MALEFICENT.....SUCKED.

Maleficent. 

One of the most anticipated movies of the year. So many big stars had signed onto the project such as Robert Stromberg, a director and visual effects artist, who brought us such classics as Pan's Labyrinth and The Aviator; Linda Woolverton, a playwright, who gave us our childhood when she wrote the screenplays for Beauty & The Beast and The Lion King----- and of course, Angelina Jolie as the title character of Maleficent. It was practically woven in the fabric that it was to be a smash hit.

SO WHY WAS IT SO DREAM CRUSHING, LIFE SUCKING, MIND- NUMBINGLY, HORRIFYINGLY BAD. 

The script was a paradox within itself because it was so starkly simple yet so much of the script was purposeless and pointless.

The editing included so many harsh jump cuts to entirely different story plots, WHILE STILL including enough slow and soft fades to make me think this movie was one of the four ending from Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King.

Because direction & editing, as well as playwriting are such key factors in making a script----- this movie rotted from its core.

Before I go any further: *SPOILER ALERT* 


So let's start from the beginning---- we open with a young Maleficent soaring through "the moors", and underscored by a narrator who speaks as if this whole things is a tale.


EVERYTHING IS WRONG RIGHT THERE.

1. Sleeping Beauty was originally written by Charles Perrault & Giambattista Basile (The Brother's Grimm). The story was originally set in France-----so why is this tale based in SEVERAL FUCKING LOCATIONS YET IN THE SAME LOCATION AT ONCE. The Moors are an infamous region of Spain, and they were also a ghetto slang for "dangerous fucking rocks" in Ireland..... everyone in this movie either has a Scottish accent or a British accent----- sooooooo....W.T.F. Seriously. Did no one have time to pick a fucking setting? The costuming evokes a 16th century France, as did the original animated film that Disney produced from 1959. YET the young girl, Aurora has an Italian boruque style, and then later a dutch hem dress for the rest of the film. so-------------------- again. W.T.F Pick an era, pick a location AND FOR GOD'S SAKE STICK WITH IT! And if you are going to invent your own place, at least let us know! For example, The Hunger Games is set in somewhere futuristic North America.... Lord of The Rings is said to be based in parts of New Zealand.... etc. Seriously.... come on.

2. Young Maleficent is soaring. With her fucking eagle wings. She is supposed to be a FAIRY. Which is another thing that bothers me in this film. They never clearly define what and/or who is a fairy. The "fairies" go between being pixies, sprites, and fairies throughout the movie---which gives it the nod that all those words a re interchangable synonyms of eachother. but they aren't. For example: the fairies Flittle, Knotgrass, and Thistletwit (aka Flora, Fawna, and Meryweather...they even changed their names. Why? I don't know May to piss on my childhood.)---these fairies can change their size at will and have clear dragonfly like wings. While Maleficent is rather human like with horns, and eagle wings---- In the beginning sequences of her flying around these fairies comment that she thinks she's all that because she has the biggest wings..... yet they share no similarities at all. In fact, Maleficent ages throughout the film like a human would----while the "fairies" do not. So really----what is Maleficent besides a giant human with big eagle wings. She actually bares more resemblance to a harpy than fairy. And if she IS a fairy, then where are the others? There clearly must be people just don't "appear" etc. I'll rant about this later on probably. So let's drop this for now. Moving on.

3. The Narrator. Dear fucking christ, if Morgan Freedman was a girl....and boring as fuck.... that person would be this narrator. The film starts off as if this is a reader telling a tale to someone small (even though they show no sequences of it being a tale like they did in the early animated films of Cinderella AND the original Sleeping Beauty). However the narrator switches between "she" and "I" indicated that the speaker is Maleficent; this is later further speculated because of their fucking British accents. Yet at the end of the movie the speaker goes to say that she was actually "the one they called sleeping beauty"........ Okay..... well then, WHEN DID SHE GET OLD. If she was going to be sleeping beauty, then they should have let Ellie Fanning (sleeping Beauty) voice the voice overs!  OR show an aged sleeping beauty! IN FACT the got Janet McTeer, some random British woman to do this voice over---- she never even had a character in this entire script.


