Maleficent
After about a 3 year hiatus from the movie industry, Angelina Jolie comes back with Maleficent, an incredible adaptation of the popular Snow White story but this time all focus was on the evil Queen. Have you ever wondered why villains are villains? Ever thought if villains at one point in time had an iota of goodness in them or what happened to them to become monsters? Personally, I do not care. Just let the hero win at the end of the day.
Maleficent was a happy and fun-loving fairy whom everybody liked in her kingdom until she was 16 and she fell in love with a boy named Stefan (Sharlto Copley). Stefan was an orphan who had little or nothing for himself and was determined to live the good life. The King of the human kingdom, after being injured by Maleficent in a war decided to enthrone whoever kills her. Stefan took on the task but was unable to kill Maleficent, instead he cut off her wings. Devastated by the betrayal, Maleficent goes dark and is filled with hatred. She turns a bird into a man named Diaval (Sam Riley) and she uses him as her eyes in the castle. As a result of his narcissistic and devious schemes, Stefan becomes king and he then goes on to have a child, Aurora. The baby’s christening was interrupted by Maleficent who after making a grand entrance places a curse on her that on her 16th birthday, she would prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and fall into a sleep like death and can only be awakened by true love’s kiss. The King entrusts Aurora in the care of three incompetent pixies and tells them to take her away for 16 years and a day. Maleficent secretly follows them and watches the child. Because of their incompetence, Maleficent began to play the role of a mother to Aurora (Elle Fanning).
I really don’t know why she did because she already cursed her but maybe it was a good thing that she did. Aurora grew up into a bright inquisitive girl who wondered about the world around her. Maleficent starts to feel affection for her, some sort of responsibility towards her. That’s probably what happens when you’ve watched someone grow into what they’ve become. She tries to revoke the curse but is unsuccessful. As fate would have it, after a series of events, Aurora goes to the castle on her 16th birthday and of course, she pricks herself. Maleficent was torn and hated herself for the hate she had towards Aurora. She apologizes and guess what, she kisses her. We all know from Frozen (I’m guessing all of us have seen it by now) that true love isn’t always what we think it is. She wakes up and all is well again but not before Maleficent and King Stefan engage in one last fight.
Angelina Jolie’s performance was intriguing, partly because we haven’t seen her on screen in a while and also because she tried to portray a villain. She carried the persona of the evil queen and also had the charisma. The fact that she started using some form of accent in the middle of the film was worrisome because it felt like she was trying to fit into character. As a villain she did not give us much to hold on to. In fact, the real villain was Stefan who did not have to try too hard for us to hate him. The special effects which were awesome by the way were blindly overshadowed by Jolie’s performance. She was just all over the place. Her costume portrayed her character well in that without her horns, she was the hero and with it she was the villain. Elle Fanning was all smiling and happy, she really did not have much to do. Nobody should be that happy in real life. The character that I liked the most was Diaval. He was a loyal and faithful servant to Maleficent but also made his thoughts known to her and whether she said it or not, she listened to him and he knew it.
Angelina Jolie made this movie, literally. It captured the basic Snow White story but would be forgotten in no time.
I’ll give the movie 3.5.
