f13.net

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-XO4XiRop0

Not sure why this has not been posted yet. I am hopeful... and I dislike Angelina.

I, too, dislike Angelina - and yet I've seen the trailers and have thought that she looked wonderful for that part.  Probably because her eating disorder(s) make her look better for the part?  Anyway, she looks very evil.

I like Angelina in the right movies. I had zero interest in this, then saw the trailers and now I can't wait. I hope it puts a spin on the story and if nothing else that it goes with the Wicked route of telling this story.

There's a little tidbit in the trailer that lets you know exactly where they are going with it.  She curses the princess with "a sleep like death" when in every other story it's plain old death and another fairy ends up lessening it to just eternal sleep.  Can't have the sympathetic character killing babies now.

I personally don't like that it seems that are gonna cop out on the pure evil part.  Maybe in the beginning they could show how she gets there but I'm expecting even at the end she won't be killing any good guys or doing anything "very" evil.

Yeah, there are some pretty big hints that she was wronged by the king and this is payback - though it does depart a bit from the original story. Wonder if she will become a dragon in the end or if they are just going to keep it as the crow transformation.

I read an interview with the writer or director - forget which - when this was first announced. The one thing that stood out was that Malificent wasn't going to be evil, but a character who was a victim of bad circumstance. So by the end I expect that Malificent will find true love, regrow her wings, her clothing will transform to a pearlescent white, and she'll throw the Emperor down a ventilation shaft.

That's in the third movie.

I think you meant the sixth movie.  Which is the third movie.

Right, of course.

The storybook good / evil is cartoonish anyway. I don't believe in goody two-shoes "good" -- so I'll take an update that provides more realistic considerations of the good / evil dynamic by providing a sound motivation to each side and their conflicting perspectives.

The best villain is one that could reasonably be seen as the hero.

There's a difference between giving a villain motivations and making them sympathetic.  Many a good villain you can understand but at the end of the day they are still vile shitbags.  Unfortunately it looks like disney is making her "not all that bad" and just misunderstood which is a shame.

Why is it a shame? You want to see her being needlessly cruel just so she can be less sympathetic? Maybe she's forced to make tough choices to consolidate her power base because the alternative is a loose end left untied. It's all in the framing, sure. She's the central character of the movie, which requires an artful narrative.

Besides, all you have to go on is trailers. For all you know she might cross the Moral Event Horizon in the third Act and start routinely massacring soldiers for sport. In fact, that'd be pretty awesome if by the end of the film they could get the audience cackling along with her.

Have you ever watched the tv show Hannibal? That is a perfect example of making a villain the main character.  It's really the best argument I can give as to how things should be done without having to butcher the original character or shoehorn them into something.

This is just Wicked mark 2 and I can't be fucked with all that.

The idea that we don't have baddies anymore is just an extension of us being fucking shitbags in the real world and wanting people to just 'understand us' even tho we're fucking shitbags.

This is Disney doing a retelling of their Sleeping Beauty. 


Are we really going to have another Pacific Rim-style conversation about how it's disappointing that this movie is anything other than exactly what it looks like it will be?  And then, when it ends up being exactly like it looks like it's going to be, and it's also done very well at the same time, will we continue to over think it?

... of course we will.  Please excuse my stupid question.

I'm not sure I understand you.  This is ONLY being compared to the original disney version of maleficent, you know the one where she curses a baby to die on her 18th birthday?  As you said it's disney so already it's a watered down version and this looks like will be watered down even more.

Oh for fuck sake.

It's a story based on a 17th century fairy tale. Fairy tales don't need or use subtle, nuanced characters all of whom act in nebulous shades of light and dark grey. Fairy tales are, or at least were, for getting the point of important life lessons to children. Good characters, bad character, good choices, and bad choices. Some of them have been so watered down, even hundreds of years ago, that they have lost any meaning whatsoever. Case in point, the original, original Little Mermaid. It has literally changed from a cautionary tale illustrating that changing your self to get another person to love you inevitably leads to the loss of self into the Disney version that tells girls to bag a man you don’t even need to talk, just smile at whatever they say and get bigger tits. I would never in a million fucking years let a daughter watch Little Mermaid or Pretty Woman for that matter.

I don't know of any perspective that changes cursing a newborn baby to death at 18 from just malicious evil into "well, it couldn't be avoided and was the least horrible option". Hey, why not make a Hitler biography from the perspective of his dogs. That fucker loved him some dogs and they loved him back so he couldn't have been that bad. We could retell the story of the holocaust as being the only option to free up space for dog parks in urban centers and ensuring that there was enough food for all the dogs in Europe during the war.

