Disney Live Action Remakes: specifically Maleficent

This specific post actually came into existence wayyy back in those nebulous times before 'Cruella' had come out, and I wanted to make an early piece of predictive commentary, on whether I thought it would be any good, specifically because most of the rest of the Disney live-action lineup was terrifyingly inadequate in my estimation. This is because, I happen to like the concept behind remaking beloved childhood memories and once, back when I was naive enough to believe that capitalism would at least take the simplistic approach of, 'Let's go with the safe option and just make it the same but with real people on screen', I was woefully inaccurate in that hope.

In its original form, this post was essentially my summing up of my opinions as presented in the project I had to do for my Film adaptations course, wherein I had to dissect a movie remake, and its literary source, and see where the differences lie, and why they happened at all. One of the options we had by default was 'Maleficent'. By default meaning, it was already within the syllabus, and I've never been one to turn down any option that lets me rant about the good and bad of a Disney property.

House of Mouse please don't come at me for this opinion, but that was the only live-action remake you've done so far that I liked even a little. 

Technically, I could've chosen to go out of the syllabus and find something else that caught my fancy, but there was a certain quality to Maleficent that I wanted to rant about, and that presentation was basically my college, by virtue of making it a compulsory requirement for my degree, subjecting one Asst Prof Jeeva to me. 

If you ever see this, ma'am you were awesome, and I loved your class. 💜💜

Anyway, it's straying way off topic here, but the point was that my original intentions were to discuss why I felt that Maleficent hadn't failed quite as severely as its compatriots in the Disney remake lineup! This, especially after what I call the trash that is 'Mistress of Evil', was still very much true, because the things the other live-action remakes did to appear "woke" as youngsters apparently call it, were the things that ruined them for me. Dumbo went from a story about a kid who was made an outcast for the way he was born, who found his place in life and had the proverbial middle finger to his bullies, that heartwarming story became an allegory for capitalism and "futurism", and it didn't even do that part well. Don't get me started on the absolute bovine excrement that is Beauty and the Beast. If I wanted a "feminist" Belle figure that fit those oddly specific and not very actually feminist parameters, I'd watch the Beautician and the Beast, at least that movie was good.

If this is my post that gets actual people reading this blog who are not related to me, or who went to school with me, then just a note. Whatever your complaints about my stances on these movies, please know these two things. I am cherry-picking which of my opinions get a voice here, there are parts of the live-action remakes that I like, and some parts I despise, and also I am one person, I don't think most people will agree with me, but this is my blog, go make your own and leave a comment with its URL, I'd love to read someone else's opinions too.

So with that out of the way, on to the horrible attempts made by Disney to be relatable, they are also why I think the teams who work to create the live-action movies are under duress, possibly under threat because the animated stuff actually seems to have got better, so there's a pattern here.

The first reason I think Maleficient is great is a combination of hatred for that thing modern television does where a parent who was at minimum neglectful to the point of actual trauma, is given a pass, because, the kid was trouble or the kid mistook their attempts to be a good parent as bad parenting or the worst in my opinion, the "they did it to protect/toughen-up/out of love" excuse, so Stephan getting a Gaston is a big plus for me. The other reason is, that no matter what some people think about the trope, I am a sucker for the whole concept of found families and adopted families. That stuff is my jam, and I will defend pretty much every found family in fiction to my dying days though there are a few exceptions, usually because they are toxic.

Family is certainly about more than blood, and while a LOT of people disagree with me on it, I don't think any parent ought to be forgiven for having been a bad parent, especially if they never tried to rectify the parts of their parenting that were horrible, but I have a special bone to pick with the nasty trope where 'they are your parents' is used as an excuse to brush, usually, major league trauma, under the rug, by either claiming they were misguided, or worse still, the borderline or straight-up abuse was actually somehow for the kid's own benefit.

Maleficent not only had a bad parent that was a bad parent to the end, but an actually well-written misguided parent, who apologized for the thing that she did that traumatized her kid. Given how rare that is, I appreciated it for existing, even if there are parts that could have been executed a bit better. 

The other thing I liked about the story itself, was that it deviated from the form of the original, which in this case was a very good choice. If you want that part explained really well, I'll be putting the link to the Overly Sarcastic Productions video on Prince Lindworm, the first segment of the video has Red going into how most of the classic fairytales are structured. She's awesome.

Anywho, Disney's original animated adaptation of the classic fairytale that Charles Perrault wrote is, well dull. The actual story is short and sweet. Ends nicely and it's obvious throughout the whole story that the actual Princess does not matter, so much as the whole idea of waiting for true love no matter how long it takes. The original animated movie was deceptive in my opinion. Unlike Alladin, it pretended at having the princess be important to the story, held on by a flimsy thread of, Prince Phillip wouldn't have shown up to fight for Aurora if he hadn't met her already, and yet the hand of the narrative team is visible in the fact that the fates have already conspired such that, he did not need to make a choice, since the choice made for him was already a good one. 

Maleficent for its flaws, can be forgiven for not giving Aurora more than a perfunctory choice in the matter because like Alladin, the story never pretends it is going to focus on her. Aurora is sweet, she is kind, beautiful and perfect... and utterly two-dimensional. These are bad storytelling elements but not unforgivable. Keep in mind I'm not saying all of this because I want to hate on the original, these are simply my only relevant opinions on that movie, to this discussion. I am laying them out because they are why I think these choices were made in Maleficent.

Maleficent became a story of a woman scorned and brutalised by a man that pretended to care about her. The specific way the plot is constructed, in my opinion, at least shows, that someone on the writing team actually realised that they could've kept her and just sent her away or hid her after her 15th birthday. 

Another reason it was written as it was, was because, as a villain, and as beloved a villain as the original Maleficent was, she was too necessary to the 'monetise-ability' of the plot to leave as her old pure evil villain self. This is because in the original animated movie, at least in my opinion, none of the other characters was fun enough to be the main driving force behind the plot, which is my way of saying, all of them were boring and the existence of a dramatic as heck villain was the saving grace for a movie that I think would have had absolutely no re-watch value otherwise.