SO MOVING ON FROM THE OPENING CREDITS, because I could spend a lifetime on just that...

Young Maleficent meets a young Stephan and they become fast friends and soon "lovers"--- despite that they are from neighboring kingdoms and completely different species. He somewhere along the line becomes obsessed with becoming King.

1. CHILD ACTORS. Need I say more?

2. It was an interesting choice to make him become obsessed with gaining access to the crown---but how the fuck did that happen. Stephan was a poor farm boy: and last time I checked this wasn't A Knight's Tale  or The Sword In the Stone. You don't earn that shit. This was back in the time of class ranks----so the kid was either lying to Maleficent to get inside her loincloth OR the kid bumped a few guys of Game Of Thrones Style to get where he wanted to go. PLUS they never show that. When we meet him he never shows an inkling of interest in the human world--- only interest in "the moors". With bad acting and bad character development on the actor and the writer's part----it was a hard hard HARD miss.

There is a battle (and okay---I will say this---the special effects were amazing: but then again, they got the guy from The Hunger Games so that was kinda expected)---- and Stephan cuts Maleficent's wings off. He becomes king, and has a child---while Maleficent crown's herself and becomes a brooding witch.

1. the battle was cool, but they really did pull their trump card too early. We are only 15 minutes into the movie and they use this. If you re-watch the trailer you'll see that almost 85% of it is footage of the first battle. the rest of the battles, and the scenes fail to be as climactic and as mind blowingly awesome.

2. After cutting of Maleficent's wings, Stephan becomes king. And apparently also gets married. And apparently also receives a daughter----in the span of a day? Maleficent  sends her crow, Diaval, to spy on the King.When he returns with the news she is always in the same spot/pose. in the same outfit. So either she really likes that brown cloak or somethings wanky in the time line. It takes a while for that to all happen: first he needed to court the girl, which normally takes a few months, then coronation, then the wedding, and then consummation of the marriage, then 9 months to produce an heir....and what happened between then? no battles? No anything? REALLY? Dude cut of Maleficent's WINGS. HE PHYSICALLY MUTILATED HER BODY and she didn't attack? okay, perhaps she was regaining strength and working on her next move----they could have showed that! They spent so much time showing the kinship between Maleficent and Stephan---and then it is all gone within moments! We know nothing of his knew queen or even if he still has feelings for Maleficent! Once their character's grew into adults their character development stopped all together.

3. I guess I should get this out of the way before I go any further: KING STEPHAN IS A TOTAL ASSHOLE. He has no regard for life or love or feeling. And that'd be great if that was the character through and through----but he's not! He's played like a tortured soul who is doing what's best for his kingdom----but he's not! It is all based out of maddening anger and revenge. The revenge spawned from when the curse was first placed upon the baby Aurora----he cared so much that he begged and pleaded in front of his subjects....and the bahm! He didn't even care that his wife, his queen, was dying (btw: it was never fully confirmed that she died. it was like: well---bye,  i think) and then when he finally meets his daughter after being away from her for 16 YEARS OF HER LIFE he tosses her aside to make battle plans, only seeing her as a ploy to get Maleficent out of hiding. AND THEN ON TOP OF THAT: Aurora wakes up 25 minutes before the movie ends. His father sees that his daughter is awake and totally fine.... shouldn't that have ended the fighting? The war was only waged to protect the princess from the curse! The curse broke 7 minutes after it was enacted---- and no one cared. They threw Aurora away like the useless pawn she was. The King didn't care about his daughter, Didn't care about his wife, Didn't care about his subjects (who he put through a war of attrition)---he only cared about revenge against Maleficent FOR SOMETHING HE STARTED.....douche.


SO THE BABY IS BORN. They have a huge coronation: and of course, don't invite Maleficent, and then of course comes the infamous scene that everyone was waiting for. As the last "fairy" goes to give Aurora her gift, Maleficent come and crashes the party, and curses Aurora.

