Maleficent

Saw Maleficent, one of the early Disney live action remake films, this time telling the story from the point of view of the evil fairy from Sleeping Beauty. It was not as good as one might hope. It starts off strong, in a Stardust-like village that straddles fairly land and human land. It ultimately neuters its strong central protagonist however and ends in Shrek-like sarcasm and self-aware fairy-tale trope manipulation.

I was hoping for something Gaiman-esque, which reinvents the source material and connects it to the wider body of magical/fairy mythology out there and while there are nods in that direction (Maleficent can't touch iron, for example) the whole thing is too cute, and at the same time too serious to really satisfy me. There's a scene where a young Maleficent winsomely plays with animated trolls and sprites, but there's another scene where she screams in horror after being mutilated by a human man. Too cute and yet too real.

The ending especially annoyed me. There's a lunkhead prince who must be dragged around and told what to do by Maleficent which is kind of a big departure from the source material. I mean, Prince Philip was never supposed to be a genius, but he was fighting Maleficent in dragon form as she shouted about the powers of hell, if I recall correctly. She was hardly holding his hand through the trial.

It would have been fun to think that we're seeing the real story which has been perverted by re-telling and propaganda, but this is too different. Such a telling of the true story would have to end in tragedy (the humans did win, ultimately) and this film must be uplifting for some stupid reason.