“I
know who you are.”
“Do
you?”
“You're
my Fairy-Godmother!”
“What?”
One of my favorite TV shows is Once Upon a Time. Yes, I do know it is silly and definitely not one
of the greatest ever. Sometimes I think I cannot stand it more than I like it. The
two reasons I like and continue watching Once
Upon a Time is for the way all the Disney fairy tales and their characters
have been woven together and for the absolutely fantastic character of the Evil
Queen/Regina Mills played by the ever amazing Lana Parrilla (I vote for her for
Queen of the Universe. She is stunning in every single way as the Evil Queen).
The writers gave the fairy tales and their characters wonderful twists. They kept
with the stories as Disney fans know them from but added more depth, more life,
and more humanity (both good and bad). The writers to me are genius for being
able to pick up certain elements in the stories and for bringing characters together I never would have thought
would come together.
As much as I like the idea and some of the stories of Once Upon a Time the writing severely
lacks in so many ways. The character growth for some has been terrible and they
seem to get more annoying (this goes out to Emma Swan and the Charmings). The
plot for most of the seasons has been a curse that comes over the real world
town where all the characters live and then they have to somehow stop the curse
and make it back from wherever the curse has taken them. I know I am not the
only who believes that the only consistently well written character has been
the Evil Queen and her real world counterpart Regina Mills.
What has my rambling about Once Upon a Time have to do with the movie Maleficent? Well, I was trying to make a point in saying that I love
seeing different sides or re-imaginings of stories. I do that sometimes re-imaginings/re-workings
do not always work and they can be a load of garbage. Maleficent was actually great.
The story begins when Maleficent was a little girl. She
was a fairy who lived in an enchanted peaceful marsh away from the human world.
One day a boy named Stefan from the
human world comes through the marsh. He had stolen a stone and was chased into
a hiding place by the marsh’s tree guards. Maleficent flew over to see the
human since she had never seen one before. She is kind to Stefan and manages to
bring him out of his hiding place and to return the rock. The two become
friends. Stefan reveals that one day he wants to be the king who lives in the
castle far off in the distance but he is only a stable boy.
Stefan returns to the marsh over the next several years
until his human greed for power stops him. The current old king plans an attack
on the marsh because he wants the magic of its inhabitants. Maleficent has
become the protector of the marsh. She flies out of the marsh and her and the
tree guardians defend their home. She knocks the king of his horse and
seriously wounds the old man. With the king dying and not having an heir he
tells his men that whoever can avenge his death will be the new ruler. Stefan
is part of that group of men. Since he was friends with Maleficent he calls out
to her as he used to do when they were children and she comes to him. They sit
together under a tree. He gives her a drink and she falls asleep. Stefan came
back to kill his old friend but he cannot bring himself to do so. Instead he
cuts off her wings and leaves her. When Maleficent wakes in the morning she is
in pain and her heart has hardened.
Maleficent turns into someone dark and vengeful. Her main
focus is to make Stefan suffer just as she has suffered. Stefan and his queen
have a daughter named Aurora. At the christening Maleficent plants the curse
that on Aurora’s sixteenth birthday the girl will prick her finger on a
spinning wheel and stay in eternal sleep until true love’s first kiss. Stefan
is forced to send his baby daughter to live in the woods with three kind fairies.
Throughout the sixteen years Maleficent keeps a kind eye
on Aurora. As a baby she sends her crow with a flower to feed Aurora. As a toddler
she saves the girl from falling to her death off a cliff. Once Aurora turns
sixteen, Maleficent reveals herself. Aurora has always known she has had
someone keeping an eye on her and thinks Maleficent is her fairy godmother.
Maleficent’s old kind heart comes through and tries to lift the curse off of
Aurora.
The day before Aurora’s sixteenth birthday, she tells
Maleficent that she wants to live in the marsh with her. The once kind fairy
allows her to. On her way home to tell her aunts of her new plan she comes
across the young Prince Phillip. It is love at first sight for them both.