1. OKAY..... so they are having a battle against all the magical creatures----Why the fuck did they invite the three "fairies". They state that they only come in peace---but where the hell was that attitude three minutes ago? IN THAT GIANT ASS BATTLE OF DEATH? AND WHERE WAS THAT PEACEFUL OUTLOOK WHEN MALEFICENT TOOK THE THRONE AND FORCEFULLY HURT HUMAN SOLDIERS?!

2. This is an OCD thing---but it was Maleficent who altered her own curse to have Aurora not die, but rather fall asleep---and the third fairy never got to give Aurora her gift. Just like----wow. Thanks for nothing... bitch.


The king freaks the fuck out and tells the fairies to go raise Aurora in the woods. secretly, to NO-ONE'S KNOWLEDGE Maleficent stalks them, and Aurora, as she grows up. She constantly creepily stares at her and saves her life---as well as interacts with her several times and brings her to The Moor----eventually, Maleficent likes the girl so much that she tries to take away the curse but cant.


Okay...SO MANY THINGS WRONG WITH THIS!

1. Okay.....THOSE. FUCKING. "FAIRIES". Where Do I even begin.... Flittle (aka Flora...the original head fairy) is played by Lesley Manville...aka Dolorse Umbridge from The Harry Potter Series... Aurora was raised by Umbridge. (let's just start there). All three Fairies are bumbling idiots who honestly should have been under inspection from ye old' DIFUS. They never fed her, changed her, and she wondered off all the fucking time. Like she fell of a cliff. She wandered into the woods and into the arms of a strange horned stalker...TWICE. And wandered around the giant ass thorn wall that guarded "The moors". The fairies complained and bumbled off and never bonded or took time to be with Aurora. EVER. IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE. Maleficent basically raised Aurora. Which is odd because Maleficent constantly states how she "hates children" and calls Aurora "beasty". Like ok...if you hate the girl so much---go away. I mean, you have a spying raven. he can spy for you. Really. It's okay. Get a life.

2. This transitions into my next point: Maleficent stalks Aurora. And fucks with the fairies all the time. Many shots are of Maleficent playing childish pranks on the fairies----- they literally add nothing to the story except some (poor) comic humor. Maleficent is an all out bad-ass evil villain. She paints herself that way, yet the film doesn't portray her as that. She starts of so sweet and innocent, then turns vindictive, and we see her promised evil only once (in that infamous scene we discussed earlier), and then she goes into a stalker mom who plays child-like pranks on some poor housewife who don't know what they are doing. The entire think was pointless.

3. Aurora has SEVERAL interactions with Maleficent. This ruins the magic of the first encounter. it ruins the mystery and the guise of stalking in the shadows, and watching from afar. She is very much so a part of Aurora young life--- it felt as if the same scene was done over and over and over again at different ages. It lost it's magic.

4. AURORA GOES INTO THE MOORS AND BECOMES BEST BUDDIES WITH MALEFICENT. this bothered me so much.
So basically there is a sequence where Maleficent puts Aurora to sleep and takes her to the moors. They interact, Maleficent puts Aurora back to sleep, and then returns her home.
This repeats several times throughout the script and it is never clarified if they are all through one interaction, or if they are from several different encounters. Either way, it depicts Aurora and Maleficent having a strong friendship bond---- Aurora even calls Maleficent her "fairy godmother". The fact that Maleficent brings Aurora into the moors is also rather anti-climactic. She even goes "hmm I wonder" before she does it too! It is the equivalent of going "i wonder what would happen if I stab you" and then you stab someone and you go "oh, that's what it's like. Okay". It made Maleficent so in-charge in a very artificial and unrealistic way---

