Maleficent: Grading & Discussion SPOILERS

[Unicron]

Kind of surprised I haven't seen this yet, so I figured I'd go ahead and post it.

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-XO4XiRop0[/yt]

For my part, I regret to say I'm somewhat disappointed. This movie had a lot of potential, and much of it isn't fulfilled. There are a lot of important details that are ether glossed over or completely ignored in favor of visuals, though it seems the original script would have filled in some of the blanks.

 

[Admiral2]

B+

It would have been an A- but I took off style points because she didn't turn into a dragon. (Seriously, Maleficent is my favorite character from the original Sleeping Beauty and the scene where she turns into a dragon is my favorite part of the friggin' cartoon!) But, there was an dragon, and I liked the raven guy, so no more points off.

And Angelina nailed everything else about the character, including the new changed heart stuff. Looks like Disney's on a redeemed villainess kick. The Snow Queen's just misunderstood, Maleficent is misunderstood...I'm waiting for the Little Mermaid reboot where Ursula adopts an African orphan.

The huge down-note? Charlto Copley. His American English accent is horrible enough. I had no idea what the f--k accent he was supposed to be using in this movie.

Anywho, B-

 

[Kitty]

Terrible and extremely disappointing. Jolie's getting praise for her performance but I thought it was both overacted and underacted, the latter more due to the terrible script limitations.

I'm glad it's getting a lukewarm reception. It doesn't deserve the hype Disney's giving it.

Best part - Visuals were stunning, loads of CGI mostly done well. Elle Fanning was OK. Most of the other acting was mediocre at best (some of the accents were ... unstable)

Worst part - terrible script. Really terrible and unnecessarily so. Changed the whole damn story and characters and not for the better.

 

[od0_ital]

Flat, emotionless actin'.

Too much CGI.

Characters ignored for large gaps in the story.

And considerin' how much of it is set at night or in the dark, I'm glad I didn't waste money on the 3D release.

 

[Unicron]

Worst part - terrible script. Really terrible and unnecessarily so. Changed the whole damn story and characters and not for the better.

Agreed. The script is the weakest link, and that's a real tragedy (IMO) because some of the changes would be great if the execution was better. I think Angelina did a fine job but also that the script issues worked against her, because Maleficent's characterization isn't as consistent as it should be. The movie can't decide if she's truly become hateful and full of wrath for the most part, which would be quite understandable, or if she's only angry at the royal couple but not that far gone. For myself, I think the former would work nicely with the right execution and it would be a good base for Aurora to lead her back to a more heroic side. The film kind of tries to do this but doesn't give the concept what it deserves to work.

 

[trekkiebaggio]

Wrote a full review on my blog. I thought it was awful. The action sequences were cool and Jolie commanded the screen well but other than that...sheesh.

I thought it took far too broad a scope and it never really settled. I think I would have preferred it had Maleficent taken Aurora when she said "she'll die if these fools look after her" and then we spent a lot of time with her actually raising Aurora, which would have made it far more tragic when the curse eventually hit.

As it is it was pretty shallow.

I also didn't think that, given how paranoid Stefan was portrayed as being, he would allow his daughter to be raised so far out of his control.

Those fairies as well, they annoyed me so much.

 

[Gryffindorian]

Although the plot was lacking in depth, I really liked this movie and thought it was an interesting retelling of the fairy tale.

Maleficent is one of Angelina Jolie's more endearing roles; she plays a character who is neither completely good nor purely evil. She felt betrayed by her lover and was thereby driven by vengeance, later realizing that her rage was misdirected. She did have a soft spot for young Aurora, and her pet bird was rather compassionate.

I gave it a B+.

 

[Mr Light]

It was good, not great. My primary complaint is that she wasn't evil enough. I thought this was going to be the story of a villain from the villain's POV, but she was more misunderstood and just having one bad day

Also, the fairy kingdom was severely under-developed. Maleficient grew up among these people, yet in the entire movie she never actually TALKS to any of them and apparently had zero friends because she had to create a crow/human hybrid just to have someone to talk to. It would have worked a lot better if the crow character was a fairy guy she grew up with.

 

[Gryffindorian]

I found myself asking a few questions while watching the movie. If she was a very powerful fairy, why didn't she just grow back her wings? She practically cast an irreversible curse on a newborn, so her magical abilities must be super. And couldn't she have just teleported to King Stefan's castle instead of riding a horse?

 

[Admiral2]

I found myself asking a few questions while watching the movie. If she was a very powerful fairy, why didn't she just grow back her wings? She practically cast an irreversible curse on a newborn, so her magical abilities must be super. And couldn't she have just teleported to King Stefan's castle instead of riding a horse?

Wow. You were thinking way too hard watching this. I just accepted it as Disney-logic and relaxed.

