Sleeping Beauty/Awesome
Disney's Sleeping Beauty
- Crowning Music of Awesome: The entire soundtrack, courtesy of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (albeit rearranged and with added lyrics by George Bruns). Especially Battle with the Forces of Evil.
- Merryweather turning the raven into stone. Hey, wait...
Merryweather: I'd like to turn her [Maleficent] into a fat old hop toad. |
- At this point, Merryweather's magic becomes a Holy Hand Grenade, proving that good isn't impotent.
- Hey, turning that raven to stone made her happy. Therefore, it works.
- Maleficent has this one particularly awesome line that just made me shudder with Emotional Torque the first time I saw it as a kid and every time thereafter. It's so short, and yet it was one of the most memorable scenes of the movie for me. I was pleasantly surprised, when rewatching it as an adult, that its effect on me was not diminished in the least:
Maleficent: A forest of thorns shall be his tomb! |
- Similarly, Maleficent's brilliant, sarcastic callback to the story's introduction, which she uses to taunt Prince Phillip in his cell. Accompanied by swelling music and images of an aged, broken Phillip, we have:
The years roll by... but a hundred years, to a steadfast heart, are but a day. And now, the gates of the dungeon part, and our prince is free to go his way. And off he rides, on his noble steed, a valiant figure straight and tall! To wake his love, with love's first kiss, and prove that true love conquers all! Ahahahaha! |
- Phillip, not only being the first Disney prince who actually does anything, but telling his father that he's willing to forsake his birthright to marry for love rather than political reasons before riding off.
- Maleficent: Now shall you deal with ME, O Prince, and all the powers of Hell!
- The climax is as epic as animation -- indeed, film in general -- gets (and much imitated since): the three good fairies successfully breach Maleficent's castle, rescue Prince Phillip, and provide him with weaponry and armor; from there they assist his escape and protect him from everything Maleficent throws at him on the way to the castle -- boulders, a gigantic forest of thorns, and finally her One-Winged Angel form of a gigantic black dragon. When she knocks his shield away, the fairies respond by enchanting his sword to make sure throwing it does her in. Think about this a moment -- how many Disney films include the heroines killing the villain?
- It maintains its awesomeness in the vast majority of the foreign language dubs; the majority preserve Eleanor Audley's distinctive cackle. But avoid, with all your strength, the 2001 Spanish redubs -- Maleficent was toned down, in an example of Disneyfication of Disney.
- How about this line from Flora:
Flora: O Sword of Truth, fly swift and sure, that evil DIE and GOOD endure! |