When I first saw the trailers for Maleficent, I was pretty curious. I've never really enjoyed tragic villain origin stories, but it sounded like it could be interesting. When I saw it... my hopes were crushed.
For starters, her entire reason for villainy is over a man's betrayal. A really nasty betrayal, but still betrayal. That alone set off some red-flags for me, not just because it needlessly demonizes Stefan but also because these sort of stories always try so hard to make the villain sympathetic they turn everyone else into a monster. That's why I don't really like Freudian Excuse as a trope. Stefan's cruelty is used to justify Maleficent's evil, but at the same time he's just shown as a monster who changed out of greed... which sort of messes with the whole "tragedy makes you evil" thing.
But what really, really annoyed me about this movie is something I've never see anyone else talk about. Needing to vent about it is why I made this review in the first place. The main reason I was interested in this movie is because I hoped it'd be something similar to Wicked, where we see the character's descent into villainy. In this movie? None of that character development existed. Seeing her turn was the main draw for me, and it was covered in about a paragraph of exposition. Maleficent loses her wings and suddenly she's evil- that's not a cool story, that's the plot synopsis of a cool story. We should've seen her slip into evil over the course of the film, not just leap into it. I didn't care to see her relationship with Aurora because at that point I'd lost all interest in the storytelling and character arcs.
The main highlight was Diavolo. He was fun. Other than that, this movie just had very little to make me care about it, from the overused plot tropes to the rushed Face–Heel Turn. This movie is the reason I refuse to watch Cruella- burn me once, I'm not going near the fireplace again.
Not really my cup of tea
When I first saw the trailers for Maleficent, I was pretty curious. I've never really enjoyed tragic villain origin stories, but it sounded like it could be interesting. When I saw it... my hopes were crushed.
For starters, her entire reason for villainy is over a man's betrayal. A really nasty betrayal, but still betrayal. That alone set off some red-flags for me, not just because it needlessly demonizes Stefan but also because these sort of stories always try so hard to make the villain sympathetic they turn everyone else into a monster. That's why I don't really like Freudian Excuse as a trope. Stefan's cruelty is used to justify Maleficent's evil, but at the same time he's just shown as a monster who changed out of greed... which sort of messes with the whole "tragedy makes you evil" thing.
But what really, really annoyed me about this movie is something I've never see anyone else talk about. Needing to vent about it is why I made this review in the first place. The main reason I was interested in this movie is because I hoped it'd be something similar to Wicked, where we see the character's descent into villainy. In this movie? None of that character development existed. Seeing her turn was the main draw for me, and it was covered in about a paragraph of exposition. Maleficent loses her wings and suddenly she's evil- that's not a cool story, that's the plot synopsis of a cool story. We should've seen her slip into evil over the course of the film, not just leap into it. I didn't care to see her relationship with Aurora because at that point I'd lost all interest in the storytelling and character arcs.
The main highlight was Diavolo. He was fun. Other than that, this movie just had very little to make me care about it, from the overused plot tropes to the rushed Face–Heel Turn. This movie is the reason I refuse to watch Cruella- burn me once, I'm not going near the fireplace again.