Maleficent

For the last few years, a rather peculiar trend has infected the movie industry in regards to fantasy movies: the “retelling” of fairy tales. I’m not talking about bringing to the screen our childhood fairy tales like Disney Animation has done for almost a century; I’m talking about retelling this fairy tales as epic stories with the intention of giving them a more adult look and feel. This has been going on for the past two/three years, and it’s starting to bother me.

It started with Tim Burton’s “Alice in wonderland” (2010) and was followed by “Red Riding Hood” (2011). But it really became a “thing” with the simultaneous release of “Mirror Mirror” and “Snow white and the Huntsman” in 2012. The success of these two films gave way to “Jack the Giant Slayer” (2013), “Hansel and Gretel: Witch hunters” (2013), “Oz, the Great and Powerful” (2013), “La bete et la bêlle” (2014) and “Maleficent” (2014). But it doesn’t end there, there are several others in production: “Into the woods” and “Cinderella”. So, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon.

Many people has told me that this is insignificant and that I should not get so worked up about it because these are kids movies. Well, maybe. But my grievance over them goes beyond the fact that they are not particularly good.

Fairy tales work in a very peculiar way, which is radically different from the narrative mechanisms of high fantasy: simple story lines, childlike logic, archetypical characters… There is, obviously, some common ground for both mediums (fantastical lands, magic,…) but these are not so many as one might think. And so, by trying to turn fairy tales into high fantasy stories, what we are really doing is this Frankenstein monster which isn’t really a fairy tale nor a high fantasy, and ends up ruining both. 

When first I started thinking about talking about this, I thought of doing it through the reviews of both “Snow White and the Huntsman” and “Mirror Mirror”. But then I saw “Maleficent” and changed my mind.

As bad as “Snow White and the Huntsman” was, and as weird as “Mirror Mirror” could get, nothing could reach the level of stupidity of “Maleficent”; a movie that encapsulates everything awful about the “epic retelling” trend and abuses of every topic in the book of storytelling.

“Maleficent” is a retelling of Disney’s animated classic “Sleeping Beauty”, and tries to be an origin story for the main villain: Maleficent.

To understand why this movie is as bad as it is it’s necessary to talk a little about the original Disney classic. “Sleeping beauty” is the 16th animated film released by the Disney Animation Studios. It premiered in 1959 and since then, has become one of the most iconic Disney Animated Movies of all times.

This was a movie that spent almost a whole decade in production: the story work began in 1951, the voices were recorded in 1952, the animation production took from 1953 until 1958 and the score was recorded in 1957. So, as this clearly reveals, it was not a “fast product”. This movie was Disney’s attempt at creating a visual masterpiece. They strived for a certain artistic excellency and tried to create something unique and beautiful. This created a piece of an incredible artistic value: with its richly detailed backgrounds inspired in the Renaissance paintings (interchanging perspective with layering), its strictly horizontal and vertical orientation, and its beautiful score that adapts Tchaikovsky’s music for his ballet version of sleeping beauty.

Empty backgrounds for the movie

All this, coupled with a timeless story and some memorable characters, set a new standard for animation movies.

Amongst this memorable characters, the most memorable of all was, without doubt; Maleficent, the self-proclaimed mistress of all evil. With her fantastic design, her diabolical plans, and her awesome final transformation into a dragon, she has become one of the most iconic Disney villains of all time.

As you can see, the bar was set really high for a “reimagining”. For a long time, this kept the idea of retelling the sleeping beauty story at bay. But for some reason, in the late 2010’s someone thought that retelling the story of Maleficent (not the story of sleeping beauty) would be a good idea.

Maleficent, in the original movie, doesn’t have much of a background or backstory. She is first introduced in the baptism of Aurora, where she curses the baby to die by pricking her finger with a spinning wheel only because she feels slighted. She is basically evil; that’s how she’s described. The enjoyment of this character lies on her coolness: she is evil and has an incredible amount of fun being evil.

So, how do you tell the story of a character who is basically evil? By turning her the “goodie” of the movie, of course (I still can believe that anyone ever thought this could work).

