Maleficent
Jun. 12th, 2014 06:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI saw Maleficent! Holy uncanny valley, Batman, if they were going to use that much CGI I don’t know why they didn’t just go ahead and get rid of the live action component.
Having said that, I think the visuals bothered me more because they were really the most interesting thing about the movie. Some of the scenes where Maleficent shows Aurora the moor are quite lovely, like the fairies skating across the water to turn it into ice (Fantasia shout out!). But as a whole I thought the movie dragged, and it really put too many eggs in the message basket (true love is not necessarily romantic love!), especially given that Frozen portrayed the same message in a more original and interesting way.
We get it, Disney, you’ve repented of your sins in glorifying love-at-first-sight romance as the path to One True Love. It would be nice if you could have expressed this without committing character assassination on everyone but Maleficent and Aurora. I'm particularly bitter about how they made the good fairies a trio of raging incompetents.
I also was not a big fan of the fact that Maleficent tells an entirely different story than Sleeping Beauty. If it had just billed itself as a retelling of Sleeping Beauty the fairy tale that would be one thing, because really the only thing I demand of a Sleeping Beauty retelling is that a person falls into an enchanted sleep and gets kissed awake, and this movie had that element.
But this is not a retelling of Sleeping Beauty the fairy tale, it’s a weird AU version of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty that suggests that the original version never happened. I get that it would be difficult to construct a movie around Maleficent’s original characterization - how much depth can you get out of a petty fairy putting a curse on someone for petty reasons because sometimes that’s what fairies do? But it seems cheap to make a movie that purports to be about a character who behaves like that, but is actually about a completely different character in a completely different story, who happens to have similarly-shaped horns.
On the bright side, at last my darling Elle Fanning has gotten a role in such a major movie! Maybe more people will start casting her in better movies.
Having said that, I think the visuals bothered me more because they were really the most interesting thing about the movie. Some of the scenes where Maleficent shows Aurora the moor are quite lovely, like the fairies skating across the water to turn it into ice (Fantasia shout out!). But as a whole I thought the movie dragged, and it really put too many eggs in the message basket (true love is not necessarily romantic love!), especially given that Frozen portrayed the same message in a more original and interesting way.
We get it, Disney, you’ve repented of your sins in glorifying love-at-first-sight romance as the path to One True Love. It would be nice if you could have expressed this without committing character assassination on everyone but Maleficent and Aurora. I'm particularly bitter about how they made the good fairies a trio of raging incompetents.
I also was not a big fan of the fact that Maleficent tells an entirely different story than Sleeping Beauty. If it had just billed itself as a retelling of Sleeping Beauty the fairy tale that would be one thing, because really the only thing I demand of a Sleeping Beauty retelling is that a person falls into an enchanted sleep and gets kissed awake, and this movie had that element.
But this is not a retelling of Sleeping Beauty the fairy tale, it’s a weird AU version of Disney’s Sleeping Beauty that suggests that the original version never happened. I get that it would be difficult to construct a movie around Maleficent’s original characterization - how much depth can you get out of a petty fairy putting a curse on someone for petty reasons because sometimes that’s what fairies do? But it seems cheap to make a movie that purports to be about a character who behaves like that, but is actually about a completely different character in a completely different story, who happens to have similarly-shaped horns.
On the bright side, at last my darling Elle Fanning has gotten a role in such a major movie! Maybe more people will start casting her in better movies.
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Date: 2014-06-12 10:40 am (UTC)I know, right? I think they were meant to be useless and resentful as a way to amuse the adult viewers, but I came away from that thinking - uh, Disney, you gave Aurora a neglected and abusive childhood, was that the PLAN?
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Date: 2014-06-12 03:12 pm (UTC)But seriously, the fairies were probably the least funny comic relief characters I've seen in a long time. I really don't think they thought that subplot through.