Cast: Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Sam Riley, Ed Skrein, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, Lesley Manville, Michelle Pfeiffer
Director: Joachim Rønning
Writers: Linda Woolverton, Noah Harpster, Micah Fitzerman-Blue
Maleficent, which came out in 2014, is a film that I didn’t care for when I first saw it but appreciate a little bit more in retrospect. A live-action fantasy-drama that took the story of Sleeping Beauty and reimagined it from the point of view of its best character, I don’t think I gave enough credit to the movie at the time for the lengths it went to offer a different, modernised spin on its classic tale. In the five years since Disney has released a surge of live-action remakes such as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and The Lion King that have contented themselves with repackaging their stories into ‘updated’ formats that only depart from the source material on the most superficial level. Maleficent, in contrast, dared to reframe its story from the perspective of its villain, revealing her to be not an evildoer bent on wickedness and malice but instead a misunderstood antihero acting out of grief and vengeance for the injustices inflicted on her. The film also went a step further by subverting the narrative conventions as determined by fairy tales like Sleeping Beauty, shifting its emotional crux from the love of an inactive princess and her princely saviour to that of a forsaken girl and her surrogate mother. It’s still a rather messy, CGI-laden blockbuster and the sexual assault overtones are clumsily done, but dammit at least it tired!
The film’s best quality was of course Angelina Jolie, with her commanding screen presence, devilish demeanour, and razor-sharp cheekbones, as the bewitching faerie queen. It’s one of those pitch-perfect casting choices that I wish could have been realised more fully outside the confines of the existing Disney property it had to cater itself to (a category that also includes Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins, Idris Elba as Shere Khan, and Ian McShane as Blackbeard). Before departing the screen to assume the director’s chair, Jolie was one of the true movie stars of our age with a talent for turning the thinnest of material into something compelling (as in Wanted, Salt, and of course Maleficent). While Maleficent was a movie that told a complete story and therefore didn’t really demand any kind of follow up, any excuse for Jolie to return to the front of the camera and assume a leading role is welcome in my book, especially when the sequel in question promises to pit her against fellow icon Michelle Pfeiffer. What the movie sets up in its first few minutes is the makings of a juicy battle royale between the two matriarchs that promises to challenge and evolve the relationship the so-called Mistress of Evil shares with her adoptive daughter. There’s a gold mine of material here that the film flat-out squanders, choosing instead to get caught up in escapades with cutesy CGI creatures, overcomplicated geopolitical intrigue, and aimless world-building and mythology.
Aurora (Elle Fanning), having become Queen of the Moors at the end of the first film, is engaged to be married to Prince Philip (Harris Dickinson), whose parents rule the nearby kingdom of Ulstead. The happy couple see their nuptial union as a chance to bring their two kingdoms together so that human beings and magical creatures may live and prosper in peace. Aurora’s godmother Maleficent (Jolie) is less convinced and wholly disapproves of the idea. So too, we learn, does Queen Ingrith (Pfeiffer), a genocidal supremacist bent on wiping non-humans from the face of the Earth. Both mothers agree to a family dinner where they promise to be on their best behaviour, the best scene in the film. It is an irrepressibly hostile feast that Ingrith has furtively designed to trigger Maleficent’s worst impulses and Jolie is delightful through it all as her character struggles to maintain her composure while barely disguising how contemptible she finds everything to be. With the character dynamics and psychological mind games at play, this could almost have been a scene out of Game of Thrones had director Joachim Rønning been more willing (or able) to let the tension play out gradually and allow the actors to revel more in the intrigue. As it is, the dinner turns sour and erupts into open warfare being declared between the two kingdoms. This setup is more than the film needs for a satisfying, character-driven fantasy-epic, but then it keeps on going.
Not realising that the real meat of the movie could and should have been the conflict between the two leading ladies with Aurora, uncertain of her loyalties, caught in the middle, Maleficent is instead separated from them for the entirety of the second act and ends up meeting a community of faeries living in secrecy. Perhaps there was room in this narrative for Maleficent to find her own people and struggle to decide whether her place is with them or with her goddaughter, but that’s yet another thread the film never allows any real time to explore. The faeries, as led by the even-minded Conall (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and the hot-headed Borra (Ed Skrein) are raring for a good fight and so all talk immediately slips into discussions of age-old grievances and battle plans. Meanwhile back at the castle, time that could be spent on character development is instead devoted towards matters of conspiracy, including a mystery about whether Ingrith’s husband King John (Robert Lindsay) was cursed by Maleficent, and warmongering. Even if we were to accept that the movie has other things on its mind at this point besides the theme of motherhood that was so foundational to the first movie, Ingrith’s explicit racism for example, it cannot even bring itself to explore these ideas at any substantive level. Things are escalating to war ever quicker and the movie spares far too little thought for what is driving any of the characters there and how any of them actually feel about it.
It’s clear that the movie has an endpoint it wants to reach, that being a wedding which gets interrupted by a massive CGI-fest battle, and so it rampages towards its goal with reckless abandon. One would hope that the climax would at least be worth the forced contrivances it took to get there, but it’s all the same old torrent of standard action and generic imagery you could have expected in your typical live-action fantasy. The various magical creatures lack as much in texture as they do in personality and the action scenes are shot with the same standard framing and predictable camera movements as you’ve seen in countless other big-budget CGI flicks. When things inevitably come to head, there is no emotional payoff to be had because so little of what has occurred since the dinner scene has been driven by character. There was potential here for a story about a strong-willed and misunderstood mother whose relationship with her daughter is strained by an inability to let her go, but with all the political scheming, tactical planning and other divergences that got in the way, there was simply no room for it. The film doesn’t even work as a star vehicle for Jolie, who disappears for long stretches so that room can be made for characters who aren’t as interesting a plot that no one cares about.
★★
Aled Warren Films 