Also, it’s hard to root for the royals when Maleficent is so consistently magnificent. (See what I did there?)
All that said: I would 100% be down with sleeping for a hundred years right now.
Sleeping Beauty (1959), 06 April 2021, streamed via Disney+
Okay, these storybook openings are pretty cute. I kind of wish they’d carried these on--I don’t think it happened with The Little Mermaid, for example. ANYWAY, somehow watching these fairy tale movies is making me pro-arranged marriage, guys, I don’t know what that says about Western romantic ideals. Imagine how fun it would have been if Prince Phillip and Princess Aurora grew up together.
Beauty, song, and the guarantee of some dude laying hands on you while you sleep. Great gifts, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather. Sigh. BUT ALSO, King Stefan and Queen Leah, you’re just...down with these well-meaning flakes raising your child? Like, no accompanying tutors or anything? Also, when we jump ahead sixteen years, are we seriously supposed to believe this is the very first time the fairies have sewn and baked things? WTH have they been doing for sixteen years?
Stranger danger, Briar Rose! STRANGER DANGER.
The fairies told Briar Rose her name is really Aurora, that she’s actually a princess, that she’s leaving the only home she remembers, and she’s getting married to a purported stranger in the space of three minutes. WTF. (Also, what’s going on with Queen Leah? Why is she so silent in all these proceedings?)
Justifying children’s fear of needles since the 14th century.
And after the curse takes effect, the fairies decide to just put the entire kingdom to sleep so that nobody finds out the curse took effect? This entire narrative is about the consequences of trying to avoid consequences. Also, they didn’t just wreck up Aurora’s kingdom--they inadvertently (I guess) kidnapped King Hubert, as well! Good god.
This isn’t a gory movie at all, but it was actually a bit more violent than I remembered!
I’m also pretty weirded out about Aurora’s return being more about dancing with Phillip than, say, FINALLY MEETING HER PARENTS. Geez.
Sleeping Beauty (1987), 08 April 2021, streamed via Apple TV
OMG, there is a Sleeping Beauty with a young Morgan Fairchild! She’s so Fairchildy! Note, though, she’s playing the queen, not young Rosebud. (This is like that Cinderella when they crowed about Ginger Rogers being the queen, like, that is not actually significant to the plot, my dudes.)
Anyway, this film starts out with a musical number of a bunch of castle staff singing about spinning? While a puckish dude laughs about it? I don’t know. Then the queen, who is, according to the staff, “filling the pond with her tears,” sings about wanting a child, but also about spindles. This movie is filled entirely with choices. Anyway, the puckish dude and his puckish elders act as guardians to the queen and to Rosebud. Why? *shrug*
She just wants BABY, okay?
So the reason they left one fairy off the invite list? They only had nine golden plates. So they figured, just don’t invite the one they know the least. Rather than, oh, BUYING ANOTHER GOLDEN PLATE. This entire curse is an unforced error. And in a fit of delightful pettiness, when the uninvited Fairy Red shows up, she takes the time to break the nine golden plates before she gets on with the cursing. (The king’s move? He makes owning a spindle a CAPITAL OFFENSE.)
Oh, hey, Rosebud is played by Tahnee Welch. Haven’t heard of her? Maybe you know of her mother, Raquel Welch.
So, like, due to the king’s burning of spindles, the kingdom has not made any cloth for SIXTEEN YEARS. Further, by the time we get to know, everybody’s clothing is FALLING APART. NGL, I dug it.
The king and queen decide to go personally to buy cloth from other kingdoms, because...wait, what? Anyway, you know the rest.
Sleeping Beauty (2014), 11 April 2021, streamed via Tubi
This one’s got zombies and lake monsters! Why? Why not?
On the eve of her sixteenth birthday, Princess Dawn sneaks off with the bakery boy, who is OBVIOUSLY EVIL and is just...carrying a spindle in his pocket. Every iteration of Sleeping Beauty is an exhibit in incompetence.
Delightfully, Finn Jones isn't playing the prince--he’s Barrow, the prince’s whipping boy! The prince is a sadistic ponce, of course. (What a weird career Jones is having.) The point of this movie isn’t the breaking the curse, it’s a schlocky adventure in which we watch a bunch of dudes get killed while breaking into a castle. (They are all jackasses who die noble deaths, because why not.) The bad fairy is actually the queen of a ruined kingdom that was abandoned by the other two, playing the long game with her vengeance.