With this movie, they wanted to create a big epic film filled with battles and magic, and with a big “strong-independent-woman” message behind it. And I really don’t think that the story they were “remaking” was the best medium for this.

So, what is the basic story for this “new” sleeping beauty movie? I’ll try and explain briefly.

Maleficent is a fairy (yes, she has wings) from the magical kingdom (the “Moors”) that collides with a human kingdom ruled by a bigoted king who wants to get rid of his magical neighbors. She grows up to be the most powerful and the kindest of her kind and becomes the protector of her kingdom. Because of this, when the human king attacks, she comes to the defense of the Moors and defeats (with the help of other creatures that I’m incapable to name) the humans by mortally wounding the king. In his wrath, the king offers the hand of his daughter and the throne of the kingdom to whomever can kill Maleficent. Stephan, a poor boy who grew up as a friend (and love interest) to Maleficent, corrupted by the promise of power, deceives Maleficent and cuts her wings off. And so, he becomes king. And she, in anger, becomes a “baddie” and crowns herself queen of the Moors. 

When Stephan has her first daughter, she breaks in the christening and curses the child. In response to that, the king decides to send off Aurora with the three good fairies to live in secrecy in the middle of the forest. But the three fairies turn out to be useless and can’t take care of the child properly. Because of this, Maleficent will start looking out for the child from the distance, and will end up creating an affective bond with Aurora. Because of this, she tries to lift up the curse, but she finds herself unable. Therefore she’ll have to find the way to save Aurora and bring back peace between the Moors and the Human Kingdom.

It’s even sillier than it sounds.

This movie has a tone of problems, but the worst part is that these are not only narrative problems; neither story, nor characters, nor visuals really work. Unfortunately, the characters are the ones that end up getting the worst of this deal.

Maleficent, the mistress of all evil, becomes just another spited woman who feels betrayed by a man. Really? Why every time Hollywood tries to give a backstory to an iconic female character ends up with this same story? (let’s not forget the train wreck that was Catwoman) I feel really affronted by this issue: there are a thousand reasons a female can decide to do something bad towards another person. To keep insisting on the “oh my god, a man treated me wrong and now I’m all bitter and evil” thing is insulting to the female population beyond measure. It’s instilling the idea that a woman’s life and character depend entirely on her relationship with men. But the worst of all is that this movie tries to be “empowering” to women. I’m about to be controversial, but mark my words: CERSEI LANNISTER IS A MORE EMPOWERING FEMALE CHARACTER than this. Why? because she is not written as a “female” character, she is written like a “human” character: she has flaws, obsessions, desires and overall characteristics that are indistinct to her gender. And that’s what every female character in fiction should do. That’s it, I had to say it.

The second obvious problem with their take on Maleficent is pretty easy to spot: she’s good now? The movie doesn’t even has the balls to go all out and portray a real villain. If you’re going to do this, what’s the point in focussing in this specific character? 

What makes the original character as epic and memorable is the fact that she is so bad ass and evil; she has so much fun messing with people’s lives that it’s compelling. Her schemes are downright cruel, and that is why she rocks. In the 1959 movie, she doesn’t try to kill the prince, she decides to lock him up until he is old and grey while his love sleeps in an immortal slumber, so when he finally gets the chance to awake her he’ll be too old to have any kind of sexual activity but she’ll be just as young as when he last saw her. That’s twisted. Taking the “evil” out of her is just ruining the fun of the character. Besides, she transformed into a huge dragon, I still can’t believe they skipped this in this remake.

But she is not the only character they messed up. I still don’t understand what they did to our beloved three good fairies. Somehow they’ve been transformed into three bumbling idiots. They are simply useless. Remember the fun upbeat fairies of the animated classic? Well, now they are just the most useless people in the universe. And someone thought this was a good change? There’s really nothing much else to say about them because this new interpretation does them a huge disfavor.

Aurora, on the other hand, continues to be just a dull character. One would think that they could have taken their time to fix that, but no, they needed more screen time to explain the incredible “complexity” of their new take on Maleficent. 

