Angelina Jolie champions women in ‘Maleficent’
Also starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Elle Fanning, it is the rare movie where men are in secondary roles
The sequel to Walt Disney Co’s 2014 hit Maleficent, out now in the UAE, puts three women at the centre of a fight for control between humans and fairies. Angelina Jolie stars in Maleficent:
Mistress of Evil as the titular villain and dark fairy godmother to Aurora, the queen of the fairies played by Elle Fanning.
When Aurora becomes engaged to the human Prince Phillip, the pending marriage brings Maleficent in conflict with Aurora’s future mother-in-law, Queen Ingrith, who is played by Michelle Pfeiffer.
It is the rare Hollywood movie where men are in secondary roles. “They’re just not the focus” in this film, Pfeiffer said.
Chiwetel Ejiofor, in the role of a mysterious figure named Conall, said the movie plays with many of the traditional narratives typical to fairy tales.
“There’s like 100 tropes that are exploded in this film,” Ejiofor said. “Seeing those explored in different ways, I think is very exciting.”
The sequel reflects the message of the original, which urged people not to judge a book by its cover or to attach labels to others that ostracise them.
The sequel amplifies the look with more fantastical creatures and more intricate costumes.
“You try that little bit harder to say ‘We’ve got to give them something better or we’ve got to give them something a little more fun,” said Jolie, who also acted as a producer of the film, “or this would make a better Halloween costume for the kids.”
FINDING IT TOUGH
For Jolie, slipping into the role once again was difficult.
“It was a tough time,” she told People magazine. “I’d been coming off a few years of difficulty, and I was not feeling very strong. In fact, I was feeling pretty broken. It took me a moment to feel the strength of [Maleficent] again.”
Jolie shares six children with her 55-year-old ex-husband Brad Pitt: daughters Zahara, 14, Shiloh, 13, and Vivienne, 11, and sons Maddox, 18, Pax, 15, and Knox, 11.
But while her six kids hung around in London with their mother during most of the shoot, Jolie couldn’t get them to appear on screen this time. Even her 11-year-old daughter Vivienne, who appeared as a young Aurora in 2014 original, will not be seen in this flick.
“I tried,” Jolie says. “Viv still can’t believe I made her a princess. None of my kids want to be actors. [They’re into] business, humanitarian affairs, things like that. Nobody was interested!”
With the film, Jolie wants to send out a message to women to show their strength by working with rather than fighting men to improve the world.
“I think that, so often, when a story’s told which says ‘this is a strong woman’, she has to beat the man, or she has to be like the man, or she has to somehow not need the man,” Jolie told the BBC.
Speaking about her character Maleficent, who is shown as a more sympathetic figure than the Sleeping Beauty villain she is in the original Disney animation, Jolie added: “We very much need and love and learn from the men. And so I think that’s also an important message for young girls, to find their own power, but to respect and learn from the men around them.”
The star went on to say that she feels an important theme of female-led films is that female heroism and villainy takes very different forms, just like male greatness does.
“We have strong women, but the character that is wrong in the film and has to be taken out is also a woman.