MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL: Magic Does Its Best To Shine Through An Unremarkable Sequel

In preparation for the release of Maleficent: Mistress of Evil I decided to rewatch the 2014 film that spawned this sequel (yes for those of you playing at home, Disney decided to make a sequel 5 years after the original, which is usually Warner Bros. signature move.) And in my rewatch, I found myself often bored by the film, as it attempted clumsy homages to the original Sleeping Beauty. The CGI was lackluster and at times unsettling (I don’t want to see fairy-Imelda Staunton, no matter how much I love her.)

However, when the film broke away from Sleeping Beauty, when Maleficent began to grow fond of Aurora in a relationship where Maleficent still found some disdain that morphed slowly into love, I was enthralled. It was a genuinely endearing experience, watching Maleficent turn from foe to friend because of her inability to resist Aurora’s cheerful personality. And when the conflict arose of Maleficent having to tell Aurora that it had been she who cursed the princess, things just got juicer and more fun to watch.

Maleficent was a flawed but endearing film, and Angeline Jolie and Elle Fanning were marvelous together. The sequel missed the mark on what was the strength of the first, and stumbled its way along its two hour runtime because of it.

Blank Slates Can Be Dangerous

With Maleficent ending in the same sequence (more or less) as the original Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil was a chance for the writers to explore what happens next. They have a blank slate and can take Maleficent anywhere they wish. Maleficent: Mistress of Evil opens on the proposal of Prince Phillip (Harris Dickinson) to Aurora (Elle Fanning) who has been queen of the Moors, the land of the fairy people for the last 5 years.

Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) is displeased by the union, not only because it means interacting with humans, but because it may mean losing Aurora. After a disastrous dinner party that results in the king being cursed to sleep, the Queen (Michelle Pfeiffer) declares war on the people of the Moors. Maleficent is discovered after the dinner party by creatures like her, who call themselves “darkfae”, and she learns that they are planning an assault on the humans during the wedding of Phillip and Aurora.

It’s a lot isn’t it? I know! This information overload and Maleficent’s desire to expand its fictional fantasy world is a deep trap that the film falls into, and where it loses its audience along the way. When Maleficent goes off with the other…maleficents to learn her heritage, a winged Chiwetel Ejiofor tells her about the origin of her people, and that she’s also kind of a phoenix. Or something. Here’s the thing: audiences love fantasy. We know this from the success of Game of Thrones, Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings series.

But we don’t come to Maleficent: Mistress of Evil for deep world building and mysterious prophecy, we come to see Angelina Jolie sink her teeth into the role of Maleficent. To see her grin slyly and say “Well, well, well” in that breathy tone that captures what we love about the character in the first place. Her suave candor mixed with her dangerous power just makes her cool. Jolie has more than enough charisma and star power to carry this film on her back (wings?) without the subplots of Maleficent’s origins that make us want to scream “Just do some green magic already!” But Maleficent 2 feels like an example of a studio that thinks epic fantasy is a mandatory selling point, so they have to use it.

What Could Have Been (An Almost Is)

Like its predecessor, when Maleficent 2 focuses on the relationship between Maleficent and Aurora, it gets interesting. During the aforementioned disastrous dinner sequence, it’s an absolute delight to watch a black-clad and winged Jolie have a snide-remark-contest with the white-clad Pfeiffer. It feels like the only point in the film when the dialogue is fun for the sake of entertainment, and not rigid for the sake of plot.

If the film had focused solely on Maleficent having to deal with her losing Aurora, or feeling like she was being replaced by Phillip, we would have been treated to an interesting character study. Maleficent cares deeply for Aurora (she still calls her “beasty” which absolutely melts my heart) and it feels like the writers lack characters, or their characters relationships to each other, that takes this film where it does. When a film doesn’t have faith in itself, how can the audience?

There’s Still Magic

With all of my qualms with Maleficent‘s insistence on being a sprawling fantasy film, I couldn’t help but be wowed by some of its visuals. Maleficent shows much more confidence in its CGI than in the first film by showing us new magic by the “evil” fairy. Many of the scenes of her flying are a true rush to experience (I saw it in IMAX and I encourage you to do the same) but Maleficent’s home continent, a place that contains tundras, forests and deserts all on the surface of a small island, was a dazzling spectacle to behold. During the final battle (why is there a final battle?) Pfeiffer‘s Queen uses a red dust to injury the fairy creatures, resulting in beautiful red accents of smoke (pictured below) throughout scenes of a castle under siege.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is a film that, like most of Disney’s live action remakes, might fizzle into the murky depths of obscurity to a place barely remembered by the public, but it’s one that I might find myself resisting just to watch Jolie do her thing. It’s a movie that feels at war with itself, but when the right side breaks through, it can be something beautiful, like the film that came before.

Did you like Maleficent: Mistress of Evil? Let me know in the comments below!

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