Coming after a long string of other fairy tale adaptations in theaters, the new movie Maleficent brings us a retelling of the classic tale of Sleeping Beauty, only this time told from an angle that we haven’t seen yet.  As you can tell from the title, this version is less about the slumbering princess and instead is centered primarily on the one who cursed her in the first place; the dark fairy, Maleficent.  Naturally this fantasy film comes from the Walt Disney Company, who are taking their inspiration not only from the original fairy tale, but from their own 1959 animated classic as well. Celebrating it’s 55th anniversary this year, Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (1959) is a film that has withstood the test of time and has become a favorite to many, including myself.  Sleeping Beauty actually holds a special place in my heart because it was one of the very first movies that I ever got to see in a movie theater.  It was during a 1985 re-release that I had my first experience with the tale and the 2 1/2 year old me was forever changed by it.  That movie, along with another Disney classic I saw that same year (1961’s 101 Dalmatians), probably are what helped propel me towards becoming a lifelong film buff, and because of this, I still hold the film in very high regard.  The same is probably true for many other people too across the globe.

Walt Disney created the original Sleeping Beauty at a transitional time for animation.  Walt Disney saw that tastes in styles were changing in the late 50’s, so he decided to take a whole new approach to Sleeping Beauty by giving it a very unique look.  Styled to look like medieval tapestry art, the movie was unlike anything the studio had ever made before and it still looks magnificent in all it’s 70 mm widescreen glory.  But,  it’s art style isn’t what has become the film’s biggest triumph over the years.  Instead, that honor goes to the creation of it’s villain, Maleficent.  Drawn by legendary animator Marc Davis and voice brilliantly by actress Eleanor Audley, Maleficent is an all time great antagonist; one by which all other Disney villains are now measured against.  In fact, her popularity has grown so much over the years that she has since become the unofficial antagonist of the entire Disney community.  You’re more likely to see her sparing with the likes of Mickey Mouse and friends today than with characters in her original film.  This is evidenced in other mediums by the company that she has also featured in, like the Kingdom Hearts video games and the Fantasmic nighttime shows at the Disney Parks.  Not to mention the numerous merchandise made available with her image on them.  Given a legacy like this, it’s not all that surprising that Disney would feature her prominently in their brand new live-action adaptation.  What is surprising, however, is that Disney would take their most popular villain and try to make her sympathetic.  Given how much she’s beloved by many people like me as someone we love to hate, it’s a risky revision to undertake, and one that does have to face some extra scrutiny from fans.

What is unique about this movie is that it looks at all of the events of the story from Maleficent’s perspective.  It begins with her childhood as a powerful yet innocent fairy living in a magical kingdom called the Moors.  Soon she meets a young human boy from the neighboring kingdom named Stefan, who becomes her closest companion as they grow older.  But when they become adults, they grow apart.  Maleficent (played as an adult by Angelina Jolie) soon finds her kingdom at war with the neighboring King, who grants his crown to anyone who can kill the winged Maleficent.  Stefan (played by Sharlto Copley) betrays his friend by cutting Maleficent’s giant wings off her back, leaving her both grounded and defenseless.  Stefan becomes the new king thereafter and Maleficent vows vengeance, which she soon enacts once Stefan and his Queen have a child.  At the presentation ceremony, Maleficent places a curse on the child, ensuring that she will be put into a death-like sleep once she turns 16.  The years pass and Princess Aurora (Elle Fanning) grows up far from Stefan’s care in the woods, raised by three fairies (played by Imelda Staunton, Lesley Manville, and Juno Temple).  Unbeknownst to the others though, Aurora is also being looked after by Maleficent herself, who surprisingly grows attached to the young girl and begins to regret the curse that she made out of anger.

So, as you can tell from this premise, the movie actually takes the angle of making Maleficent less of a villain and portrays her more as a hero.  Stefan on the other hand is cast as the villain of the story, with Aurora still caught in the middle.  This may be jarring to people who have grown up with the original movie, but it’s a reversal that is not without precedence.  The Broadway musical Wicked has become a popular retelling of the Wizard of Oz tale, centered around the maturity of the villainous Wicked Witch of the West.  In that retelling as well, the popular villain is treated more sympathetically, becoming something of a misunderstood hero, while the Wizard is cast as the cold-hearted villain.  It’s a reversal of roles that works perfectly in that story, but unfortunately works less so here.  I’m not saying that it can’t be done.  It’s just not given as much care as it was with Wicked.  Unfortunately, it also takes away a bit from what made Maleficent so memorable in the first place.  She’s really at her best when she’s at her worst; being an unruly source of terror that strikes fear into all.  The original animated classic did that perfectly and it’s mainly why she is remembered so well today.  In this version, the movie hits it’s high points when Maleficent is allowed to be menacing, especially in the presentation of Aurora scene, which is almost lifted directly from the original film, including some of the same dialogue.  That moment works very well and unfortunately it’s an aspect that is not carried throughout the entire film.