There's retelling and reimagining a character or background, then there's lifting up a character name and putting an entirely different character and story under it. Also, as rare as they might be in real life some people really are just unredeemable and purposefully evil.

This.

What next, a retelling of how Noble the Emperor was and the justification of the rape of Nanking?  How Dahmer, Bundy and McVeigh were just poor saps who needed help?

Sometimes people are just evil, sick fuckers and they're a darkness in the world.  Maleficent was originally intended as this, but Disney saw how successful Wicked and their retelling of Cinderella from the sister's side was and said, "fuck yeah."

"well, it couldn't be avoided and was the least horrible option"
Which gives Maleficent the same moral footing MoS Superman.

Grimm's fairy is "slighted, pms-inflicted fairy number 12".  Perraults fairy is, "whoops, we thought you were dead and didn't make a gold thing for you fairy number 6.  ... Holy crap you're cursing her to death! What-the-hell?!".

"Maleficent" is entirely a Disney creation.  In the first telling she's just spit-nasty with no real motivation.  In this telling they've decided to give her more of a background.  If the movie is done well and it's entertaining are you really going to say, "well, it was done well, but, for my money, she is no Maleficent.  Harrumph!"

Is there really no room to take a different slant on a character?

There is another thread (Man of Steel) where we talk about how the IP holder can take different slants on their character over the years.  The example used is Batman - starts grimdark, goes campy, returns to grimdark.  Same shit here.  This is misunderstood, still pretty nasty, but also kind of good Maleficent.  Were any of you horrified when Batman returned to grimdark?

For a generation of people boba fett is the ultimate badass with maybe 4 lines of dialogue and 0 character explanation beyond "bounty hunter".  Maleficent to many disney fans and children of that age is the embodiment of evil and the archetype for the evil sorceress.  Is it deserved in either case? That's entirely besides the point, this is what people have come to associate these characters with no matter how little there actually was of them.

It'd be like if you made a boba fett story where he turned out to be just one of a million clones of some other dude who doesn't really do much and then dies.

Zing.

Boba was the kid.  :oh_i_see: But I get your point. The mysticism and power of a character is reduced the further their background is explained. See also: Vader.

And the kid was just another clone, but without the rapid aging process.  Because the dude wanted to raise himself as his son.

I admit I forgot that detail, but I don't see how that devalues the character. Vader being a whiny bitch compared to his intimidating older self, I get. Boba being a clone of the father who ends up dying, thereby fueling a Batman-esque dedication to becoming one badass Jedi-hunting motherfucker (in canon) ... ?

He's basically just a stormtrooper with cooler armor.

It certainly explains the aim.

Oh man fuck Star Wars so much  :uhrr:

Wait, what?  I thought Wicked was the telling of the "Wizard of Oz" backstory about the fall of the Wicked Witch of the West from Nice Witch to Psycho Bitch.

Note the 'And'.

As in, he's talking about two separate things.  Or that's how I'm reading it.  I didn't know they did an ugly stepsister facelift, but it wouldn't fucking surprise me.  Ugly spoiled evil people have feelings too !!!

(which brings me to the point :  These stories are to tell Children right from wrong.  You can't say 'She was evil, ugly and rotten, but actually her Economic Program brought prosperity to the country through radical teeth-reforms'.  I don't want my kid to learn the lesson that you can rules lawyer your way out of being a fucking shitbag.)

If your kid has any exposure at all to other people its all over already.

No, she's kept in a cage.

Under the stairs.

Wow, you mother fuckers take your fairy tales seriously!

Seriously, if any of you watch Once Upon a Time the two most interesting characters on it are Regina and Rumplestiltskin. Both villains from fairy tales/Disney movies. (Regina being the evil queen from Snow White for those of you who don't know) and to borrow a wrestling term Regina has made a pretty complete heel-face turn despite being pretty damned evil when the show started.

You all are comparing a Disney villain to people like Ted Bundy and getting all morally outraged that Disney is corrupting our children or something.

Good god, don't you ever go to movies for fun?

Edit: Removed the word Disney from in front of "fairy tales" as I meant to say Fairy tales and Disney movies. Not Disney Fairly Tales and Disney movies. Blah.

If you watch one upon a time....*headdesk*

If your idea of grimdark is 1940s Batman... "Holy Candycorn, Batman... the Mad Hatter stole the key to the Pumpkin Festival!"

