From arguments about whether or not this film is more progressive than the original Sleeping Beauty, to thoughts about why girls like fairies when boys don’t, and even questions about the film’s marketing campaign, Maleficent inspired a lot of intensive thinking. Here are the best reactions to it.

Funny | Analysis | Background



Funny

What Must Have Happened At The Writer’s Meeting

DISNEY PRODUCER: Gentlemen, I have an idea that will put Disney back at the top of America’s hearts and minds and wallets!

DISNEY EXEC #1: [Putting on his Mickey Mouse hat.] We’re all ears!

DISNEY EXEC #2: That stopped being funny a decade ago, Ted.

DISNEY PRODUCER: The Disney company excels in many fields, but what would you say is the thing we are very best at?

DISNEY EXEC #3: Producing animated coming-out metaphors?

DISNEY PRODUCER: No.

DISNEY EXEC #1: Financing Johnny Depp’s scarf habit?

Eric D. Snider had an entire script imaging the pitch meeting for Maleficent. (Link)

The Movie’s Strange Poster

Isaac Cabe wondered why Maleficent was striking the pose she was in her poster. “Are the horns really that heavy? Or is this just a result of Angelina Jolie’s spinal column starting to finally age? We can only imagine that she was bent over picking something up, and the poster designers startled her.” (Link)

Maleficent Leads The Rest Of The Disney Female Villains In A Song About How They’re Misunderstood

“See the princess was a joy, what a precious little toy, but I knew the day would come when she would mess around with boys, so I cast a spell that put her out the day she turned 16, till her happily ever after came to wake the future queen.” (Source)

Jimmy Kimmel Edited 50 Cent Into The Maleficent Trailer And Called It Malefiftycent

“I’ve been shot nine times I’m not afraid of no little white girl.” (Source)

The Sequel: Elleficent

Ellen DeGeneres floated her suggestion for a sequel. (Source)



Analysis

(Spoilers) The Scene Where Jolie Loses Her Wings Is A Metaphor For Rape

According to Nina Bahadur Jolie said “We were very conscious, the writer and I, that [the scene in question] was a metaphor for rape…the core of [Maleficent] is abuse, and how the abused have a choice of abusing others or overcoming and remaining loving, open people.” (Link)

Lindy West thinks it was a bad idea, asking “did Maleficent have to be punished so profoundly for succumbing to her completely justified rage? Did the supporting female characters have to be so useless? It’s a fantasy movie. It’s a constructed world. You could have built any world you wanted to—why choose one ruled by the same regressive, white-washed midcentury morality as every other ‘modern’ fairy tale?” (Link)

Sady Doyle supports the decision to include it in the film noting that “Sleeping Beauty has always been a story about rape. In the earliest known version of the tale—the Italian ‘Sun, Moon and Talia,’ by Giambattista Basile—the princess is not awakened by ‘true love’s kiss,’ or by a kiss at all. She’s discovered by a king who repeatedly rapes her while she’s unconscious. She gives birth to two children in her sleep, before one of those children dislodges the splinter in her finger and wakes her up…that central image—a man ‘kissing’ an unconscious woman—made it into the Disney version, and has survived into the present day.” (Link)

Hayley Krischer also thinks it works arguing that “it’s a story that allows a woman to recover. It gives her agency. It gives her power. It allows her to reclaim the story. And this is something that can’t be ignored.” (Link)

This Film Is Less Progressive When It Comes To Female Empowerment Than The Animated Disney Feature

The 1959 animated Disney film had greater female agency than Maleficent writes Monika Bartyzel: “In Sleeping Beauty, Aurora had a nurturing family and a trio of good fairies who were flighty (yet responsible). She had the gift of song, the man of her dreams, and an iconic, charismatic villain who audiences loved. In Maleficent, Aurora is the product of a cold and loveless marriage and a vengeful, unhinged rapist. Her safety relies on a trio of clueless and dangerously careless fairies, and her Godmother is the woman who cursed her — and who had, in turn, been violated by her own father…which sounds more reductive to you?” (Link)

Girls Like Fairies Because They Allow Them To Indulge In Fantasies Of Flight

After watching Maleficent Jan Millsapps wondered why girls like fairies while boys mostly ignore them. She thinks it has something to do with the fact that boys “engineered their own wings: airplanes and rocket-ships. Pilots were groomed as the first astronauts, while stewardesses (the only women I knew who could fly) were trained to negotiate turbulent conditions in high heels while asking: how may I make your trip more enjoyable?” (Link)

