As a child I rarely rooted for the heroes in movies. I usually sympathized with the villains, and was secretly disappointed when their dastardly plans failed to come to fruition. John Waters once said of The Wizard of Oz that he was the only child in the theatre who was sobbing when Dorothy clicked her heels to go home to that “sepia farm, with those smelly farm animals and that aunt who was dressed badly.” And did anyone ever prefer Glinda the Good Witch to The Wicked Witch of the West? I felt the same way when Prince Phillip killed Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty (1959). Film heroes just seemed so boring in comparison, while the villains always had interesting backstories, the best lines, and the most charismatic personalities. With Disney movies, most of the villains were properly abhorrent, but on occasion they were the ones whose corner I was firmly camped out in. The wicked stepmother in Cinderella was no prize, but the Queen from Snow White was far more intriguing than the simpering high-pitched victim who did nothing but clean the dwarves house and be scared in the woods. I frequently loved these fabulous haxan stunners more than the little Pollyannas waiting for their princes to come.
Maleficent was always the true star of Sleeping Beauty. The king and queen were practically invisible, and though the three fairies were charming and funny, Aurora herself was quite the dim bulb dullard. Even the studio seemed to recognize this as Maleficent had the most screen time of any character in the film. The animation came most alive whenever she was around, even her evil crow sidekick had personality to spare, she had wavy horns on her head, all-black flowing robes, an ornate staff, and a hot prince locked up in her dungeon to torment for fun. What’s not to love?!
When Disney announced that they had a new film focused on my favorite villain, and that they had pegged Angeline Jolie to play the title role, I lost all patience for it to come out. With her bold features, and having prophetically won her Academy Award 15 years previous while styled as Maleficent (when she had that Flowers In The Attic moment with her brother on the red carpet), it felt like her starring as this character was foretold in the stars. Little did I know that the film would fuse her altruistic mother-of-many children persona with this villainess to create a pseudo-feminist origin story that robs Maleficent of her evil and replaces it with a deep-seated desire for love and motherhood. After seeing the film, Beneficent seemed like a more appropriate title.
The film begins by telling us that she was happy and pleasant as a child; the most powerful fairy in a land divided between the normal human landscape with it’s castle and village, and the unsettling moors with it’s rabble of magical species rifling about as an affront to their human neighbors. Bitterly divided due to the humans’ intolerance, Maleficent becomes our tortured heroine, a victim of said intolerance, once the king sets out to destroy the fairy land. Envious and fearful of her tremendous power, the king offers a price for her demise. Her childhood friend whom she spared years before when the magical creatures found him invading the moors to steal precious stones from their pools, eventually accepts the king’s offer to destroy her in exchange for ascension to the throne. So he cuts off her wings while she sleeps, and abandons her. It is this act that eventually gives rise to her placing a curse on his newborn child after he has become king.
MALEFICENT