Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent claims to be a deeper look at the story behind Disney’s Sleeping Beauty; showing a more sympathetic, nuanced version of the classic tale.



But finding complexity is one thing; inventing entirely new characters is another. While at some points Maleficent shows us new sides to the story, at others it takes us to a previously unimaginable Bizarro World version.

Where do the stories diverge, and where do they intersect? We set out to map their two sometimes overlapping trails. Yes, that means the following contains spoilers, so please check back after you’ve seen Maleficent. (If you haven’t already seen Sleeping Beauty, which has only been out for 55 years, then you’re beyond help).

In the beginning…

Sleeping Beauty: Is, from the film’s get go, a fairy tale, read straight out of a storybook.

Maleficent: Narrator Janet McTeer announces she is going to tell “an old story anew.”

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King Stefan has a baby.

Sleeping Beauty: He and his queen don’t waste any time and the princess appears right at the top. They name her Aurora.

Maleficent: He gets around to it eventually. But first he spends his callow youth toying with the heart of a woodland fairy named Angelina Jolie’s Cheekbones.

Does Maleficent fly?

Sleeping Beauty: Not that we recall.

Maleficent: Like Superman—and the first third of the movie is her origin story.

King Stefan drugs Maleficent, and hacks off her Dogma wings.

Sleeping Beauty: Doubtful that anyone had the guts to pitch that particular take during Walt Disney’s lifetime.

Maleficent: There’s no family-friendly way to put it: In this iteration, Stefan (Sharlto Copley) is a bastard. And not that it matters, but he’s not even a blue blood; he’s a peasant who drugs and hacks his way to the throne.

Maleficent puts a curse on King Stefan’s baby Aurora just because she didn’t get a proper invite to the christening.

Sleeping Beauty: That’s all the motivation a lady needed in 1959.

Maleficent: Well, yes — that plus the king drugged her and hacked off her wings.

The newborn Aurora is whisked away from the kingdom, and raised in the woods by three fairies.

Sleeping Beauty: Technically, yes, this is what happens.

Maleficent: Technically, yes, this is what happens.

The fairies are incompetent twits.

Sleeping Beauty: This is implied, but Flora, Fauna and Merryweather are nonetheless celebrated as Aurora’s saviors, despite the fact that even after more than a decade of custodial work they still don’t know how to crack an egg.

Maleficent: Their haplessness is expressly stated. One of the fairies is actually called Thistletwit (Juno Temple). The names of her peers aren’t much more flattering: Flittle (Imelda Staunton) and Knotgrass (Lesley Manville).

Maleficent is an incompetent twit.

Sleeping Beauty: Kinda. Who else doesn’t regularly touch base with her team, and keep them focused on the mission, which is to find Aurora.

Maleficent: Don’t make us laugh. Jolie’s Maleficent is as sharp as her cheekbones. She knows where that baby is before the kid needs her first diaper changed.