Maleficent

There's a lot of mileage in retelling old stories from a new perspective these days, and Disney has not been slow to jump on the bandwagon. From Once Upon A Time to the massively successful Frozen, this process has perhaps peaked with Maleficent, a sumptuous live-action Sleeping Beauty from the perspective of the iconic villain of Disney's 1959 adaptation.

As far as first impressions go, this can not be denied: Maleficent is a gorgeous piece of film-making, if a little heavy on the CGI for my own tastes. Maleficent is most impressive in her free-spirited, flying woman phase, although her black-capped, ultra-goth mode is certainly striking. The enchanted Moors are spectacularly realised, and the human kingdom, even with its classical Disney castle, is rather bland by comparison.

The story is a little less sound, and in its attempts to turn Maleficent into the hero without losing her villainy she becomes a little too vacillating. There are some nice touches, and a splendid sidekick in the form of the raven Diaval (Sam Riley). In terms of performances, Angelina Jolie revels in the quieter moments, but falls down a little when belting out challenges to invading armies; her voice doesn't quite have the force. Her interaction with Diaval is delightful, and I'm shipping those two so hard it isn't funny. Elle Fanning as Aurora isn't utterly grating, which is in itself an achievement, and while we don't have much of Prince Philip to work with, I did like that they gave him at least some qualms about kissing the coma girl.

My problems with the film are mostly in the details, and thus require a few spoilers.

As has been noted, it is a crying shame that Maleficent herself doesn't get to turn into a dragon, but more or less inevitable given how the rest of the film is shaped. The betrayal that acts as her start of darkness has her drugged and her wings cut off by the young man she loves, a Wagnerian act of figurative rape-as-female disempowerment which is frankly a little strong for a film with a family focus. Her power can only be restored with the return of her wings, and if she could turn into a dragon herself, she would have wings.

My only other major issue is that the farcical incompetence of the pixies charged with raising Aurora is such that it is impossible to see why anyone would trust them to do it. It's not as if they're just a little bumbling, the baby is literally safer in the care of an untamed carrion bird.

I was disappointed that they didn't go a musical route, as a character with the stalking menace and superior incidental music cues that Maleficent displays throughout the film deserves a really kick-ass villain song.

Overall, I enjoyed the film a lot - I think it definitely helped that I wasn't expecting something sublime - although I was left with the feeling that I'd just watched a propaganda piece commissioned by Sleeping Beauty to explain that historically, the enchanted Moors had always been part of generic Britland.