Maleficent

[bookworm]

I'm not sure quite what to make of this.

[Metal15]

I'm thinking it'll be a dud. I can't imagine this remake of a classic cartoon will go anywhere. :/

[~JCGJ~]

I thought the "Remake a Fairy Tale" fad died off with "Mirror Mirror..."

[The Top Crusader]

It looks weird and I don't like it.

[Knight Fisher]

This coupled with the live action Cinderella marks a disturbing trend.

[bookworm]

I didn’t have the interest to go see this on my own, but a friend offered to take me for my birthday so I saw it.
I actually liked it quite a bit. As far as completely unnecessary prequels go, it wasn’t bad at all. Though it wasn’t actually a prequel as much as a retelling.

I had meant to watch Sleeping Beauty before, since I’ve only seen it once years ago and remember nothing about it, but didn’t get around to it so I’ll watch it sometime after. Until then I won’t know how to think about how it fits in, if it does at all, with the original story, but at least as a stand alone movie it’s pretty decent.

[jelly]

The movie pretty much left me with one thought:

Male-frozen-icent. (If you've seen it, you'll get it.)

I'm all for this new trend of strong, independent female roles in the traditionally conservative Disney canon. But I don't want to see the pendulum simply swing in the opposite extreme. Okay, so a Disney princess doesn't always need a Prince to rescue her. But does every single male character have to be completely and totally useless or inept? When's the last time Disney has given us a strong male role model? Aladdin, maybe? Tangled, if we're being generous? I think Prince Charming is dead.

[Kait]

But does every single male character have to be completely and totally useless or inept?

Well now you just have a taste of what it's like to constantly see characters of your gender be completely and totally useless or inept, as a matter of course. Sucks, doesn't it.

As for movies with male leads recently:
Monsters University
Wreck-It Ralph
Arjun: The Warrior Prince


And I would honestly argue that the male leads they've had in recent movies have NOT been useless and inept. I'm not sure where that's coming from. Because the central storyline and action takes place around the women in the movie, the men are suddenly useless because they aren't the main deal?

Kristof wasn't useless. He wasn't SUPER MACHO NO FEELINGS MASCULINE, he was an actual character with depth and nuance who was on the more sensitive side. But he wasn't useless. He was an active part of the story and didn't sit around waiting to be rescued from his castle.

And with Tangled, Flynn was again, a primary part of the action in the movie and I would certainly never say he was useless.

I haven't seen Brave, so I can't comment there. And neither have I seen this movie.

But let's be real: Male characters haven't gone away. They aren't useless or inept. They just haven't been the main driving force behind some of the more recent Disney narratives. And even if they have it never ceases to amuse me that, that fact becomes the primary criticism from people when women have been complaining about the same thing for years and years and we just hear "Don't be so sensitive about it. It's just a movie. Blah blah blah."

/feministrant

[jelly]

I knew you'd jump on this thread.

My comments about all the male characters being useless or inept was specifically about Maleficent. I wasn't making any broad or paranoid claims about the state of movies in general. I loved Tangled. I loved Wreck-It Ralph. Heck, I'm the only one on these forums who will even defend Brave. And of course I loved Frozen. (I feel like you're projecting a dislike of Kristof on me, which is completely uncalled for. I never accused Kristof of being useless, and you don't need to tell me why Kristof was great.)

But Maleficent suffered from several things, one of which was a disappointing waste of character potential in the male characters. The movie didn't just waste male characters, though... it hated them. (There's a pivotal scene that stands in as a metaphor for rape, after which all male characters become entirely mistrusted by the film itself.) At best, that's poor artistic integrity. Especially in a fantasy environment that points so strongly towards redemption. Kait, you should probably see the film first before defending it. Not that the movie's bad because of it... it's just a noteworthy critique.

[Kait]

You said:

I'm all for this new trend of strong, independent female roles in the traditionally conservative Disney canon. But I don't want to see the pendulum simply swing in the opposite extreme. Okay, so a Disney princess doesn't always need a Prince to rescue her. But does every single male character have to be completely and totally useless or inept? When's the last time Disney has given us a strong male role model? Aladdin, maybe? Tangled, if we're being generous? I think Prince Charming is dead.

