Recently I
saw the movie Maleficent which I
thought was a fine film bolstered by an extraordinary leading performance by
Angelina Jolie. The movie hit all the
right current blockbuster notes by doing the gritty revisionist history where
the bad guy isn’t all that evil but rather misunderstood and it’s really the
king that’s evil (who knew a goofy cartoon king had some much evil baggage). The story made a bit more sense than the Disney
story (of course Maleficent, the most powerful fairy in the world, would
immediately know where Aurora is hiding and I do buy the mini-twist that Aurora
would have no connection or loyalty to her father because well he decided to
lock her away and never visit), but all it made me want to do was re-watch the
old Disney classic. I recall little from
the Disney story other than the fact that the Prince had even less personality
than Sleeping Beauty (quite a feat) and that the whole kingdom went through a
bit of a snoozing period. Other than
that, my working memory of Sleeping
Beauty came through various parodies and references. It was as a good a time as any to revisit the
old classic and see if the viewing experience would be any different. Truth be told I liked the old classic a lot
more than I can remember and much more than Maleficent. Despite recognizing and calling out every
weirdness or problem I had with the film, it’s hard to deny the effortless
charm that pervades through the film.
The magic in
Sleeping Beauty is that I full
heartedly enjoyed the movie despite agreeing with all the criticism of the
film. Sure Princess Aurora is a damsel
in distress, but she really doesn’t do anything in Maleficent either. Prince
Phillip has even less of a personality in Maleficent
than he does in Sleeping Beauty (at
least in the later he gets to tell a few jokes or something of the sort before
totally being helped by the fairies in battle despite their insistence that
he’d have to do it alone-what a bunch of liars). Plus I like evil Maleficent. She’s happiest when she’s being a big old
meanie so who’s idea was it to paint her as a tragic figure? Why the best scenes in Maleficent are when Angelina Jolie gets to chew some scenery
playing a spiteful baddie – like in the gift giving scene and or her lame ways
at making life a bit hellish for the three fairies. The lighter scenes in Maleficent were the best
parts of the film. All the grit and grime
has been done to death so it wasn’t rather exciting or shocking. Showing an “evil character” using her magic
for pettiness and personal pleasure was a welcoming change from the rote boring
behavior of most magical bad guys.
Sleeping Beauty utilizes no made up fantastical
creatures (aside from some weird goblins) or scenes of majestic sweeping battles but
still ends up as the more magical film.
These gritty adaptions of stories miss the whole point of why fairy
tale adaptions were popular in the first place.
Sometimes it’s fun to watch a light story with a happy and predictable
ending. Not everything has to be as
gritty as Frank Miller’s Batman. We can
(and should) keep the pro-woman messages in these new adaptions but we don’t
need to sacrifice the charm that made us enjoy these classics in the first
place. I would like to leave a fairy tale
with an enchanted feeling because it’s a fucking fairy tale not Lord of the Rings. Let’s have some tonal diversity people. Not every fairy tale movie needs to have an epic
battle scene to produce a sense of grandeur or wonder; sometimes a simple duet
through an enchanted forest is all that is required. Well one time it was, once upon a dream.
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