Maleficent



2014 live-action film from Disney starring Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning. It retells the story of Sleeping Beauty from the viewpoint of its villain, the "evil fairy" Maleficent -- and reveals that the tale as conventionally told is not quite the way things "actually" happened. Along with 2009's The Princess and the Frog and 2013's Frozen, it appears to herald a new generation of Disney films that toy with and actively subvert the conventions of "traditional" Disney storytelling.


 * Animate Inanimate Object: The curse, once Maleficent sets it in motion, seems almost sentient and actively takes a part in its own fulfillment, even going so far as to re-create a spinning wheel from the ashes and shards of all the destroyed wheels.
 * Anti-Villain: Maleficent.  Oh, she certainly does curse Princess Aurora, but not because of anything so petty as  not getting invited to her christening and certainly not just For the Evulz.  And she repents later and does everything she can to undo it.
 * Badass: Maleficent, even moreso than in the original animated film.
 * Becoming the Mask: Aurora mis-identifies Maleficent as her Fairy Godmother -- which Maleficent, amused, goes along with.  But by the end of the movie she has fully taken on the role, doing everything she can to save Aurora from her own curse.
 * Big Entrance: Maleficent gets several impressive entrances, including her "traditional" one at the christening.
 * Book Ends: The narration which opens and closes the film.
 * Broken Angel: Maleficent, after.
 * Chromatic Arrangement: The fairy "aunts" maintain the same color scheme as in the animated film.
 * Cognizant Limbs:.
 * Cold Iron: Maleficent suffers from this traditional faerie weakness, which Stefan knows about from practically the first moment he meets her.  He throws away an iron ring -- almost his only possession at the time -- when it burns her hand.  At the end, he tries to use it against her.
 * Dangerous Sixteenth Birthday: As in the original story, although just about everyone including Maleficent tries to prevent it.
 * Didn't Need Those Anyway: Losing her wings turns Maleficent from a theoretical danger to the human kingdom into an actual one.
 * Disney Princess: Aurora is one of the canonical examples.
 * Disney Villain Death:.
 * Disproportionate Retribution: Not nearly as bad as her animated counterpart, but still... Maleficent's curse is not death, as in the animated film, but sleep to begin with, only to be broken by "true love's kiss" -- which is a deliberate taunt aimed at Stefan, who claimed to have given Maleficent such a kiss before betraying her.  Stefan's dialogue late in the film makes it clear that he never believed such a thing existed, so he believes Maleficent has condemned his daughter to eternal sleep.
 * The Ditz: Thistletwit.
 * The Dragon: Diaval, loosely speaking, for most of the movie.
 * The Fair Folk: The inhabitants of the Moors are all manner of fae -- and defying studio tradition, not all of them are Disneyfied.  Maleficent herself is some variety of fae, but precisely which is never said.
 * Fairy Godmother: Played with when Aurora, unaware that the three women who've raised her are literal fairies, decides that Maleficent (whom she knows has been watching over her for years) is her Fairy Godmother. Maleficent's response is basically Sure, Let's Go with That -- but by the end of the film she has become for all practical purposes the real thing.
 * Freudian Excuse: For Maleficent:.
 * Friend to All Living Things: Aurora, to creatures both mundane and magical.  Everything seems to love her automatically, even the scariest faerie creatures.
 * Friendly Enemy: What Maleficent becomes, quite against her will at first, to Aurora.
 * God Save Us From the Queen: Although this is the way the human kingdom views her anyway when she is the guardian of the Moors, when Maleficent promotes herself to its dark queen after Stefan's betrayal even the fairie folk seem to have thoughts along these lines.
 * Hair of Gold: Aurora.
 * Has Five Mommies: Aurora has a birth mother (who vanishes from the story after her christening) and three fairy "aunts", and.
 * The Hedge of Thorns: Maleficent causes a wall of thorns to grow around the Moors to protect them from Stefan's army.
 * Stefan has a similar wall made of cold iron created to guard the castle from Maleficent.
 * Heel Face Revolving Door: Maleficent starts out as a sweet child, becomes a romantic teen girl in love, grows into the protector of her land and people as an adult -- and then is brutally betrayed by the human man who claimed to love her.  In pain and rage she becomes the monster that the human kingdom already sees her as, and plunges the Moors into darkness to reflect her own darkness and pain.  She curses Aurora as revenge on Stefan.  But in watching Aurora grow, and eventually becoming the "fairy godmother" that Aurora mistakes her for, Maleficent returns from her darkness, and brings the Moors with her.
 * Hell-Bent for Leather: Until her descent into darkness, Maleficent's clothing is all earth-toned fabrics; after, though, she's always wearing something leather (or snakeskin) -- and that usually black.  And then there's what she ends up in during the climactic battle...
 * Hoist by His Own Petard: Stefan, whose troubles all stem from his betrayal of Maleficent, and who ended up obsessing over her to the point of madness for seventeen years, trying to wage war on the Moors simply to get back at her for her own revenge on him..
 * Hollywood Kiss: Averted -- we never see Aurora and Phillip kiss (well, other than when she's sleeping), although it's pretty clear they're going to end up together.
 * Horned Humanoid: Maleficent very clearly has real horns, unlike her animated counterpart.
 * Hypnotize the Princess: The curse, which appears to be semi-sentient, seems to entrance Aurora; it clearly is leading her to the room of destroyed spinning wheels.
 * Interspecies Romance: Stefan and Maleficent, at least at first.
 * Involuntary Shapeshifting: But Diaval gets used to Maleficent yanking his physical form this way and that over the years.