Last but not least, one remarkable aspect of this movie is the fact that every male character that’s in it is dumb, useless or downright evil. And poor king Stephan is the one that suffers the greatest. He didn’t have much character in the original, but it wasn’t needed. And I understand that this time he needed to be a bit more fleshed out. But what they did is just stupid. According to this version, he is a man corrupted by power and who ends up going mad because of it. The worst part is that he is a one note character: first he is ambitious, then he is mad. Nothing more to explain. One might think that the only way hollywood knows how to do female empowering movies is by stereotyping its male characters so that they fit this “men are all dicks” slot.

And to top all this: the actors are horrible. Even Angelina Jolie. Much has been said about her, but she has never been a top notch actress. She may have done some entertaining movies, but she is no Kate Winslet or Julianne Moore. And this is very noticeable here. She kind of holds her own when she only has to be there and function as a presence, but the moment she needs to put dramatic intensity the whole thing crumbles, and her acting becomes kind of silly. She definitely looks the part, but I don’t think she has the dramatic strength to pull it off.

Because of all this, the problems with the storyline are pretty much connected with the character problems. First of all, trying to justify that Maleficent is not the real baddie forces the storyline into some heavy contradictions and silly turns. Second of all, it feels forced and stupid, which doesn’t help at all.

On top of that, it has zero stylistic aspirations, and completely ignores that creative drive that motivated the original movie. Here, the main drive is getting as many people into the theaters, whilst in the original, the main drive was to create an artistic piece that could boast of both visual and narrative artistry. Because of this, the movie looks exactly like any other blockbuster out now. It has nothing distinctive in style or look. The CGI looks nice, true, but it’s utterly unoriginal.

Take a look at this two pictures. They both belong to the same scene;
the only scene that is exactly the same in both movies.

But the real problem for me lies in the fact that when you give an origin story to a villain, it generally tends to ruin them. Because the moment you uncover the veil of mystery around them they stop being interesting or scary; it takes the fun away. It’s almost like trying to make an origin story for the Nolan’s Joker. With this kind of characters, the less we know about them, the more interesting they are. And the worst thing an adaptation can do is make you question if the original material was really that good to begin with.

Its contradictions, it’s shifting tone, the poor acting and its lack of stylistic aspirations turn this movie into another mindless movie made to cash in money. And what’s worse; it ends up being more childish than the animated movie. It tries to go for a more mature and three-dimensional story, but fails completely at it.

The failure of this movie serves me to reaffirm my belief that the medium transfer needed to turn a fairy tale into a big fantasy epic is not as simple as most Hollywood executives believe. There is one core problem: fairy tale are quick and simple, it’s a pretty straightforward narrative; high fantasy is not. Both genres might share the use of magical elements and far away lands, but that’s about it. The complexity of the inner workings of good high epics demands a level of work and creativity that most studios won’t commit to. 

To transfer a fairy tale into a high epic you would need to create a whole new world; its specific geography (which fairy tales never do), a distinct inner working, a characteristic culture and language, etc… Otherwise, all you’ll do will be taking the more “spectacular” aspects of high fantasy (battles, extraordinary odds….) and shoe horn them in the fairy tale. All you’ll be doing will be putting a fairy tale on steroids.

What defines high fantasy such as “Lord of the Rings” or “Game of thrones” is not the great battles; it’s not even the magical creatures. It’s the capacity to create new complex worlds that feel as real as our own, and suck in the viewer/reader. It’s usually filled with a cast of thousands; there are many many characters in this type of stories. It’s the size and scope of the story and its complexity in terms of character, morals and values.

What defines a fairy tale, on the other hand, is the focus on the morals or “lesson” that is meant to get across. It usually takes place on a nondescript place (a castle, a forest…) in a nondescript time (a long time ago…) and it’s usually reduced to two-five characters at most.

All in all, I’m disappointed that this is the route fantastic cinema is taking right now. I’d be happier if they focussed on doing real high fantasy movies instead of trying to convert Disney fairy tales into huge epic stories that try to emulate the classics of high fantasy.