Malef­i­cent: Mis­tress of Evil

Five years ago, Disney’s Malef­i­cent reimag­ined the sto­ry of Sleep­ing Beau­ty from the per­spec­tive of the vil­lain: the evil god­moth­er who curs­es a child to fall into an eter­nal sleep on her 16^th birth­day, with only true love’s kiss able to wake her. Though turn­ing an alle­gor­i­cal fairy tale into a char­ac­ter study may not appear like an obvi­ous idea, from the per­spec­tive of a stu­dio inter­est­ed in recy­cling its own mate­r­i­al while adapt­ing it to the mores of the time, Malef­i­cent made sense.

On the one hand, the ori­gin sto­ry revealed that the mean crea­ture was only a hurt, proud woman with­out the prop­er tools to deal with her anger, thus over­turn­ing the misog­y­nis­tic under­tones of both Charles Perrault’s orig­i­nal sto­ry and Disney’s own 1959 ani­mat­ed inter­pre­ta­tion. But more impor­tant­ly, Malef­i­cent allowed Dis­ney to freely indulge in the idea that the bad guys are more inter­est­ing than the heroes.

As sug­gest­ed by the suc­cess of a recent film about a crazy mur­der­ous clown, this idea is yet to go out of style, and Dis­ney attempts to recre­ate the mag­ic in the ran­dom­ly-titled Malef­i­cent: Mis­tress of Evil. The fact that the first film firm­ly estab­lished the inher­ent good­ness and hero sta­tus of Angeli­na Jolie’s Malef­i­cent is a hur­dle the sequel over­comes with the grace of a sledge­ham­mer. Awk­ward­ly argu­ing that leg­end becomes fact real­ly fast in the world of fairies, a voiceover informs us that humans have sim­ply ​“for­got­ten” the events of the pre­vi­ous film, and now hate Malef­i­cent all over again.

Thus this new adven­ture begins on already shaky ground, and we spend the next two hours in a cru­el world where noth­ing good ever lasts, more sym­pa­thet­ic to the wronged Malef­i­cent than ever. Mak­ing mat­ters worse is the flat, aggres­sive­ly bright CGI, which gives the Moors where Princess Auro­ra (Elle Fan­ning) and the oth­er mis­cel­la­neous crea­tures live the allure of a child’s birth­day par­ty, stripped of all mys­tery and wonder.

The faces of Juno Tem­ple, Les­ley Manville and Imel­da Staunton are back, stuck once more to the float­ing dig­i­tal bod­ies of the Princess’ fairy god­moth­ers, appari­tions more unset­tling than any of Maleficent’s frankly ele­gant black gowns and slen­der thorns.

When Prince Philip (now played by Har­ris Dick­in­son), after wait­ing five whole years for some undis­closed rea­son, final­ly asks Auro­ra for her hand, Malef­i­cent is invit­ed to meet the fam­i­ly and the tem­pera­men­tal crea­ture tries her best to be agree­able. But she finds good rea­son to be upset when soon-to-be moth­er-in-law Queen Ingrith (Michelle Pfeif­fer) threat­ens to take Auro­ra away from her.

We soon learn that this provo­ca­tion is part of a plan not only to for­ev­er break the bond between the worlds of humans and crea­tures, but to erad­i­cate the lat­ter. Not such a nov­el idea for a film where man and mag­i­cal enti­ties cohab­it, but the clum­sy inclu­sion of what can only be described as Holo­caust imagery cer­tain­ly gives pause.

In one scene, Ingrith’s men cut all the rare flow­ers grow­ing in the fairy ceme­tery – essen­tial­ly van­dal­is­ing the graves of an already oppressed minor­i­ty – for her evil sci­en­tist to use in the con­coc­tion of a fairy-killing pow­der. Even more eye­brow-rais­ing is a scene of actu­al exter­mi­na­tion, in which the Queen lures the crea­tures into the church, only to lock them in and spray the dead­ly pow­der over them.

Such ref­er­ences to real-world tragedy can be worth­while – Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant is a children’s film that suc­cess­ful­ly broached the top­ic of nuclear weapons and mass destruc­tion, mak­ing the hor­ror of hate pal­pa­ble while acknowl­edg­ing the grav­i­ty of geno­cide. But here – despite the rev­e­la­tion of the exis­tence of oth­er horned crea­tures like Malef­i­cent, a ges­ture towards big­ger themes of oppres­sion, home and belong­ing – these plot ele­ments come across as ran­dom, mis­guid­ed and sad­ly unimaginative.