Maleficent

[Depression Moon]

I saw this today and I thought it was a decent film. Angelina Jolie's performance was definitely good as Maleficent and I liked how they changed Maleficent up a bit and made the tale a little more tragic. The movie does suffer however from being a bit too fast paced in the beginning, which from my memory is the first movie I that I've had this opinion.

What I'm talking about is that I think the movie could have been a bit longer to flesh out Maleficent's backstory, her motivations.

I did find it odd at the end how Aurora wasn't upset at all that Maleficent killed her father and just went back easily to living with her. We also had like zero time with Aurora's mother too. I did also think that there should have been some scenes showing Maleficent improving her magic because it seemed to come out of nowhere. Really this movie just needed to be longer.

[Ayen]

I'm going to see it on Tuesday. Angelina Jolie looks like she was born for the role so I'm pretty excited to see it.

[Miss Mae]

As a stand alone film, I have plenty of criticisms, but I really liked how it handled certain themes when compared to other movies that have tried to do a similar thing recently (like Frozen). I have a lot of opinions about Maleficent and I'm currently writing a long essay about this movie to try and explain them all in relation to other films and whatnot.

[Jiro]

Wish Stefan had a bit more depth to him but I got pretty much nothing but praise for this movie. In regards to the Spoiler, I can understand why Aurora didn't feel a whole lot for her father. She rocks up and he regards her momentarily with suspicion and then locks her up. I understand he was doing it for The Right ReasonsTM but that's not exactly the way to react to seeing your daughter for the first time in 16 years. While there's no real reconciliation period between Aurora and Maleficent, I expect that Aurora understood that whoever she first saw after waking up loved her a whole goddamn lot so seeing Maleficent kind of undid the dickish stuff she did.

[noxious.sunshine]

I rather liked that this was a different spin on the Sleeping Beauty tale.

I think it was very well done and I'm not complaining about the short run time at all. Had it been longer than 2 hrs, I wouldn't have gone to see it at all. Because I would've fallen asleep. Yep.

[Ayen]

Just got back from seeing it and I honestly don't understand the people who thought it was bad (and to be frank, I don't want to). I thought it was well done. The scene between Maleficent and the baby was hilarious and the true love theme was the best I've seen from Disney in a while (never seen Frozen). There might have been some overacting in the first battle scene, but overall, would see again.

Professor Umbridge as a fairy? I died.

[Scotty_ffgamer]

I do think the movie is good for the reasons people have mentioned, but it wasn't the kind of movie I really wanted to see going in. I did know I wasn't going to see the movie I wanted considering what I wanted was probably too dark.

Maleficent is possibly my favorite Disney villain, and I like her most as a villain. I was excited during the scenes where Maleficent put the curse on Aurora, green flame around her. That's the Maleficent I like. I also rather liked the imagery at times with evil Maleficent walking in the fog and the crow flying around her. It had a sort of creepy atmosphere that I wish was in the movie more.

Honestly, I really wanted this movie to make Maleficent sympathetic, but show her descent into darkness after her wings were taken by who she thought was her true love. Her befriending of Aurora would be to guide her away from home to fulfill the curse. Something like that.

[Shauna]

I enjoyed it well enough. The act with Aurora growing up was kind of slow and disappointing, but it picked up at the end.

It was kind of weird, but it has made me interested in where Disney is planning on going with all this stuff. Let's see how Cinderella '15 goes.

[Wolf Kanno]

It boggles my mind that people liked this. I just came back from the flick and honestly it is probably one of the worst films I've had the misfortune to pay to see. Jolie does a great job as Maleficent but this film reeks of being some fanboy's Draco in Leather Pants (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DracoInLeatherPants) fics. I was already bothered by transforming one of the best classical examples of a true evil villain into a sympathetic character but my goodness does this film just reek of Maleficent being the greatest thing ever. We've got humans and fairy folk fighting which never goes anywhere, never has an explanation for why it happened in the first place and has an ass pulled solution in case anyone still cared by the end.

Maleficent largely overshadows every other character in the script except crow boy, they completely transform the three good fairies from charming but bumbling support characters into incompetent stooges who are only good for being idiotic. Aurora has really no character development (so I guess that is the same with the original) but Philip is stripped of all his character moments and screen time, reduced to showing up so he can fail at reviving Aurora so once again Maleficent can swoop in and be the one to save the day. I mean Maleficent curses Aurora, raises her better than the fairies, ends up breaking the curse on her, tries to walk away from revenge only to get it against the king anyway cause he's been reduced to a mad man by this point, and ends the long "cold war' between humanity and the fairy folk by making Aurora queen of the Fairy Folk, and she gets her fucking wings back. I spent half the movie wondering why they bothered putting in the other characters. I mean for a film that was trying to humanize what some consider to be a flat evil character and make a more balanced version of a classic Disney film, it still winds up with her having an absolutely happy ending where everything gets neatly tied up and she only loses the villain role by making the main villain just as flat and unsympathetic as most Disney villains. Excuse me, I'm going to bang my head against a wall until it stops thinking about how awful this film was and then mourn the hour and thirty-seven minutes of my life I'll never get back. :wcanoe:

[Christmas]

Truth to be told, I prefer how Aurora looks when she was a kid. :bigsmile:

Same goes for Maleficient. Maybe I am a paedophile deep inside me, I'm not sure. :quina:

[StarCross1988]

Going to see it tomorrow. All my friends that have seen it say it's really good, so I'm looking forward to it.