USA TODAY International Edition
Pfeiffer is royally evil in ‘ Maleficent’
Spoiler alert! The story contains details about the ending of “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil.” Stop reading now if you don’t want to know.
Michelle Pfeiffer is the GOAT ( Greatest of All Time) when it comes to villainy, as her purr- fect role as Catwoman in 1992’ s “Batman Returns” proved.
So Pfeiffer was going to be a sure treat as ambitious Queen Ingrith in “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” ( in theaters now), especially squaring off against Angelina Jolie’s dark Maleficent.
“It is kind of fun,” says Pfeiffer of going to the dark side.
Director Joachim Ronning says the actress wanted to play a restrained villain, focusing on her Ingrith’s love for her son, Prince Phillip ( Harris Dickinson). But he asked her to turn it up a notch.
“She didn’t want the audience, at first, to know she was the villain at all,” says Ronning. “I was joking with her, ‘ People will have seen the trailer. They will know.’ ”
The first trailer focused on the frosty meeting of Jolie’s Maleficent and Pfeiffer’s Ingrith as they celebrate Princess Aurora’s ( Elle Fanning) engagement to Prince Philip. Things get ugly quickly between godmother Maleficent and future mother- in- law Ingrith as they battle for Aurora’s affections.
Even Fanning couldn’t take her eyes off Pfeiffer and Jolie “going head- tohead. The tension, you could feel it in the room.”
Ingrith is revealed to be a cold- blooded killer, taking power in the kingdom and waging war with Maleficent, along with a colony of dark fairies ( played by Ed Skrein and Chiwetel Ejiofor), long in hiding from humans.
She’s so evil that Ingrith has an adorable little light fairy captured and killed as part of a beyond- cruel extermination experiment by her henchman Lickspittle ( Warwick Davis). It’s eye- opening horror, at Ronning’s insistence, even if the fairy’s demise is shown as a flowerfilled return to nature.
“I’m a little fed up with these movies where there is nothing at stake. People can just come back to life,” says Ronning. “I fought a little for that to really show the stakes and that Queen Ingrith is a bad person. It’s all part of her elaborate plan.”
Ronning said he worked with Disney
DISNEY
to find a way to show the flower side of fairy death. “We went many, many rounds on this. You can imagine. They lose their magic, the fairies, and they turn back to nature. So they don’t stop fully existing, but they probably stop having a consciousness.”
The success of the experiment leads to Ingrith inviting the fairies and other magical members of the Moors to the royal wedding and locking them in a church.
The fairy- tested airborne killer cloud is then dispersed through a pipe organ. There are fairy casualties before the group manages to escape.
Meanwhile, Aurora and Prince Phillip lead a charge to stop the killing. Peace breaks out like flowers as Ingrith’s dark plans and dark heart are revealed.
There’s no final confrontation between Maleficent and Ingrith, but Aurora does find love for her dark godmother again.
“The queen’s ultimate defeat is when Maleficent and Aurora come back together,” says Ronning. “That to me was more important than the two of them ( Maleficent and Ingrith), say, sword fighting.”
Ingrith meets her comeuppance being turned into a goat, complete with pearls, by Maleficent – so the GOAT becomes a literal portrayal.
Aurora and Phillip move hastily from battlefield to outdoor wedding, with a stunning dress made by Maleficent. The godmother visits to say goodbye to the newlyweds the morning after, and mentions she’ll return for “the christening.”
So is Aurora pregnant? Even Fanning isn’t sure about her character, who looks puzzled onscreen by Maleficent’s comment.
“Harris and I were looking at each other like, ‘ Am I pregnant in this scene?’ Both of us were looking at each other like, ‘ What is happening?’ We didn’t know. So that look is how I really felt,” says Fanning. “I guess Maleficent knows all.”