I have to say that the biggest problem with this movie is it’s inconsistency.  Tonally, it is all over the place, not knowing whether to be dark and brooding or fun and lighthearted.  Sometimes the shifts in tone are so abrupt, that it will be absolutely distracting.  I attribute this to the screenplay, written by Linda Woolverton, who does have a long legacy with the Disney company, having drafted scripts for both Beauty and the Beast (1991) and The Lion King (1994), as well as Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010).  Unfortunately, her grasp on a story-line isn’t as refined as it was on her early work.  While not as needless complicated in plot as Wonderland was, Maleficent still feels incomplete, particularly when it comes to the characterizations.  Maleficent gets fully fleshed out in the film, but Aurora and most other characters do not.  I feel like another draft of the script could have worked some of these problems out, because there are some genuinely good ideas present there in the script.  Also problematic is the direction.  The film is helmed by first-time director Roger Stromberg, an Oscar-winning visual effects artist and production designer whose work we’ve seen in films like Avatar (2009), Alice in Wonderland (2010), and Oz, The Great and Powerful (2013).  Unfortunately, by giving direction over to a novice more comfortable with visual effects, you’re most likely to have a film that looks pretty, but feels hollow, and that’s unfortunately what happened here.  The inconsistency in tone is probably the result of Stromberg being unsure about what kind of movie he wants to make, and it shows.

But the movie isn’t un-salvageable.  What does hold up is some of the performances, particularly Angelina Jolie as the titular character.  Jolie’s involvement probably helped to give this film a boost during development and thankfully the potential in that casting is not wasted.  Thanks to some rather good make-up work by the great Rick Baker, Jolie is spot-on as the iconic character.  She matches the original look of the character perfectly and she plays the character well, clearly relishing the grandiose nature of the part.  She also makes the transitions between Maleficent’s darker and lighter sides feel more natural than they do in the script, which helps to keep the film from falling apart.  One other character that proved to be surprisingly effective is her companion  Diaval (played by actor Sam Riley).  In the original film, he was personified as a pet raven named Diablo, a character with very little complexity.  Here, he shifts forms between human and raven, and even into other creatures, depending on the needs of Maleficent.  What could have been a throwaway servant character actually turns into a thoroughly likable individual.  He works perfectly off Maleficent as her companion, bringing out some of the movies most genuinely humorous moments.  I give the movie a lot of credit for taking a minor character from the original film and reshaping him into a more involved personality that actually contributes something good to the overall story.  Honestly, I would have preferred more scenes with Diaval and Maleficent, since they are the only characters that had any sort of chemistry throughout the whole movie.

Unfortunately many of the other characters aren’t as well balanced as those two.  King Stefan is a mixed bag as a character.  Sharlto Copley does give a solid performance, especially in the later scenes where he begins to descend further into madness.  Unfortunately, he gets the shorter end of the stick when it comes to the role reversal of the story line.  Taking Maleficent’s place as the villain, King Stefan feels a little out of his element.  He doesn’t have the same kind of menace that Maleficent had in the original film, and he never comes across as truly terrifying.  It’s a missed opportunity with the character and it unfortunately reduces the impact that the final showdown at the end could have had.  Elle Fanning’s Aurora is likewise a one-dimensional character, but to the movie’s defense, she was pretty bland in the original film as well.  Most problematic though are the depictions of the Three Good Fairies.  In this film, they are very obnoxious and incompetent characters, who seem more preoccupied with squabbling with each other than looking after the princess.  At times, these characters almost made the movie insufferable to sit through, particularly when you think about how well portrayed they were in the original movie.  The fairies were actually the heroes of the original film, and I for one love their characterizations from that version; especially Merryweather.  God I wish Merryweather was in this movie.  I don’t understand why the filmmakers chose to go that route with the characters, but I can tell you that it did the movie a big disservice.

