I'm on a bit of a kick of watching large corporate films and teasing out where the talent of the people they hire show through, and seeing how the corporate bullshit has taken over more and more.
I liked Maleficent a lot when it came out, and honestly...it holds up, probably better than it did before, in the context of all the "live action remake" bullshit today. In particular, I remember my main criticism of Maleficent at the time was how bloomy it was, how everything looked so bright and saturated. Well, now, it seems like every movie that comes out is even more so, to the extent that this film looks tastefully reasonable in comparison.
Unfortunately, its messaging around feminine power and the emphasis on (found) familial love over romantic love has been so oversaturated by #
Disney in particular since then that it feels less impactful in a modern context, although I'd say it's a lot more genuine in Maleficent than the strictly corporate attempts made today. I don't think Disney would ever have another clear rape metaphor in a film, and I don't think anyone but Angelina Jolie could have carried the whole narrative as convincingly.
Also, the original Sleeping Beauty was 100% corporate trash even back in 1950-whatever. The creativity and theme reclamation of Maleficent is a proper rehabilitation of it, probably the only one that any of these corps have managed to achieve in all these horrendous attempts.
It's a shame that the film only received middling reception when it came out. I think if critics could see the state of things today, they might have chosen to emphasize these aspects. Or on the other hand, they might have panned it even more as a warning against Disney and other corporations taking it as a template for their own bastardization.
Because modern audiences simply can't make that distinction: If you give them a movie, they can't sit down and say, "Here, the writers and actors, artists and set designers were allowed to create a piece of an amazing movie; and here's where the corporation stuffed its fingers right in there and ruined it." There's actually a lot to be enjoyed in these movies — and really, most corporate shit — if you are able to make that separation; and you can also gain insight into why there's been barely a single good movie released anywhere in the west in half a decade.