Emphasis mine. I definitely read all of that as speaking to the recent trend of strong female roles and secondary male roles. You didn't mention Maleficent at all in that paragraph and actually were discussing Disney princesses (which Maleficent is not). You also seemed to feel like Disney hasn't had any "strong male roles" lately, which is why I went into Kristof and Tangled. They are strong male roles ... they just aren't the primary roles. I wasn't trying to project any dislike on to you, just to rebut the idea that there haven't been any strong males lately. Sooo that's what my post was about. The trend, which is what *I* thought that paragraph was about. Apparently not.

I wasn't defending the movie because I haven't seen it. I was defending the "new trend."

[snubs]

The movie pretty much left me with one thought:

Male-frozen-icent. (If you've seen it, you'll get it.)

=p Haha, this made me literally laugh out loud (and that is rare with text)

[jelly]

I wasn't defending the movie because I haven't seen it. I was defending the "new trend."

I love the new trend. It's what gave Brave and Frozen so much life. But trends can quickly go off the deep end. Something that's a really good thing can, in reckless excess, suddenly become a bad thing. Maleficent essentially does the same thing as Frozen, except it takes it too far. So my concern is not with the trend, but the damage that can come from running the trend into the ground.

[bookworm]

Of course there’s going to be hints of the current trend, it’s unavoidable since this is from the same studio, but I didn’t get the impression that it was an intentional statement in this movie. I don’t think they made a thematic decision of ‘Not a single decent guy!’ I think there weren’t any simply because there aren’t any in this story. The two main characters are female, the movie is about their relationship and therefore focused primarily on them. There are no notable male characters, not because it’s anti-male or pro-female, but just because that’s how this story is.

[jelly]

There are no notable male characters, not because it’s anti-male or pro-female, but just because that’s how this story is.

I certainly don't think Disney or the creators of this particular film are in any way "anti-male" (although I'm certainly pleased that they are pro-female), however I think you're wrong about there being "no notable male characters." Stefan is a very important character to the film. As children, his and Maleficent's relationship is what signals a potential for peace and harmony, virtues that Maleficent shapes her identity around and places her faith in. Then, when the film pulls a Lord of the Rings-esque fantasy trope ("Men are weak and will always give into temptation"), Stefen ceases to become a relatable character and instead becomes a symbol for man's inevitable corruption, justifying Maleficent's character transformation into a sympathetic villain. In this metaphorical context, the fairy world is an idealized representation of femininity and the human world is a demonized representation of masculinity. This is confirmed when

Prince Phillip shows up and consequently becomes one of the most useless characters ever conceived. Like seriously, he serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. You don't write characters who serve utterly purpose to your story unless you're trying to play some "trick," in this case, stealing the climax from Frozen with an underlined thesis statement: "A Princess doesn't need a Prince." Which is all well and good, except that Maleficent goes out of its way to demonize the Prince at every turn.

Again, none of this is inherently bad, except that it was all pulled off with little or no artistic integrity. It came off more like a political societal agenda than a provocative fairy tale rendering, which is a tragic misstep for a studio like Disney. The impression I got was one of blatant intentionality.

[bookworm]

I think you're wrong about there being "no notable male characters." Stefan is a very important character to the film.

I agree; I thought that was what you were saying. That all the males were bad or useless.

As for Phillip, that supports my take, not yours I think.

Remember that this is a prequel/retelling of Sleeping Beauty, not just the next Disney movie telling whatever story they want. If it was, then you would be absolutely correct in your assessment. This dude is dropped in out of nowhere and does absolutely nothing, therefore the message is obviously that men are useless.
However, in this context, that is not the message I think it gives at all. I can definitely see where that message can be seen, but I think it comes from trying to pull that message out of the story rather than the story sending that message out.

This story is all about Maleficent and her relationship with Sleeping Beauty, and how it was misrepresented in the original story. Now in the original story, the Prince is the hero. He wakes Sleeping Beauty. So in this version he had to be there, there wasn’t a way around it. But keeping that part the same would have been a less complete Maleficent reinvention. They wanted as much as possible to hinge on her, so of course they wanted her to be the one to save Sleeping Beauty. So the reconciling of the necessary prince but the desired Maleficent heroine was to ostensibly keep the prince’s part, but add on after it details left out of the original story. So his turning out to not be the savior wasn’t because they didn’t want a man to be the hero, as such, but because they wanted to keep on their narrative of Maleficent being the guardian and eventual savior of Sleeping Beauty.

