Review of Maleficent (2014) by Darian H — 23 Mar 2015

We all know the story of Sleeping Beauty. But do we know the story of Maleficent? The story of Sleeping Beauty started with the Grimm's brother's story. It then got made into a movie in 1959, becoming a kids favorite. In 2014 Robert Stromberg took this story and made a movie revolving around the villain, Maleficent. The 2014 adaptation of Maleficent added dimension to characters and more conflict for an interesting on screen experience. Characters got added and back stories got brought in. Overall this adaptation added dimension, interest, action and is a very well done version about 1959's sleeping beauty's villain.

Premise.

Starting with setting, the story and the movie both take place in a vague far away land. They both revolve around the king and queens daughter. In the Grimm story, the wise women give the child blessings, but the 13th woman was not invited, and out of jealousy brought a curse to the baby. She proclaimed that when the daughter was 15 she would prick her finger on a spindle and fall asleep for a hundred years. In the movie, fairies come to bring blessings but Maleficent shows up, and gives the same curse, with the change of age 16. In the story the whole kingdom falls under a sleeping curse. Years later, a Prince came to the castle and fought his way through the thorns into the kingdom. The king kissed the King and Queen's daughter, and she awoke. In the movie, just Aurora falls into a sleeping curse. Maleficent, who thinks she has cursed her forever, kisses her on the forehead and wakes her up. The conflict between the two stories stay the same, although the concept of true love is originally between the daughter and the prince but is now the daughter and surprisingly, the villain.

Maleficent.

One of the main differences between the Grimm story and the movie is the character of Maleficent. In the Grimm story you never hear much about her aside from her cursing the King and Queen's daughter, which cuts her out as pure evil. In the movie it starts out with her backstory and we see that she may not be all evil. She was betrayed by Stefan, who cut off her wings. In the Grimm version Maleficent is clearly evil, and never even gets named. The movie gives us more insight about Maleficent, her story, and why she is how she is. When we see her open up and begin to love Aurora it becomes much harder to see her only as a villain.

Actors in Maleficent include Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning and Sharlto Copley. The movie teaches messages of love, trust, and the problems with revenge. The message in the story is plain and simple, about how revenge is not the answer. The movie teaches many other themes as well, focusing on love, how you will regret acting on revenge and more. In the movie, action and conflict were added to make the on screen experience more enjoyable. "As you get into the details you have to tie ends together, by doing that you have to change certain scenes to fit other scenes. When you get into the details is when you start to see potential problems and we had to force fit this huge movie into four months prep. So we had to take the script and design the time we had to fit it. That being said, it's the same story, it's really just reworking the structure of how to shoot that story, and in doing that sometimes it changes some of the subtle detail", says Robert Stromberg, director of Maleficent.

The movie is a different and more meaningful interpretation of Sleeping Beauty. Although reviews were mixed, the movie stays some what faithful to the real story but changes the character of Maleficent, and adds emotional appeal and new characters.