BUT WAIT. Could it be? The brave and clever young Barrow is, in fact, a prince! Unknowingly! In exile! It’s kind of unclear which kingdom he’s prince of--not Olivetta (Dawn’s), not Tambria’s (the evil ex-queen). The sadistic prince indicates that his grandfather deposed Barrow’s grandfather, but what? What?
Maleficent, 14 April 2021, streamed via Amazon Video
This is possibly my favorite of the live-action Disney adaptations, mostly because it’s decided to be extremely different from the original. (Aladdin does it, too, but that script is shakier.) I mean, according to this narrative, Maleficent’s heel turn comes because soon-to-be-King Stefan rapes her. Well, technically, hacks her wings off, but the metaphor is pretty goddamn clear.
DESTROY HIM.
Me too, girl. ME TOO.
It’s pretty delightful that the three fairies are complete trash at caring for a baby, continuing the distinguished and unending line of fairy tale guardians who do more harm than good. Meanwhile, Maleficent is all, I’ll do it myself, and I feel SO SEEN.
I love pretty much everything about the design of this film--scenery and makeup and everything--EXCEPT for the three fairies who edge waaaaay too close to the uncanny valley for me. But everything else, gold. The CGI is not seamless, but I don’t care.
Oh, the Sleeping Beauty parts! Right. Aurora is so delightfully and annoyingly sweet. I’m pretty impressed Elle Fanning was able to walk that line--it would be sooooo easy to tip to one side or another. Oof, can you imagine what she would have been like if Stefan had raised her? Ughhhhhh.
Maleficent bestowing “true love’s kiss” would have been more surprising if they hadn’t just done it in Frozen but ah, well. The prince is pretty much a non-entity, but that’s par for the course with princes. (Him being weirded out by strangers encouraging to kiss an unconscious girl is, like, twenty thousand points in his favor, though.)
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, 15 April 2021, streamed via Disney+
What a confusing title. I thought we’d established that this Maleficent is lawful neutral! (I recognize this is debatable, but I stand by it.) And aw, they recast the prince! I wasn’t particularly attached to the last one, but that is kind of a bummer for the actor, isn’t it? And this dude is just as much of a blank as the last one.
I do like that this film follows a pretty logical conclusion--first of all, that yeah, if Maleficent is pro-Aurora then, yeah, she will be involved with Phillip’s kingdom, and she’s not going to play nice about it. I love the walk from the Moors to Ulstead: It’s Aurora, Maleficent, and Diaval, it shows how unnerved everybody is by Aurora’s family, and wonderfully, Aurora isn’t put off by Maleficent’s effect on others. The smile she shoots at her fairy godmother as they cross is proud. (Aurora asking Maleficent to veil her horns is an interesting bit, partly because Aurora’s canny enough to know how folks would react to Maleficent, and partly because Maleficent reluctantly agrees to the costume. Later, of course, it all goes to shit.) ALSO: I do so want to know what people think Diaval’s role and relationship with the others is.
Queen Ingrith is a portrait of passive-aggression. And that would have been enough to make her a good antagonist, except OH RIGHT, she’s a frickin’ genocidal entrepreneur. Meanwhile, Phillip and his father desperately trying to make the conversation boring is pretty hilarious.
I have mixed feelings about the whole, Maleficent finds her people, thing, mostly because, uh, did this never come up before? She never wondered? How did she get to the Moors? And how did she get powers when the others didn’t? How did they find her (and at the exact right time)?
With all her ornate costumes, it’s a bit funny that her most striking look is the one where her clothing is half bandages. Probably because her hair is down?
Anyway, as much as I HAVE QUESTIONS about the dark fey, the revelation of them all, in rather breathtaking variety, is pretty wonderful.
So you can imagine how little I care about the adventures of Pinto the CGI fairy thistle. Like, that side quest is important, yes, but we didn’t need it. Not when Ingrith was full-on turning a wedding chapel into a gas chamber. God. I legit would have been fine if the dark fey just burned Ulstead to the ground. (Meanwhile, Aurora tore Ingrith’s old wedding dress to shreds so she could rappel down the castle walls, like, girrrrrrl. Good on you. Just because you’re sweetness and light doesn’t mean you’re not capable of being almost as badass as your godmother.)
Y’know, when Connal tells Maleficent she’s a descendant of the phoenix, I didn’t assume it was so literal. You can imagine my utter joy when, well. You know how I feel about worldbreakers by this point, right?
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Man, the royal guard of Ulstead must be so confused.
What an entirely satisfying way to end this clutch of films.
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