Aurora tells the fairies of her plans and they reveal who she really is. Angry
and confused she runs to Maleficent. Maleficent reveals who she is as well.
Aurora goes to castle to see her father. Stefan has been vengeful and paranoid
all of those sixteen years. He is not very happy to see his daughter before the
agreed upon date she was to return. He locks her in a room. In the room Aurora
hears something calling out to her behind a wall. She opens the door in the
wall and follows the calling and sensation down to the basement where Stefan
had all the spinning wheels to be burned. Of course there is one spinning wheel
that escaped the blaze. Aurora pricks her finger and falls into a sleep.
Maleficent tried to get to the castle in time to stop
Aurora but it was too late. She had the good mind to take Phillip along with
her in case anything had happened. Maleficent had a comatose Phillip floating
in the air and drops him in front of the door to the room where Aurora had been
laid. The fairies were watching over her and nearly drag Phillip into the room
to have him kiss the girl. His kiss unfortunately does not work. Maleficent,
lurking in the background sees that her curse was not lifted. Heartbroken, she
goes over the Aurora’s body and apologizes for what she has done and how she
will miss her smile. Before she gets up she kisses Aurora’s head. Suddenly
Aurora awakens.
The two women were about to leave the castle when Stefan
and his men come to attack. Maleficent is not able to hold them off. Her skin
cannot handle iron so Stefan has the iron workers in his kingdom make iron
weapons he could use against his enemy. In defense Maleficent turns her crow
into a dragon to hold the men back for a moment. Aurora was wondering the
castle when she comes across a room with a pair of wings suspended in wood and
glass. They are Maleficent’s wings. Aurora breaks the glass when the wings
begin to move. The wings fly to Maleficent and are reunited with her once
again.
Maleficent manages to defeat the evil king Stefan. She
brings Aurora back to the marsh and turns it into the marsh she had known as a
child. Aurora becomes queen of the lands of the humans and the people of the
marsh. She unites them both and the lands live happily ever after.
Maleficent and Regina Mills/Evil Queen from Once Upon a Time have a lot in common.
They were both once good women who wanted nothing in life but to be loved and
to be happy. Their happiness was taken from them and their lives turned dark by
other people they once trusted. Their souls and character turned dark with
revenge and hate towards one person and made that person suffer. Through their
darkness their old former kind souls came through. I love that kind of story
for these two women so much. They were hurt and they lashed out but there
was/is still goodness and kindness in them.
 |
| A young Regina Mills on the left and after she became the Evil Queen |
I cannot give
Angelina Jolie enough credit and praise for her performance. No one could have
played Maleficent better than Jolie. She looked like the character from the
Disney movie. Jolie added an air of dignity to Maleficent that I do not think
would have been there had she not done so. From the moment Jolie came on the
screen I just adored her in the role. She was scary yet you sympathized with
her.
Maleficent is
such a great movie. I had been dying to see it in theaters but did not have the
time to when it was originally released. I am so happy I enjoyed it as much as I
did. The writers did such a perfect job making Maleficent someone the audience
could sympathize with. I think I was waiting to not like her because we are not
supposed to like her in the animated version. The writers did not make me hate
her they made me want her to get revenge against Stefan. I also liked how they
showed that Maleficent did not hate Aurora because what happened was not her
fault. She had no idea who her father was and what he had done. Aurora was just
as much the victim as Maleficent was. One of my favorite aspects of the movie
was how Aurora’s true love kiss was not Phillip but her fairy godmother.
Maleficent was the one to show her what true love was. Their relationship was
that of a mother and daughter so her kiss could be seen as a mother’s true love
for her daughter (On Once Upon a Time
to get a kid out of a coma was the true love kiss of his mother. No one has
ever made a stink about that!).
Maleficent is
one of the best movies I have seen in some time. I highly recommend watching
it.
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