Have you ever been forced to go to the movie theatre to see a movie that you really don’t have any interest in watching, expecting that the movie will be just “okay”? It happens to me quite frequently, and more than it probably should. I am not much of a go to the theatre to watch a movie type of person. When I went to theatres to go see Maleficent, I thought it would be boring and all about how evil she was. It turns out I was very wrong. Maleficent was one of the best movies I have ever seen in my entire life.
The timing of the movie release date and how long the playing time was, was perfect. Its release date was May 28th, 2014, making it come out right around the time that summer begins for school aged children who may have been interested in watching the movie. The movie itself was a whopping 97 minutes. Which transfers over to an hour and thirty-seven minutes long. It really didn’t seem like I was in the theatre for that long, and keep in mind I am not the theatre type of person. The movie was very captivation of my attention and I was interested the entire time the movie was running.
If I were to rate how long the movie was in correlation to how good it was, I would give it a 10 out of 10; considering that the average movie length in the year 2014 is around 130 minutes long, which is two hours and ten minutes long. The acting in Maleficent was phenomenal and very believable. Angelina Jolie played the main character, Maleficent, who was the good fairy that turned into a very bad fairy. The character she played had giant horns coming out of her head, the biggest wings anyone in the entire fairy land had ever seen before and, cheek bones that could cut through steel. With all of that, you couldn’t see any struggle.
She was aware of her horns and massive wings, but not to the point that we could tell that she was aware of them. She plays the role very well and you can tell that she really is in tune with the character that she had to become in order to be in the movie. In my opinion, Angelina’s acting skills were at the point where they were better than some of the special effects. Angelina really has that heroic presence. Throughout the entire movie, even if she was in the background of the scene, you could tell that she was an important character. Elle Fanning also starred in the movie as Princess Aurora, also known as Sleeping Beauty.
She plays the victim in the movie very well, even though she doesn’t exactly know she is a victim. She is very elegant, sweet natured, and exactly what you would picture a princess to act like. The cinematography in this movie is a force to be reckoned with. To start out, a large majority of this movie takes place in a magical forest like setting. The flowing rivers are crystal clear and the trees are covered in green leaves, and the landscaping is beautiful. There is a scene in the movie where Maleficent is trying to block out the king from her fairy land and during this scene, she tells the trees to grow and they do.
They grow into these thick trees that are extremely tall and pointy at the top. The trees act as a force field to keep the intruders out. Another scene that shows great cinematography is the dragon scene. Long story short, Maleficent was a good fairy at one point in her life. What made her into a “bad fairy”/villain, was when her wings were stolen from her. Fast forwarding to the end of the movie, she makes it to the castle where her wings are being held, all because she followed Aurora there to make sure that she made it there safely, even though it was not safe for Maleficent herself to be there.
Aurora ends up finding the wings while Maleficent is in this battle with a fire breathing dragon that is the size of the ballroom the event took place in. I know that gigantic fire breathing dragons are not real, but it sure did look like it. The special effects were great. Maleficent ends up slaying the dragon and Aurora lets Maleficent’s wings out of the glass box they had been in, and the wings flew straight to Maleficent and attached themselves as if they were never removed in the first place. This story was very deep and had a great plot.
It is in some ways a spin-off of Sleeping Beauty. Sleeping Beauty being Princess Aurora and Maleficent the villain that cursed Princess Aurora with the curse that only a true loves kiss can make her spell disappear. More into depth on what made Maleficent into a villain was when she was younger. She lived in a peaceful forest, and fell in love with a human. This human had a mission to become king, and in order to do so, he had to prove it to his nation he was worthy. He went back and forth between the two kingdoms, gaining trust from all of the fairies.
One night though, he cut off Maleficent wing’s, making her very angry and vengeful. Years go by and Maleficent hears from her bird friend that the king, the man who she was once in love with and cut off her wings, was having a baby girl. Still upset with the whole situation, she goes to the baby’s christening and casts a curse over the baby, before the sun sets on her sixteenth birthday she will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel, and she will fall into a death-like sleep. She will only awake with true love’s kiss.
The King, nervously decides to send his daughter to live with three good fairies in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, in hope that the curse will not work if she is not near the castle, her parents, or Maleficent. The king’s plan does not work though. Maleficent finds where the child is being kept, and watches her grow up from afar. She eventually accidently runs into Princess Aurora, and Princess Aurora thinks that she is her fairy god mother, since she recalls seeing her multiple times throughout her life.
Maleficent begins to feel love toward the child and even tries to go as far as breaking the curse that she made, but it is not possible, since it was an unbreakable curse. Since she realizes that she cannot break the curse herself she is set on Aurora having this boy she met in the woods kiss her, in hopes that he is her true love and can break the curse. A few days go by and it is nearing midnight of her 16th birthday. She is led to the room where she must prick her finger. She does so, and Prince Phillip, the guy she met in the woods comes to kiss her and it turns out that he is not her true love and cannot break Princess Aurora’s curse.
In fact, it is Maleficent that kisses her and awakes Princess Aurora, she apologizes and tells the princess that it was her that casted the spell, but it was when she was young and heartbroken. The two try to escape the castle, and this is the scene I mentioned earlier involving the fire breathing dragon and the replacement of Maleficents wings. In the end the forest kingdom is restored and Aurora is crowned the queen of both the human and fairy kingdoms, which have become united thanks to her and Maleficent.
Overall I think the movie was great. I would see it over and over again, I enjoyed it that much. I would also recommend it to anyone who likes action movies, love stories, movies that have a plot twist at the end, and much more. It wasn’t your average fairy tale Disney movie, and it could arguably be better than some other movies Disney has released. Overall, the film looked great, the effects were excellent, the story worked, and the performances from all of the actresses and actors was good.