The discussion in the Superman thread turns on the changes to the core elements of a deeply developed character.  Superman has lived in the comics since the 1930s with a set of core character traits that define not just him, but provide the pillar by which the entire pantheon of heroes in his universe are judged against.  Maleficiant had a few pages of text and a few minutes of screen time to define her - before various artists grabbed a hold of and manipulated her to suit their needs.  Superman has the depth of a protracted protagonist, while Maleficient has the shallow character of a melodrama villain.  You can't mess with core and deep without changing the essence of a character, but you can bend undedeveloped and shallow all you want as there is nothing to defile by adding your twist.

I've just now decided to be arbitrarily upset with this film, too.  It's ruining my parents' childhood, god dammit!

Just because you take my grandma's skin and wrap it around some other woman doesn't make her my new grandma.

Disney did a version of Rumplestiltskin?

Not unless you count little golden books.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apZuO1nwSvQ

No, I just accidentally put the word Disney in front of Fairy Tales. My bad. That's been corrected now.

Is this all part of some meta-argument you're having? Any creative that gets his hand on a property is going to do their own spin of it, and it's going to be compared to a traditional vision that people have come to know because A) that traditional vision exists! and B) has existed for a significant period of time to build association and support.

Does the brand serve the creative, or the creative the brand? It's not so black and white but I'd say its more the former. But the 'best' version of something doesn't necessarily exist in the past... or the future! In fact the 'best' may be how it reflects the times its representation finds itself in.

Modify: I'm mistaken about "best" qualities vs. "core" qualities -- however the stream-lined, "core" of a character can be influenced by future iterations (Iron Man), which requires creatives to be able to explore their own, different interpretations.

You know, I ought to know better than to put a reference to a comic book character in any post on f13 because you are kind of pathological about the topic.  And I absolutely know better than to respond to anything you say about because it's no-win.

But this...  Batman kills without remorse in those early comics, pre-Robin.  Gradually he does so less and less, then not at all, especially after the introduction of Robin.  They reverse that in the 80s, at least in the movies (which is actually what we're talking about).  So, from that perspective, yeah, Batman is dark.  Vigilante = dark.  Seems pretty simple.  Regardless of the names of the villains, or the language used to describe things, killing someone in premeditated cold blood for vengeance seems pretty dark.

So, back to Maleficent, I actually see a death-like-sleep (yes, I know that she says, "sleep-like-death" in the trailer, but that is fucking stupid, is she asleep or dead? which is it?!) as the bigger twist of the knife than straight-up killing her - especially if it's only Sleeping Beauty that sleeps.  Unchanging, not alive, not dead.  A constant reminder of their betrayal and failure to protect their child.

That said, clearly Disney is making the character more sympathetic, and it's likely that she develops a soft spot for Aurora and ends up getting herself killed to protect the her.  I will laugh at this part.  I will laugh long and loud thinking about how Zod is furiously, though impotently, shaking his fist at the TV (surely he's not going to see it in the theater).

I'm actually laughing as I type this.  I had no intention to see this in the theaters, but now I just might have to.  We all have a bit of spite in us, after all.

Cant wait for Rita Repulsa the movie. I really want to know how she came to decide to attack Earth. A Zordon Origins would be nice.

She just wanted more living space for the Putties.

The audience eats this shit up!

My sister said she wanted to see this so I thought I'd read this thread.  I think I've a horrible mistake.  I have no idea what anyone is talking about and I'm not entirely sure this is about the film at all.  Or maybe it's me.  I think in light of not being able to follow a thread about a Disney film, I will hit the sack early and wake up late. 

PS  I forget why we dislike Angelina.  Is it the lips?  I LOVE her dad.

It's the Lips.

Since Signe reminded us that this is a Disney movie, I'll reserve judgement until the inevitable direct-to-video Maleficent 2.

I took my daughter to a sneak preview of this tonight. We both enjoyed it. It takes a turn for the predictable but it was still a fun reimagining and it has a great visual style. My only major complaint with the movie is


Overall, to be blunt, this forum is far too cynical for most of you to enjoy it but if you go in with the mindset of "this is a reimagined fairy tale" and just go with it you'll enjoy it.

I just came back from the matinee (because I am a cheap bastard) and I enjoyed it for what it was. The sore taste Jolie leaves in my mouth after one of her movies was graciously missing from this.

I think that's herpes.