Prince Phillip shows up and consequently becomes one of the most useless characters ever conceived. Like seriously, he serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever. You don't write characters who serve utterly purpose to your story unless you're trying to play some "trick,"

Again, if this were any other movie you would be correct; but it’s not. They didn’t write him in, he was already written in. The story of Sleeping Beauty was already laid down, they had to work within that with their retelling.

[jelly]

bookworm... I'm not really sure how you do it, but somehow your applied logic always manages to overcomplicate basic topics to the point that I don't even really know what we're discussing anymore. As for your defense of Sleeping Beauty, I don't think there's much there to stand on. To call Disney's Maleficent an adaptation of Sleeping Beauty is way too generous. It's branded as a "reworking," but really it's unique to itself (disregarding the fact that it borrows heavily from various cliche'd fantasy tropes). Anyone can take the characters from one story and craft their own story using the same characters. That doesn't mean the storyteller is staying true in any way to the original story. This is especially the case if the artistic integrity of the original piece is changed or distorted. Like, for example, what Peter Jackson did with The Hobbit. I don't blame the problems with the Hobbit movies on J.R.R Tolkien, I blame them on the fact that Tolkien's themes and intentions were misrepresented by the filmmakers. Likewise, I don't blame Maleficent's problems on the Brothers Grimm. I blame them on the filmmakers.

[bookworm]

I didn’t complicate, I simplified. You were expressing disappointment about the prince not doing anything, I explained why it was like that because it’s perfectly clear to me.

To call Disney's Maleficent an adaptation of Sleeping Beauty is way too generous.

I don’t even understand this.
Of course it’s a retelling of Sleeping Beauty, that’s the whole point of making this movie. They wanted to give ‘the other side’ of the original story, turning around everything we thought we knew about the character of Maleficent. But not just shake things up, turn it entirely around. Make it so the takeaway is not only ‘Hmm, she’s not really the villain we had thought’ but also ‘Wow, she is actually the ultimate hero that really saves Sleeping Beauty.’

Anyone can take the characters from one story and craft their own story using the same characters. That doesn't mean the storyteller is staying true in any way to the original story.

It does in this case. I don’t know why you aren’t grasping, or at least accepting, this concept, but once again: This wasn’t ‘You know what would be fun, let’s redo Sleeping Beauty ’ this was ‘You know what would be interesting, let’s expand Sleeping Beauty. Show the untold story.’ So yes, this absolutely is working within the original; that is the entire purpose. The idea is that the original story of Sleeping Beauty was told either with a bias against Maleficent, or simply on a basis of incomplete information on her motivations and what actually happened, and this movie is correcting and/or filling in those previously unknown pieces.

It’s essentially Wicked, just in the Sleeping Beauty story. It’s showing how the original story misunderstood/misrepresented one of the characters and made them look like the villain when in reality they were not only not the villain, but in fact the ultimate hero all along.

You seem to be desiring they had left the prince out all together. Is that correct? Because that would have been a disaster. Everyone except apparently you understood and expected this to be Sleeping Beauty retold. I don’t know how someone would look at ‘The untold story of Maleficent’ and conclude that it must be a self-contained story not meant to connect at all to the original. If they had left the prince out you would be happy because they wouldn’t have pushed their alleged useless men trope; but the movie would not have made any sense! Once again, the prince had to be there; everyone knows he was there, we know the story of Sleeping Beauty.

I suppose a sort of compromise could have been reached by letting the prince remain the one to wake Sleeping Beauty; would that have satisfied you? Because that could have definitely worked. It still allows Maleficent to be the hero, as she was the one that brought him to the castle. That would have been fine. But, going back to my first paragraph, that only provides the ‘Okay, so she’s not really bad’. The takeaway is so much better and deeper though when she was the one that woke her. Because again, they didn’t want to just make the character be not a villain any more, they wanted to go all the way with the turnaround and make her the hero.

[jelly]

I don’t know why you aren’t grasping, or at least accepting, this concept, but once again: This wasn’t ‘You know what would be fun, let’s redo Sleeping Beauty ’ this was ‘You know what would be interesting, let’s expand Sleeping Beauty. Show the untold story.’ So yes, this absolutely is working within the original; that is the entire purpose. The idea is that the original story of Sleeping Beauty was told either with a bias against Maleficent, or simply on a basis of incomplete information on her motivations and what actually happened, and this movie is correcting and/or filling in those previously unknown pieces.

