Maleficent

Back in the 40’s and 50’s it was relatively easy to produce a classic children’s movie. First you got a damsel-in-distress and a hero to rescue her. Handsome princes were readily available as the prince business wasn’t exactly a growth industry.

Villains of course were even easier. The only requirement for being a fantasy villain was to be able to play your part with style and to die with flair for the dramatic. You didn’t even need a name, and when you got one it was more of a label than a name. Everyone back then knew why “Evilynn” didn’t get invited to the prom.

    Then things changed. Darth Vader was the ultimate bad guy, that is until we found out he was a daddy and that the only reason he was evil was because the emperor gave him some really bad advice.

    Of course it was the Twilight series and Wicked that changed the villain biz. Instead of Bella Lugosi (or the chiropractor that substituted for him after he died) or Christopher Lee, we have Cedric Digory post Harry Potter running around as Edward, a vampire putting the moves, but not the bite, on  a girl (interestingly enough) named Bella.

    Margret Hamilton’s delightfully infamous Wizard of Oz character has changed too. Instead of “ The Wicked witch of the West” she is now Elpaba, presumably because Ms. “Of the West” just doesn’t sound right. Her sister briefly considered changing her name to Consuelo Marie but she had a fatal household accident before she could file the papers . It completely changes the story to consider the villain as a real person.

    Maleficent is a movie that gives us 50’s era viewers a little culture shock. Maleficent doesn’t start out being …well… maleficent. She starts out as a nice fairy child whose only problem is that her parents for no understandable reason gave her a rotten name. I am at a loss to understand why, since there is no indication she actually did anything bad at this point. Its sort of like calling Anakin Skywalker Vader before he earns the dark helmet. Just to be fair, we‘ll call her Shirley in this article.

    Shirley is sort of big for a fairy and there is the matter of her black horns and wings. This of course was why she had to be home schooled after being expelled for violating the draconian school dress code. Of course I know of a school where that wouldn’t have mattered. Still, she loved her home and all the inhabitants of the forest she lived in.

    Of course we need a bad guy. We have two. One is the local king who apparently had an army and no  legitimate enemy to fight, so for no justifiable reason he attacks Shirley’s forest while the theme from Billy Jack plays in the background. He was of no match for Shirley’s magic and her Ent friends visiting from Gondor and was soundly defeated.

    The sonofa… was Stefan. He met Shirley when they were both kids and they sort of hit it off. He wound up giving her what he said was a true love’s kiss™,  only the truth was he was just about the age where he wanted some tail.

    In later years Stefan turns out to be more maleficent than… well you know. In order to get in good with the king, Stefan visits Shirley and slips her a roofie. He intends to kill her but takes her wings instead. The king is pleased and Stefan gets his job.

    I thought Shirley took things rather well considering. I would have cursed Stefan with incurable Erectile Dysfuction. I would also have convinced the queen she would be better off being a Lesbian than to be married to that jerk. Not something you’d see in a Disney movie but I figure if Stefan is going to act like a …

    We now have a few additions to our story. First there is Dival the crow. Male… Shirley saved his life by turning him to a human. (I would have chosen a female crow). Dival is not too useful as a guy so she turns him back into a crow so he can spy on Stefan. He gets turned back to a guy so he can report what he sees. Dival gets changed in form almost as much as Darrin Stephens got zapped by Endora, Maurice, and Serena

    Next we meet the three fairies, one of which happens to be Delores Umbrage, one of Harry Potter’s nemesis’s. they visit the castle to give their blessing to Aurora, Stefan’s newborn daughter. This sequence is more or less by the book. Shirley shows up and lays the spinning wheel curse on Aurora. I guess Shirley has to have one evil moment to fulfill her contract with Disney.

    Just when you think this story is getting on track, Aurora is sent away to protect her from the curse. The weird part is that it is Shirley who protects Aurora from the three idiots sent to protect her from Shirley. Also, here is a prime example of why you should never ever check the checkbox that makes your curses irrevocable. Shirley starts to care for Aurora and tries to cancel the curse, but of course that would cancel the rest of the movie.

    Now Shirley must protect Aurora from her from her own curse. Shirley runs into a prince looking for work. Since it is too late for him to even introduce himself to the princess on Facebook, Shirley knocks him out and drags him into the castle with a win guardian leviosa  spell.

    Of course to break the spell, you need a fresh prince. You can‘t really buy a frozen prince(appropriately found next to the frozen vegetables)  at the store and expect him to be any good at breaking evil curses.  That’s ok though. Fortunately, we have bent the rules so much that the true love’s kiss™  is no longer gender specific.

    Even though Aurora has been reawakened, we need a big ending battle. Stefan is still insane with anger against Shirley because she….(uh, did they explain why Stefan hated Shirley? I don’t think so.)  Oh well. Shirley gets her wings back, Dival gets promoted to a dragon, Aurora becomes queen, and Stefan gets a nice dish of Just Desserts, with lots of whomping cream.

    Although I must applaud Disney’s progressive ideas about women in movies like this and of course Frozen, I honestly don’t think a reimagined Cinderella is going to work.