Review of Maleficent (2014) by Martin O — 20 Mar 2015

It has been said that there is an inherent danger in giving a movie villain a back-story,, history, humanity. childhood. It removes the mystery , fun.

It allows the viewer to empathise with the villain like an audience facilitated "Stockholm syndrome." (This was apparently the most widely accepted grievance of Rob Zombie's 2007 "remake" "reboot" version of John Carpenter's Halloween.) Which I totally disagree with. I always felt confused with the original and CONFUSING DOES NOT EQUAL SCARY) And this is the overwhelmingly obvious and horribly disasterous flaw in Disney's "reimagining" of the story of Sleeping Beauty. I enjoyed the idea of telling the storyline in which we all remember vaguely the classic tale which would now be told through the perspective of the antagonist, the title character Maleficent. I would have been perfectly fine with that, if that was what the movie was about. The concept of learning the original storyline from a new and unexpected perspective would have been again, well, fun. But that is not what happened. Once again the original source material was perfectly apt as long as it was simply told from another more interesting perspective. But alas, they then had to go further and completely change the character to the point that she lost all credibility, portrayed as a physically and emotionally damaged child, later becoming what could only be described as full-blown garden variety manic-depressive by placing a curse out of anger on the child of the man who had shunned and lied to her as an adolescent (for no necessary reason) only to try to take back the curse half way through the movie. Her moods and motives and subsequent actions swing and change so often that she ends up looking more like an emotionally distraught case study for bi-polar disorder. At least Mrs. Angelina Jolie was amazing both in form and action as the title character. I must admit I alway had always hoped of seeing her in a villainous role. SO at least I got my wish, even if it ended up being a curse.