Maleficent (2014)
Directed by Robert Stromberg
A beautiful, pure-hearted young woman, Maleficent has an idyllic life growing up in a peaceable forest kingdom, until one day when an invading army threatens the harmony of the land. She rises to be the land's fiercest protector, but she ultimately suffers a ruthless betrayal – an act that begins to turn her heart into stone. Bent on revenge, Maleficent faces an epic battle with the invading King's successor and, as a result, places a curse upon his newborn infant Aurora. As the child grows, Maleficent realizes that Aurora holds the key to peace in the kingdom – and to Maleficent's true happiness as well.
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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?
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 .
(I suppose Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke gets a deserved nod here as well.)
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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.
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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.