Maleficent Is Feminist In A Way That Other Recent Disney Movies Have Not Been

“This recasting of the powerful, magical woman as not wicked is a colossal depiction in the world of Disney, a corporation that has heretofore rarely shown positive depictions of magical women, and when they have graced the screen they’ve been asexual (Bedknobs and Broomsticks), practically perfect (Mary Poppins), grandmotherly (Cinderella’s godmother) or, most recently, an icy figure in need of taming by her kinder, more traditionally feminine sister (Frozen)” writes Natalie Wilson. (Link)

We Finally Have A Complex Female Villain

“Villainous men often get their due. From Darth Vader to Dexter, the bad guys of popular culture have been front and center for a long time” says Kelsey McKinney, “Hollywood is filled with female characters who are complacent and nice, but the world isn’t. Society is filled with women who are complicated, and some that are downright evil.” (Link)

Films Like Maleficent Have The Opportunity To Prompt Real Discussion With Children About Important Concepts, However They Fail To Grab It

Devon Maloney writes that in films such as Maleficent “Villains wind up with the exact same traits as their ‘good’ nemeses; no discomfiting outlier behavior for them. Evil—actual, absolute evil—is always obliterated. Good women remain feminine and kind, and always morally understandable, as they should be, and the villainess almost always regrets the qualities that made her an outcast. By the end, she’s been absorbed into the very ‘happily ever after’ template the retelling purported to subvert.” (Link)

This Film Is About The Politics, The Environment, And The Distribution Of Wealth In Our Society Today

Jordan Shapiro contrasts the “monarchy of the human kingdom” and the “utopian Democracy of the Moors” writing that “true love is not about living happily ever after in an out-dated institutionalized legal arrangement where one person is almost always exploited. The princess (Sleeping Beauty a.k.a Aurora) is not a prize and she doesn’t need to be rescued. This story does not end with a wedding. The kiss of a handsome prince is a comedic gag in this film. The kingdom is transformed, and balance restored, when Aurora frees Maleficent’s wings, defeating the patriarchy, and allowing the magic of the Moors to flourish once again” (Link)

There Are Themes Of Homosexuality Throughout The Movie

J. Bryan Lowder notes that “properly attuned audience members should find much to identify with in Maleficent’s position as a figure both special and feared, a person who, though celebrated for her queer talents among her own people, is subject to prejudice and even physical violence once she wanders beyond the borders of her ‘safe space’ in the faerie moors.” (Link)

Jolie Is Perfect For This Role Because Everybody Thinks She’s Basically A Witch Anyway

Society already largely thinks of Angelina Jolie as a witch writes Alyssa Rosenberg, “in the pages of gossip rags she was an enchantress, a creature of blood and sex, qualities never entirely erased by her eventual transformation into mother of three children by Pitt and three others by adoption.” In this movie she’s embraced that identity. (Link)



Background

Angelina Jolie’s Daughter Made Bank From The Film

Vivienne Jolie-Pitt, Angelina Jolie’s 4 year old daughter who makes an appearance in the film, made $3,000 a week and had a $60 per diem for her role in the film according to TMZ. (Link)

Sarah Barness points out that being a child star and “making a film debut with a family member” seems to be something of a Jolie family tradition. Angelina Jolie had her own first role alongside her father Jon Voight, in the movie ‘Lookin’ To Get Out’, at the age of 7. (Link)

The Film Would Not Have Been Made If Angelina Jolie Had Turned Down The Role

“There was no point in making the movie if it wasn’t her.” (Link)

Jolie’s Look Was Inspired By Lady Gaga And The Horns Were Held In Place By Magnets

Sophia Panych spoke with makeup artists from the film. Other revelations include that the eyes were inspired by goats, and that Jolie’s daughter was the only one who wasn’t terrified of her in costume. (Link)

A Young Maleficent Covered In Feathers Was Considered

The concept artist for Maleficent revealed early sketches of what young Maleficent could have looked like. (Link)

Meredith Woerner writes that early concept art of the adult Maleficent had the fairy looking like a Sith. (Link)

The Special Effects Team Created CGI Actors

This method of creating faeries allowed the team to do things such as “focus on how blood flowed around the actress’ face as she talked.” (Source)