Robert Stromberg
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What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Well, obviously there’s Maleficent and Maleficent 2 (did anyone bother to see Maleficent 2 ?), but Cruella is mostly Joker crossed with The Devil Wears Prada .
It also brings to mind “All About Eve” and the origins movie “Maleficent.”
In other words, this is not something to compare to the Angelina Jolie interpretation of Maleficent, where it’s made clear that we are witnessing the truth.
Many people will instinctively want to compare this movie to Maleficent, but it's a completely different approach to telling a villain's tale.
Puppies! “Maleficent” juggled similarly tough territory — how to make a woman best known for poisoning actual babies seem sympathetic — and did it well enough to inspire two films about the villain’s secret charms, but Craig Gillespie’s “Cruella” struggles to attain similar success.
What started with Maleficent in 2018, continues with a new tale featuring the puppy killer, Cruella de Vil.
Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
Directed by Rupert Sanders
influenced Maleficent (2014)
Visuals Themes
There are elaborate battle sequences with Maleficent wiping out hordes of human soldiers that recall the dark-toned, blood-free slaughter of another recent fairy tale do-over, "Snow White and the Huntsman" (which I liked, actually).
Maleficent is a more mature iteration of the tale than Sleeping Beauty, with the story having been framed as a fantasy adventure rather than a traditional fairy tale (much in the same way that Snow White and the Huntsman expanded on the simplistic premise of that animated classic).
Instead of replicating classic Disney magic, Maleficent feels more like one of the CGI-cluttered fairy tale retellings of recent years, not much different from Mirror, Mirror or Snow White and the Huntsman or Jack the Giant Slayer or Red Riding Hood .
The films that Maleficent more closely resembles are Alice in Wonderland (2010), Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), and Oz: The Great and Powerful (2013).
Snow White And The Huntsman , Alice In Wonderland , Maleficent – what’s the difference?
Now that all the old films are out there in the public domain, live-action remakes are the best way to keep the story brands alive, starting with Maleficent in 2014, Cinderella in 2015 and now this.
Beauty and the Beast is the fifth film in Disney’s ever-growing slate of live-action revisits, which started with Maleficent , but didn’t really kick off until Cinderella .
Beauty’s hugely successful Disney live action predecessor, Maleficent, reimagined Sleeping Beauty from the point of view of the iconic 1959 villain (Angelina Jolie).
1994’s “Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book” and 1996’s “101 Dalmatians” would end up early test runs for the full-on blitz that began in 2014 with “ Maleficent .”
It’s just the latest in a series of experiments in back-catalog mining that have become a regular presence on the release schedule, following The Jungle Book , Pete’s Dragon , Cinderella , and Maleficent .
While the 2015 “Cinderella” was a delightful surprise, efforts such as “Snow White and the Huntsman” and “Maleficent” fell flat.
Moving away from the occasionally garish CG creations found in 2014's " Maleficent ," this superior effort proves heartfelt and technically dazzling in equal measure, its bewitching landscapes and fantastical happenings more comfortably blending with the human actors.
Cinderella is that film, an earnest and impeccably executed adaptation filled with the same wonder and magic that re-imaginings like Maleficent and Mirror Mirror , among others, evidently deemed too vintage for inclusion.
Cinderella makes no claims on depth or complexity; unlike Disney's last cartoon brought to life, Maleficent , this isn't even minutely interested in challenging or re-conceiving the original animated feature it occasionally nods too.
Plenty of films have tried to reinvent and modernize the themes classic fairy tales over the years, and even Disney has taken a subversive angle to recent efforts like “Frozen” and “Maleficent.”
Other recent retellings of storybook favorites by the studio such as “ Alice in Wonderland ” and “ Maleficent ” reshaped the material for 21st century tastes, turning Lewis Carroll’s heroine into a pro-active warrior and upgrading the villainous fairy in “Sleeping Beauty” into a misunderstood victim.
Don’t expect another Maleficent ; we’re not about to see events from the point-of-view of the wicked stepmother.
Maleficent launched to $69 million in May 2014…
…spin-offs like the “backstories” of villains MALEFICENT…
Like Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent and Emma Stone’s Cruella, Gadot embraces the Evil Queen’s narcissism and cruel nature.
I’m open to revisionist fairy tales–see Maleficent—but after all the books, stage productions, and movies, Wicked: For Good makes me wish we had left the Wicked Witch of the West alone.
Elphaba’s moment of finding freedom and love is expressed by dark shadows and fireflies à la Maleficent, where she pronounces that she truly feels ‘wicked’.
Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent (certainly not Wicked: For Good) remains the standard-bearer for such flip-the-script fairy tales…
…movies like Maleficent and Frozen remixed and reimagined the villains of other iconic fables into heroes more than ten years ago…
Directed by first-time helmer Robert Stromberg from a script credited to “Beauty and the Beast” scribe Linda Woolverton, the film has a clever enough big-picture take on the “Sleeping Beauty” tale, yet it sputters and snags as it tries construct a coherent emotional arc, and its reference points from the 1959 animated original feel more dutiful than inspired.
Sure, she chews the scenery in some scenes, going over the top, but it is these moments where she’s paying homage to the original performance in 1959’s “Sleeping Beauty,” so I can forgive a bit of overacting there.
There’s a telling scene toward the beginning of Maleficent, a revisionist retelling of Sleeping Beauty from Disney, the same studio that made the classic fairy tale famous again with its animated version in 1959.
