore, an imposing enough figure in her own right to feel out of place in a movie like this (it’s shocking that this has been her only starring role of the 2010s). Meanwhile Elle Fanning’s Aurora is once more effectively a prop, supported by Harris Dickinson’s Philip, who’s somehow more flat than his animated counterpart. Once more it’s embarrassing to see great actresses Imelda Staunton, Lesley Manville, and Juno Temple reduced to asinine comic relief parts, while the film adds a useless Robert Lindsay and a cliché Ed Skrein. The casts’ only bright spots are Chiwetel Ejiofor as the Martin Luther King Fay, Sam Riley as Maleficent’s sharp-tongued servant, Jenn Murray as the evil Queen’s remorseless servant, and Michelle Pfeiffer as the evil Queen herself, relishing her Cersei Lannister-style villainy as much as Maleficent should.
It’s not at all surprising Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is as weak as it is, but it is disheartening nonetheless –a testament to Disney’s homogeneity and limitations. And with more and more of the film industry around Disney likewise acquiescing to those limitations, we’re going to be seeing more movies like this in the near future.

Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/JordanBosch
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Strange History of the American Spoof Movie

Parody movies have been around for a lot longer than we tend to think of them. Even from the earliest days of Hollywood there were movies meant to satirize a particular subject or genre. In the silent era, Buster Keaton was responsible for a few. And in the early sound era, almost as soon as the monster pictures took off did you see comic versions of them -Abbott and Costello hosting a few. But parody movies tended to be subtle for most of cinema history, or parody came in conjunction with another goal of the comedy. It really wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that it took off and became popularly understood. And there is perhaps a line to be drawn to the counterculture comedy explosion that began in the 1970s through avenues like  Saturday Night Live , which frequently parodied from even its earliest years popular movies and cultural properties of the time. But that is still a way’s back. To my generation though, ‘parody movie’ is perhaps a less known term than the more blunt ‘s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes on the Title Cards of The Lord of the Rings

It might be sacrilege for one who both considers The Lord of the Rings  trilogy to be one of the greatest triumphs of cinema and has been an avid lover of the films since adolescence, to declare that the original theatrical cuts of the films are better than the much beloved extended editions. Easily it’s my most controversial opinion regarding these movies. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the extended editions quite a lot, especially as someone who just enjoys spending time in that universe. They flesh it out more, add extra flavour, and in increasing the length by about an hour really emphasize the epic quality of these films. But I find that the original cuts are generally more cleanly paced, more seamlessly edited, and much more accessible to audiences. All the stuff there is to love about The Lord of the Rings  is there in the original versions, the plethora of new and extended scenes merely add to that for fans. And of those, they fall into three camps for me: 1....
1 comment
Read more

Back to the Feature: New York, New York (1977)

New York, New York  is a two hour forty minute musical movie largely about a toxic relationship and I understand why it was Martin Scorsese’s first big flop. Some have blamed its poor reception on the kind of movie it was, of a style and tone Scorsese wasn’t known for, but I find that hard to believe. Even after only five films, he’d proven himself an extremely versatile director, and Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore  found an audience. Sure this jazz musical love letter to New York City was following up Taxi Driver and its’ far more cynical take on the city, but then it’s also ‘from the director of Taxi Driver ’ which itself was a big hit. Was it a matter of public appetite for musicals, or mere word of mouth and early critical reception that dissuaded viewers? Irrespective of that, I was stunned to discover this movie was the origin of the titular song, which I’d assumed was much older (it’s definitely got the sound of something that might have come out of the Jazz sce...
Post a Comment
Read more