4. 5: AURORA IS A PAWN IN THE ENTIRE MOVIE. One of the things I was looking forward to most in this new adaptation was seeing Aurora was a fully realized Character and not just a princess. In the original movie from 1959, Aurora, the character the film was named after, only got 18 lines of dialogue. Although Aurora wasn't the title character, she was still very important. She was used in the same way. She was a silly girl who was used a pawn in two people's revenge game. She does nothing important and nobody gives her any importance! True she is more "outspoken" in this version than the original---- but she honestly gets nothing for it! For several examples, Maleficent states that she is a curious girl--- we see that when she is in the moors and stares at everything in wonderlust---but wouldn't it have been more interesting if Aurora discovered the moors on her own? It would stay cannon in both characters------characters, as well as create action and angles between the two! In another instance---when Aurora first meets her father she rushes to him in a giant hug. he looks at her and says "you look just like your mother." (ya, the mom we know zilch about) " Lock her away in the tower! Maleficent is on her way!". She is used as bait. ALSO, ANOTHER INSTANCE: when she first meets Prince Philip---- she just stands there and does squat. nothing. She literally just stands there. She smiles and then---it is assumed that they are instantly in love. NO. NOT HOW IT WORKS! Even when Philip kisses her after literally only meeting her an hour earlier, nothing happens. because they are not in love. Yet at the end, we see the two together----- Aurora is not a pawn. She is a free spirited thinker.

5. Prince Philip----the kid is only in the movie for like--- 3 seconds. i feel so bad for this guy. They played him up so much. They played up the whole Aurora and Philip thing FOREVER. Honestly, Aurora had much more chemistry with Diaval, the crow, rather than Philip. Philip and Aurora only exchanged directions to the castle. That is literally all their dialogue between each other. Diaval fed her, clothed her, played with her when she was young and when she grew---- it was honest to god bad story telling.


MOVING ON: so it comes time for the curse to be enacted. Maleficent earlier tried to undo the curse because she learned to care for Aurora, but found that she could not. So they all set out to find her "true love" even though both the king and Maleficent state that "there is no such thing as true love". Once Aurora falls asleep, they kidnap (literally kidnap) Philip and force him to kiss her. Nothing Happens. Maleficent gives a lengthy speech about how regretful she is about all this and kisses Aurora's forehead----thus breaking the curse.

1.  True love can break the curse...... Only true love can thaw a frozen heart....hmmm...sound familiar? DING DING DING! you guessed it! FROZEN everyone (because it literally is taking over everything). This is the same kinda hallmark shit they pulled in their last Disney movie. It wasn't the conventional  romantic love, but rather the unconventional familiar love... yada-yada-yada. They played the same card twice. Big Shocker. Really. (*can you feel the sarcasm? )

2. THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TIME THAT AURORA WAS PUT TO SLEEP IN THIS MOVIE. SHE WAS ACTUALLY ASLEEP SEVEN TIMES (I counted) BEFORE THIS CURSE. ALSO---SHE WAS ASLEEP FOR LESS THAN THIRTEEN MINUTES. LITERALLY. She pricked her finger, fell asleep, was kissed by Philip in 3.5 seconds, and then by Maleficent--and then she awoke. The curse ended before the film did---and this was the supposed big climax!

3. I said it once, and I said it again: SHOULDN'T THE FILM HAVE ENDED THERE?!? the whole reason why this war was raging on was because they were worried about Aurora.(go to #4 to here my stem rant about why people loved her so much, even though they never even met her). The battled raged on even though it was very obvious that Aurora was awake. The entire time. This movie was honestly one petty feud after another.

4. The kingdom cared so much about a girl that they never even knew---- or did they? I think they just used her as an excuse to hate and pillage and fight.


Okay. So the film has another 15 minute long battle where Maleficent turns Diaval into a dragon, regain her wings, and slay the king: she then makes everything all pretty again by tearing down (her) the thorn bushed walls (haha, way to make a metaphor obvious) and crowning Aurora queen of both realms.


Thus ends the film. Finally.


I consider this to be THE MAN OF STEEL of Fantasy Movies.

Both movies were highly anticipated as reboots of childhood favorites----both showed a much darker take on the story---- and both had horrible editing and out of order story lines--- poor direction from great directors----- handsome actors who just couldn't act through their poorly crafted characters--- and childhood ruining scripts that defecated on the art of film and playwriting.


And just like MAN OF STEEL: there will be fans of the film. People will like it. I can't tell you what to think of something; but my personal take on it was that it diverged from the original tale too much and had a poor script and direction.

What do I give this film?  a negative 2 star rating and spot on my most despised films right beside The Dark Knight Rises, Man Of Steel, and The Charlie and The Chocolate Factory Re-boot.


I'm Hayley: officially stating that Maleficent SUCKED.