 * Ironic Nickname: Maleficent affectionately calls Aurora "Beastie", a term which dates back to when Aurora was a toddler and Maleficent was half-heartedly trying to convince herself she hated the girl as much as her father -- while seeing to it she got fed and occasionally saving her life.
 * King on His Deathbed: King Henry, who has no heir but plans to avert what seems like the inevitable chaos by awarding the crown to whichever of several candidates proves his worthiness.
 * Knight in Shining Armor: Subverted by the cold iron armor worn by Stefan and his men at the climax, which while gleaming metallically comes off almost black in appearance.
 * Love At First Sight: Simultaneously expressed and subverted:  it's obvious that Phillip and Aurora are attracted to each other from the moment they first see each other,.
 * A Love to Dismember: Stefan keeps.
 * Mama Bear:
 * Meaningful Name: Thistletwit, the blonde ditz fairy.
 * Missing Mom: Queen Leila, who vanishes without a trace or mention after the christening.
 * The Missus and the Ex: Princess Aurora's christening, although Maleficent barely spares a glance for Queen Leila, saving all her venom for Stefan.
 * Narrator All Along: A woman's voice -- which the viewer is initially led to believe is Maleficent's -- introduces and ends the story,.
 * Non-Human Sidekick: Diaval for Maleficent.  Unusual in that he spends a lot of his time as a human anyway.
 * Offered the Crown: Stefan, upon proving his "worthiness".
 * Oh Crap: Everyone at the christening when Maleficent arrives, but Stefan most of all.
 * Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Stefan has a vaguely British accent -- except in the scene where a page interrupts him while he's .  For a couple of lines he sounds inexplicably Scottish.
 * Parental Abandonment: Aurora is foisted off on the three fairies for no good reason, and the fairies tell her that her parents are dead.
 * Stefan appears to be an orphan.
 * Perspective Flip: The animated movie's villain recast as the protagonist.
 * Princess Classic: Flittle's and Knotgrass's gifts (and possibly Thistletwit's had she not been interrupted) were related to this trope. Apparently averted when we finally see Aurora, though, as she comes across more as a friendly girl-next-door than a Disney princess.
 * Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: How Stefan sees Maleficent -- not without some justification during the middle of the movie, but considerably less so toward the end.
 * Rags to Riches: Stefan goes from an orphan boy living in a barn to the king of the human land.
 * Rape and Revenge: A non-literal rape, but no less horrible --.
 * Ravens and Crows: Diaval, a crow Maleficent rescued from certain death at the hands of a peasant and made her sidekick.
 * Revenge by Proxy: Why Maleficent curses Aurora.
 * Revenge SVP: Averted.  Although Maleficent mockingly pouts over not being invited, it has nothing to do with why she curses Aurora.
 * Scaled Up: Maleficent turns Diaval into a dragon during the final confrontation with Stefan and his men.
 * Scenery Porn: Makes the animated Sleeping Beauty look positively dull by comparison.  This is a visually spectacular film.
 * Sickly Green Glow: The curse on Aurora manifests as a green glow, especially after it seems to take on a life of its own.  By comparison, all of Maleficent's other magic appears as golden light.
 * Start of Darkness: Maleficent's "start" is really a long, gradual process that begins when Stefan gives her "True Love's Kiss" and then all but vanishes for years as he begins his rise in human kingdom, but the moment when it all snaps into place is when.
 * Stefan definitely has his own -- he seems like a nice enough kid at the start, if ambitious, but that ambition consumes him to the point that he is willing to drug and mutilate the girl he claimed to love in order to become the heir to the dying king. And after Maleficent curses Aurora, it's clear that he slowly goes mad over the subsequent sixteen years...
 * Sure, Let's Go with That: Maleficent's ultimate response when Aurora mis-identifies her as her Fairy Godmother.
 * Sympathetic Criminal: Even when Maleficent is at her darkest, the audience understands why and sympathizes with her pain -- if not necessarily with her methods.
 * Then Let Me Be Evil: Subverted, in that while Maleficent does go quite dark, takes on the trappings of the Evil Queen, and curses Aurora to punish Stefan, she never really becomes truly evil, and in fact ends up a secret guardian to Aurora as she grows up.
 * True Love's Kiss: Averted and subverted and expressed, separately and all at once.
 * Stefan claims to give one to Maleficent in their teens, but then betrays her.
 * Maleficent makes this the spell-break for her curse, as a slap in the face for Stefan.
 * Afterward, Stefan claims True Love's Kiss does not exist, so breaking Maleficent's curse on Aurora is an impossibility.
 * Twice-Told Tale
 * Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The narration makes it clear that the "traditional" version of Sleeping Beauty is a sour-grapes retelling by humans that makes them out as the heroes and Maleficent as a horrific monster without a single redeeming feature.
 * Villain Protagonist: Naturally, the story is mostly told from Maleficent's point of view, exploring her true history and motivations, eventually making her somewhat more sympathetic. If anything, the movie shows that even in the world of Disney there are two sides to every story and things are rarely so black and white.
 * Welcome Back, Traitor: The fairies raising Aurora are the only Moors folk who venture outside the Moors after Maleficent shuts the border; they are attempting to broker some kind of peace agreement entirely on their own.  When Maleficent sees them at the christening, they seem oddly loyal to Stefan, which only adds to her rage -- and afterwards they abandon their homeland to raise the princess.  At the end of the movie, they return to the Moors with no consequences.
 * What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to Queen Leila after Aurora was fostered?
 * Winged Humanoid: Maleficent -- until.
 * What Happened to the Mouse?: What happened to Queen Leila after Aurora was fostered?
 * Winged Humanoid: Maleficent -- until.