 

[Unicron]

One could argue that most of Maleficent's magic is plant based, since we see her use that a lot in the early part of the film. It seems logical to me that it has limitations, even though the "unbreakable" curse was a silly plot device as used.

 

[Gryffindorian]

That, I'm willing to accept. She has some powers though she's not all-powerful. The same logic applies to other fantasy characters like Yoda, Gandalf, or Professor Dumbledore.

 

[Base_Delta_Zero]

A

I thought it was great. Thoroughly enjoyable beginning to end. Jolie nailed Maleficent and her character design was eerily spot on. She looks and sounds amazing. I found it amusing that a story told by Aurora after its relation to her by Maleficent portrayed everyone but Maleficent as a complete jackhole: the King was a powermad lunatic, the queen was a non-entity, the faerie godmothers were useless dunces, and the prince was a useless fop. Humanity in general were a bunch of stumblebums.

I would have been happy had the prince not shown up at the end of the film at all and it was just Maleficent and Aurora palling around in the faerie kingdom with their awesome raven sidekick.

A couple of things that popped up along the way:

-The blonde faerie never got to use her birthday wish. Maybe I'm misremembering Sleeping Beauty, but didn't the third faerie use her wish to change the curse from death to sleep after Maleficent left? Or maybe that was the intention, but the scene was cut/rewritten so as not to portray Maleficent as a child murderer by having her temper her own curse. Or maybe, since it is from her perspective, she just lied to Aurora about who did what during the cursing.

-Where were all of the horribly mangled bodies of soldiers crushed to death by tree-golems or impaled by 15 ft lances? Or the ones burned and brutalized by the dragon? They literally disappeared from the battlefield the moment the fight ended. I demand the horrors of reality in my faerie tales, Disney!

-Other than a "we need a prince in act 3" checklist requirement, he was pretty meh. I get why he was there and the contrast/message his one prompted action was trying to portray, but he needed at least one more establishing scene, I think. He definitely didn't need to be in at the end, either way.

-And HISHE need to do a bit where Maleficent flies up into the sky triumphant while we see the human kingdom in the background burning in the fires of civil war. The queen is dead. The king was just murdered by a faerie, who took the only blood heir. All those old nobles will be at eachother's throats in the ensuing succession crisis.

 

[Guy Gardener]

If Maleficent had tried that curse on Keyser Soze, we all know that he would have marched over to that crib and bashed his daughters brains raw with his own crown.

A more practical King of course would have just cut her fingers off.

Considering the war between fairy and humans, considering that the king pulled their leaders wings out... Didn't those three nonce fairy's seem like the Jews who worked for the Nazis in the Ghetto?

Collaborators and race-traitors?

Just trying to figure this out... Spinning wheels make thread and cloth?

16 years with no new clothes that are not imported?

The poor are just going to walk around naked since thread is now more valuable than silver.

 

[Stone_Cold_Sisko]

Enjoyable, primarily due to Anjelina Jolie. The way she looks, talks, acts, is sublime, almost iconic.

The rest of the movie... Meh.

Basically I was bored every time a scene focused on anyone other than Jolie. Agree with the comments above about a weak script.

 

[lurok]

^ This (that?).

Shame it wasn't a bit more camp. AJ was almost there.

 

[Snaploud]

\Just trying to figure this out... Spinning wheels make thread and cloth?

16 years with no new clothes that are not imported?

The poor are just going to walk around naked since thread is now more valuable than silver.

Yeah, that's always been my biggest criticism of Sleeping Beauty. There's no way the common people would give up spinning wheels on the off chance of saving the King's daughter. There would have been a revolt within days.

 

[wulfio]

I was hoping for a darker movie. With Angelina actually being evil for the movie. For those 2 or 3 minutes when Angelina was evil it was excellent though.

 

[RoJoHen]

This movie would have been all right if they had just went and completely disconnected it from "Sleeping Beauty." As its own story, it's okay, but as a companion to "Sleeping Beauty," it's horrible and doesn't make any goddamn sense.

I also think it completely missed the point of Maleficent's character and why she's as popular as she is. We don't want her to be redeemed. We don't want her to be a misunderstood hero. The reason Maleficent is awesome is because she's evil, and she loves being evil! She is a villain and needs to be stopped. That is what I wanted to see.

Unfortunately, this movie was clearly made for kids...kids who are probably too young to have ever seen "Sleeping Beauty" in the first place, and that's a shame, because the people who could have truly enjoyed this story would have been the adults.

I was also bugged by some of the more random name changes. The good fairies, for instance. They already had names; why did they need different names? Or Prince Philip's father. His name is King Hubert, not John. While not really a big deal, those kinds of arbitrary changes bug me, as they really serve no purpose at all.

 

[Gaith]

Honest Trailers, doing what it does:

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