Disney's "Maleficent"

Sounds good, but too dark for Disney.

Honestly, the more I think about this movie, the more I'm convinced that it does have some potential. It'll almost be sad when they inevitably screw it up.

edited 5th Sep '13 7:48:07 PM by Mort08

They should have her just show up, sing a Villain Song and start screwing with people for no apparent reason.

But then audiences couldn't "relate to her".

God, who wants to relate to characters?

"Fairest of All" is an official Disney published tie-in book released a couple years ago that actually leads directly into the film and features a few other Disney references, including, amusingly enough, a scene with the Queen in saner times telling a young Snow White the story of Sleeping Beauty from Maleficent's perspective

Someone posted a passage from that on the Maleficent IMDB board a few days ago. I didn't realize it was something official. I need to find that now! I just finished watching Snow White.

edited 5th Sep '13 8:31:45 PM by Mort08

There is hope?!

Executives: We need the audience to "relate" to the main character.

Writer: The main character is literally a psychotic murderer. The most famous and historically petty one in our entire animated canon.

Execs: I said bring me more cocaine dammit!

that never stops the James Bond writers.

The ones before Craig, anyway.

I could have done without "The fairest of them all" too...I really don't want to "feel" for those villains, I want enjoy to hate them. Nothing against Disney creating a more layered villain in a new movie, but they shouldn't mess with the classics.

You can get away with having an unrelatable lead as long as you have a reasonably big group of relatable secondary characters, or in a Villain Protagonist's case, a Hero Antagonist.

edited 6th Sep '13 10:53:12 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

That's why I hope they avoid Wicked's pitfall and actually give the antagonists understandable reasons for doing what they do. That and have Maleficent actually start to go off the deep end while trying to get back at them. Have us sympathize with her and want to see her die at the same time. That would make it way more suspenseful, in my opinion; is it going to play out the way it originally did for her? Is something going to change? Maybe a little bit of both? What are we hoping for? Should we be hoping for that?

Yeah, I've been thinking way too much about this movie recently.

edited 6th Sep '13 12:34:03 PM by Mort08

Should we be hoping for that?

All signs point to 'No'.

Thread Hop: Nth-ing the "PLEASE GOD, NO WICKED TREATMENT" because I love Wicked, but I also think Disney shouldn't mess with a good thing. And there might actually be a movie of Wicked itself coming up (for real this time), so we don't need Elphaba and Elphaba!Maleficent.

Only a REALLY fantastic writer, director, and actress could pull off making Maleficent sympathetic while still keeping the spirit of Disney.

edited 6th Sep '13 3:46:06 PM by Sharysa

Well, we've got Angelina Jolie, so... 1/3?

2/3, maybe. This guy is working on the script.

GUY WHO MADE MR. FREEZE THE ULTIMATE ANTI-VILLAIN. EEEEEEEEEE!

Definitely 2/3.

(Spit-take).

My God, Paul Dini really has let himself go since the last photo I had seen of him. Maybe working in Ultimate Spider-Man consumes your body and soul, or something.

That fills me with some confidence. At least Dini knows you can make a villain sympathetic yet still evil.

The thing with "Wicked" is that there are bases for a "evil is good" rewrite. After all, Glinda did give away shoes she didn't own, and The wicked Witch of the West actually had an understandable reason to be angry with Dorothy. But Maleficent? The whole point of the character is that she has no reason at all to be evil, she just is. Her inability to understand love at all is even an important plot point of the movie.

Only in the movie, mind you :P

Soooooooooo, I think I might have a good angle for this movie that could potentially be saving this film.

What if everything described in the movie never happened the way it's been shown? In the end, we see the book being narrated by a Disney villain, told to a younger version of a Disney protagonist, to trick that person into believing that the villain has redeeming qualities?

No, wait, fuck, that would just make it worse.

EDIT: NO, WAIT! It's being told by a "follower of Maleficent" or whatever bullshit name the coven or sect or whatever it is has. They need the heart of a pure or whatever bullshit to resurrect Maleficent, so that she could rule the world again. Also, Maleficent would be a total raging lesbian, but so is the protagonist, and with the power of lesbian sex Maleficent is defeated and her horn is turned into the Bong of Destiny.

edited 9th Sep '13 5:20:37 PM by GaryCXJk

I was thinking that it'd follow her Self-Serving Memory.

edited 9th Sep '13 5:38:08 PM by lalalei2001

...You had me until the third sentence of that second part.

I think it would actually be kind of cool to have it end with someone resurrecting Maleficent (perhaps in a different time period) and unleashing her on the world again. I would say Diaval ^note That's what they're calling Diablo now, BTW should do it, but he'll probably be dead by the end of the movie.

edited 9th Sep '13 7:45:48 PM by Mort08

Why on earth did they change Diablo's name? They didn't even try to make it a convincing change.