Maleficent Reviews WITH SPOILERS!

Since it seems like quite a few people had the chance to see Maleficent over the weekend, I thought I'd start a place where we can share our reactions including plot spoilers if need be to make our points. Magic Mirror and I have been talking over a few points via private message and I though other folks might want to jump into the discussion!

I've seen the movie twice now and while I still don't love it, I do like it. I thoroughly enjoyed Angelina's performance, which I thought was absolutely stellar. I like the motivation for her to take revenge. I liked the acting of the other characters--even King Stefan, who most critics have panned. (I hated the three fairies, but I don't know that i would necessarily say that their acting was bad. I don't like the way their characters were written. That's not their fault.) Id on't understand the purpose of the name change, but I like the character of Diaval very much and I love that his origin story is that Maleficent saved a winged creature--a kindness which she had not been shown. I think the visuals were absolutely stunning. I thought the movie was captivating and I was glued to the screen with anticipation from start to finish--even during the moments where I was screaming "NOOO!! How could you!!" on the inside. Like I told MM, on the second viewing, I saw it with my bestie and her kids and through a PG lens, I think it's a great movie with some really positive themes for kids (greed is bad, it's never to late to take responsibility for your actions and redeem yourself, there's good in everyone, romantic infatuation is not true love). It's scary enough to be interesting, but has a "happily ever after" quality that should prevent most nightmares.

Now, the things that left me shaking my head (rather vigorously at times):

I've already mentioned that I hated the fairies. They were purposelessly renamed. Some of the actions and characteristics were moved from one fairy to another (versus SB). I thought the CGI for them was far too Oz-like. They were written as stupid and incompetent and the explanation for why they attended the Christening without fear (to foster good relations?? Fairies were terrified of humans and now a human had attacked their protector and cut off her wings) was very thin. They were supposed to be comic relief, but as someone who loved the three fairies from SB, their complete ineptitude made me very sad.

The song. I LOVE the Lana Del Rey version, but why did we have to wait for the end credits to hear the song? This song is integral to the plot in SB, but because the plot unraveled as the changes became haphazard, the song no longer fit. I feel like someone needed to be dreaming about meeting someone else! If for nothing else, so that this song could be used to drive the story and to provide motivation for one or more characters actions.

The leather pants--just, no. Were they more practical than gown/robe/cape for the epic battle scene? You bet. Could we have turned Maleficent into a dragon and avoided the need for a wardrobe change? Hmmm...I feel like I've seen that work somewhere before.

Maleficent lives. This is just one of many departures from SB that doesn't work for me. The christening scene was SO well done and it followed the scene from SB word for word. At the end, Aurora tells us that this is the way she remembers the story (which is bogus because much of it happened before she was born and some of it happened while she was asleep. She's not a reliable witness.) It doesn't matter what she remembers. We, the audience, saw several things happen--Aurora is cursed, fairies take baby to cottage, Maleficent continues to try to execute curse, prince & princess meet, princess pricks finger, prince is captured, price escapes and fights dragon, prince kills dragon, prince wakes sleeping girl. You might be able to toy with some of these events, but changing who ends up alive and dead is a pretty big departure. At the very least, Diaval should have died in dragon form--preferably while being stabbed in the heart by an enchanted sword. Maybe have Stefan kill Maleficent and then have Aurora avenge her death and kill Stefan. Or have Aurora and Phillip develop a real relationship instead of a baseless, useless infatuation that did nothing except acknowledge that there was a prince in the original movie. In SB, Phillip was actually one of the more capable princes with the help of the fairies. He cut down a thorn wall, fought a dragon, and rescued the princess. In Maleficent, he is completely useless.

So, those are some of my thoughts on the movie at the moment. If Sleeping Beauty didn't exist, I would have liked this movie a lot better. The fact remains that SB does exist and I can't un-watch it. I'd have preferred something a little darker and a little deeper--like Maleficent PG-13 version.