Look, I've pointed out things that I didn't like about the movie. Things that felt weak or devoid of real artistic quality or integrity. If you disagree with me, that's fine. But now you seem to be trying to excuse those things by saying, "Yeah, but that's only because it's an adaptation of this other story." I'm very familiar with Sleeping Beauty and what was changed/wasn't changed for the sake of Disney's "expansion" of the story. And in the end, I strongly felt that Disney's film had some major problems. It really has nothing to do with the story it was "expanded" from. I'm not really sure why you're so adamant about making a point, or even what your point is.

[bookworm]

you seem to be trying to excuse those things by saying, "Yeah, but that's only because it's an adaptation of this other story."

Not excuse, explain. Especially in relation to the prince, which seems to be one of your primary complaints.

I'm not really sure why you're so adamant about making a point, or even what your point is.

Because I think your disappointments are coming from a misunderstanding of what this movie is. Your comparison to The Hobbit highlights it. I completely understand your point there, The Hobbit the movie is not The Hobbit the book, and by all means fault the filmmakers for the problems you find there. But that’s a different situation. The Hobbit movie is its own entity, borrowing the book’s characters but telling its own story. It should be a representation of the original story, but as you said it doesn’t have to be, and obviously it didn’t end up being one.

This movie though is not that kind of thing. It’s not an attempt to redo Sleeping Beauty from a clean slate. This movie does not replace Sleeping Beauty, it goes with it. This is not a new story, it’s a parallel story. Everything that happened in Sleeping Beauty still happened, and what happens in this movie happened also. Taking the two together reveals the full story.

To offer another example, use the Narnia movies. The Dawn Treader movie was much different than the book. That was how the filmmakers decided to interpret it, fine. It’s a faulty adaptation. The book is one thing and the movie is another.
But this movie to Sleeping Beauty is not like that, but like Wicked to The Wizard of Oz. You don’t take one or the other, you take both. Wicked isn’t saying ‘This is the new Oz story, the original didn’t happen this is all its own thing.’ Both of them happened, they tell the same story from two different angles. The new doesn’t replace the old, it expands it. That’s what this movie is.

And, once more, that’s why the prince has to be there. Because this isn’t a new story where they could have just left him out. He was there in the original so he has to be there in this, because this doesn’t replace the original story, it goes alongside it.

The concept is all I’m trying to explain, I’m not saying you’re wrong to find faults in the story with it in mind. If you understand that this and Sleeping Beauty both happen, and take issue with some things they decided to develop, that’s fine. But that’s not the message I was getting from your posts. You kept saying ‘The prince was useless, why did they have the prince not do anything?’ which should be something easily understood if you’re taking the two movies as one story, not this new movie as a replacement of the old. That’s all.

[jelly]

This movie though is not that kind of thing. It’s not an attempt to redo Sleeping Beauty from a clean slate. This movie does not replace Sleeping Beauty, it goes with it. This is not a new story, it’s a parallel story. Everything that happened in Sleeping Beauty still happened, and what happens in this movie happened also. Taking the two together reveals the full story.

This isn't even close to being true.

Instead of growing up in the castle with her family like she's supposed to, the movie has Aurora taken out into the woods and raised by fairies (which really makes no sense, and drastically changes the premise of the story). Instead of an old lady up in a secluded tower who didn't destroy her spindle like the King had ordered because of her bad hearing, the movie dumbs it down to green magic wisps that draw Aurora to the spindle, thereby removing any of the mystery or tragedy of wondering whether the old lady's spindle was an act of fate or abhorrent coincidence. Instead of everyone in the castle falling asleep for a hundred years, the movie impatiently simplifies everything so that we barely even care that Aurora falls asleep. She's only out for like... five hours. And last but definitely not least, the Prince is demoted from unlikely hero of the story to a character so completely useless he doesn't even need to be there at all. It doesn't matter if he was in the original story. If you change or distort the characters purpose or role, then you've created a character of your own. That's why Disney is entirely at fault for creating a useless character.

The new doesn’t replace the old, it expands it. That’s what this movie is.

Ultimately, no. No it isn't. If you liked the movie and you're trying to defend it, that's fine. But you can't make claims that aren't true.