Translation: Expect some fundamental changes to the legend most people know from either Charles Perrault's original fairy tale La Belle au bois dormant or Disney's 1959 animated version Sleeping Beauty.
The special effects wizard has had a hand in some of the past decade’s most indelible film imagery, from James Cameron’s $2 billion grosser “Avatar” to Ang Lee’s eye-popping “Life Of Pi.”
It comes as no surprise to learn that Stromberg worked as the production designer on Avatar , given that similarities could lead one to think he swiped some excess footage of Pandora from under James Cameron's nose to use at the start of Maleficent .
The film marks the feature directing debut of Robert Stromberg, the award-winning art director who earned back-to-back Oscars for his work on 2009's " Avatar " and Disney's live-action " Alice in Wonderland " in 2010.
The film was helmed by Robert Stromberg, a newbie in the director’s chair who brings with him an impressive resume of effects and production design work on films such as Avatar (2009) and Alice in Wonderland (2010), both of which netted him Oscars for art direction.
Less so impressive are the visual effects featured in Maleficent, which is a shame considering Stromberg is a strong visualist who has won Oscars for Art Direction on Avatar and Alice in Wonderland .
In some cases, such as Maleficent and Cruella, the story is reimagined from another character’s perspective…
A few examples precede that, like 2014’s Maleficent or 2015’s Cinderella…
(I suppose Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke gets a deserved nod here as well.)
For a children's movie, Maleficent makes one hell of a Vogue pictorial, eschewing the breakneck pacing expected of a PG Disney flick for the stern, art-house rhythms of Jean Cocteau's 1946 Beauty and the Beast.
Imagine that aforementioned Star Wars remake with the Emperor hugging Luke instead of trying to fry him with force lightning and you get the idea.
Much like Sam Raimi did in Oz the Great and Powerful , director Robert Stromberg evokes nightmarish, gothic imagery during times of wicked malevolence that is sure to have the wee little ones shaking in their booties.
It's clear immediately that first-time filmmaker Robert Stromberg isn't looking to reinvent the genre here, as Maleficent boasts a high-energy, larger-than-life sensibility that's reminiscent of such similarly-themed contemporary updates as Alice in Wonderland and Oz the Great and Powerful - with the movie stocked to the gills with impressive special effects, scenery-chewing performances, and an overall atmosphere of kid-friendly entertainment.
“Wicked” tweaked the black-and-white (and green) conflicts of “The Wizard of Oz,” and Sam Raimi’s “Oz the Great and Powerful” followed suit.
It’s mostly computer-generated, of course, playing to the fantasy and fears of the characters involved in the story as a character itself; this is the same kind of work that made both Oz the Great and Powerful and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland come alive in ways it would be very expensive to with a mere static set.
As a warning to you all, behold Maleficent, the “true story” behind Disney’s 1959 Sleeping Beauty, and the lesson not learned from Disney’s previous similar outings, Oz the Great and Powerful and Alice in Wonderland.
The sequences in which Maleficent slowly takes Aurora into her trust and her home have the delicate poignance of The Curse of the Cat People, in which former bad girl Simone Simon embraced little Ann Carter in the world of daydreams and butterflies.
She gets to sport the kind of turbaned headwear favored by 1940s movie stars – think Lana Turner in “The Postman Always Rings Twice” – plus those devilish twisting horns.
The first is that Maleficent is actually a radical pro-feminist take on the rape revenge fantasy genre — Disney’s I Spit on Your Grave (1978), if you will.
After one brief, unremarkable exchange with Aurora in the forest, Philip spends most of his time in an enchanted sleep, with M levitating him around like a comical prop, not unlike the corpse in Weekend at Bernie’s.
The scenery is vividly rendered, with tree creatures reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings and winged characters resembling those in Pan's Labyrinth.
Director Robert Stromberg is a visual-effects veteran both of action films (“The Hunger Games,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”) and magical suspense (“Pan’s Labyrinth”).
But magical fairy-tale elements still abound in the debut helming effort of Robert Stromberg, production designer on Avatar and a longtime visual effects artist whose credits include Pan’s Labyrinth, The Hunger Games and Life of Pi. “Let us tell an old story anew,” the film’s voiceover narration begins, setting a tone of once-upon-a-time with a twist.
Director Robert Stromberg—making his feature-length debut after an impressive effects career with credits ranging from “Pan’s Labyrinth” to “Life of Pi”— doesn’t skimp on the vibrant imagery that brings Maleficient’s world of oddball J.R.R. Tolkien-like figures, with talking trees and giddy pixies swirling about a mystical land.
Audiences may have flocked to see Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland or Robert Stromberg’s Maleficent , but it is the original Alice and Sleeping Beauty that audiences will be watching in 20 years’ time.
I found myself charmed by the likes of Cinderella, The Jungle Book and even Beauty and the Beast, while others like Tim Burton’s Dumbo and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland fell entirely flat and Maleficent turned a villain’s story into a repugnant and unwatchable trainwreck.
And that’s a shame, because some of the most compelling (though not top-grossing) “live action” remakes of animated films to come out of the Disney studios recently have been ones that jumped off from slightly less beloved titles (like “The Jungle Book,” “Pete’s Dragon,” and “Maleficent,” which retells “Sleeping Beauty” from the witch’s point of view) and created works that felt more like companion pieces, even subversions, than remakes.
Plus, when it goes bad it goes really bad ( Maleficent , Alice in Wonderland , Beauty and the Beast ).
Veer with questionable revisions or gaudy spectacle and you get the maligned Maleficent.