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.
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