HAPPILY EVER AFTER?
Battle looms in dark sequel
You’ve come a long way, Disney. When Sleeping Beauty first slumbered onto screens 60 years ago, she had to be awakened by a kiss from a guy she barely knew.
In Maleficent, the woke retelling — I can say woke because it was 2014 — Elle Fanning as Princess Aurora had her narcoleptic curse lifted by the even truer love of a maternal kiss. The final scene showed her and the charming Prince Philip (Brenton Thwaites) making eyes at one another.
But happily ever after? Not while there’s box office to be made! Maleficent: Mistress of Evil — which for some reason chose not to use my title, Maleficent 2: Maleficenter — picks up five years later. Philip, now played by Harris Dickinson (even actors can’t wait forever), has finally screwed up the courage to ask Aurora to marry him, and everyone is thrilled by her answer.
Well, almost everyone. All right, almost no one.
Aurora’s godmother, Maleficent (Angelina Jolie), is furious. She tries to smile, but it’s not in her nature. And it’s made more difficult by those pointy cheekbones — really more cheek-by jowl-bones.
Similarly underwhelmed is Philip’s mom, played with imperial glee by Michelle Pfeiffer. In fact, she quickly concocts a plan to use the wedding ceremony as a trap for Maleficent and her fairy-folk friends. Her ruse is so transparent, it’s a wonder she didn’t register the bride and groom at Bed, Broadswords and Beyond.
Kidding aside, Mistress of Evil spins a rather complicated geopolitical tale for a PG-rated fantasy. Aurora and Philip are clearly in love with each other and long for harmony between humans and faeries, but the fact that she herself is a human causes her loyalty to waver just a little.
And while the humans are mostly primed to distrust the faeries, the race of “dark faes” of which Maleficent is a member contains hawks and doves, personified by Conall (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Borra (Ed Skrein), respectively. And given that they have talons and wings, hawks and doves is more than just a metaphor as a battle between the species looms.
What’s most fascinating here is the way director Joachim Rønning (Kon-Tiki, Pirates of the Caribbean 5), working from a screenplay by returning writer Linda Woolverton, makes it clear that war becomes almost inevitable if even one of the potential parties wants it. Mutual mistrust and self-defence take care of the rest.
And yet ... something in the story fails to take flight, which is odd when so many of the characters have wings. For all the gorgeous visuals — I wanted to freezeframe the kingdom of Ulstead and admire its urban planning — the plot seems a touch thin, the battle scenes interminable and the resolution, when it comes, unearned.
On the plus side, Disney has crafted another strong female-centric story in its continuing penance against the likes of those damsel-in-distress tales of the dark ages.
Character-wise, Maleficent has nothing of which to be ashamed. Script-wise, “mistress of evil” may be too strong a nickname, but “mistress in need of another draft” might cover it.