So, did the movie honor the legacy of the original, or did it insult it?  I do have to say that at certain points, this movie did come very close to losing me.  Only the strength of Angelina’s magnetic performance helped to pull this movie off of the ledge.  I do think that there is a great movie in there wanting to come out, but is hampered by a lackluster script and uneven direction.  The performances help to make this film bearable, and I do think Angelina Jolie could not have been more perfectly cast.  The film unfortunately doesn’t break the recent trend of tired, CGI heavy fairy tale adaptations for the young adult crowd that have failed to live up to their potential.  Following in the wake of Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and 2012’s two failed attempts at the story of Snow White (Mirror, Mirror  and Snow White and the Huntsman), Maleficent likewise fails and instead becomes a jumbled mess trying to be too many things at once.  Albeit, this version does do some things right and probably is the best movie out of this trend that we’ve seen, but that’s not saying much.  Hopefully, Disney gets the tone right when they release their live action adaptation of Cinderella next Spring, directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Cate Blanchett as the wicked stepmother.  As far as this movie goes, I’d rather stick with the original that has been a part of my life since childhood.  At least in that version, the “mistress of all evil” is allowed to be as such.  I greatly prefer the dark side of the character, though I don’t discredit this movie for trying something different.  It’s not a terrible take on the character, but I feel like it could have been done better.

Rating: 6/10

It’s hard to believe that a giant, spiked lizard could have such a long lasting legacy on the big screen.  This year marks the 60th anniversary of the King of the Monsters, Godzilla, and there could be no better way to celebrate that milestone than with a big new blockbuster film.  First seen in the original Japanese movie Gojira (1954), Godzilla was clearly a product of his time.  For a nation still reeling from destruction by a nuclear bomb, Godzilla was a symbol of Japan’s fears about it’s own insecurity in the post-war years.  Godzilla’s reign of terror in those early films was clearly meant to represent the dangers of nuclear warfare, but his presence could have also represented any other kind of force of nature that is well out of mankind’s control.  That’s probably why Godzilla has enjoyed such longevity on the big screen.  He represents a timeless menace that everyone can fear, no matter what time or place he exists.  That, and the fact that Godzilla movies are almost always fun to watch.  To date, there have been 28 Godzilla movies in total, most of them made in his native Japan by the Toho film company.  The original film still holds up as a classic thriller, even with the crude special effects.  It proved to be so popular in fact that it was one of the first Japanese post-war films to have a wide international release; even premiering in most American first-run cinemas, thanks to an Americanized cut that presented the original movie with actor Raymond Burr spliced in for narration.

Of course, most Godzilla movies look dated now because special effects have become much more sophisticated over time.  Today, it would look silly to have a man in the Godzilla costume walking around and destroying a model set, but that’s what worked well enough 60 years ago.  Now with CGI becoming the norm in visual effects, it makes much more sense to have the creature be animated; it makes him look far less artificial (to a point).  American filmmakers have certainly looked at the creature for inspiration in their own larger than life monster movies, and to date there have been two major attempts by Hollywood at making their own films centered around the big green brute.  The first attempt was Roland Emmerich’s 1998 adaptation, which is a classic example of how not to make a Godzilla movie.  Godzilla (1998) is a notoriously bad film.  It puts much more emphasis on it’s uninteresting human characters, relies too heavily on goofy humor, and it redesigned the monster to the point where it was no longer recognizable.  In fact, Godzilla looked more like a rejected design for one of the T-Rex’s in Jurassic Park (1993), a movie that this Godzilla was clearly trying to emulate and failed.  Sixteen years after this notorious misfire, Warner Brothers has now released a new Godzilla (2014), and it sticks much more closely to the formula that has been used for 60 years in Japan.  Did it work this time around?  Kinda.

The story is nothing that we haven’t seen before.  It’s basically the same plot of every Godzilla movie before it, only done on a much more global scale.  The story begins with nuclear engineer Joe Brody (Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston) witnessing the destruction of his power plant by some unseen force.  After losing his wife Sandra (Juliette Binoche) in the accident, Joe becomes obsessed with finding out the truth about what happened.  Fifteen years pass and Joe is confronted by his Army-trained, bomb expert son, Ford (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who begrudgingly follows him back into the quarantined area of the accident.  There they find what caused the mayhem in the first place, and it’s now just waking up from it’s slumber.  A giant, spider-like creature called a MUTO (mysterious unidentified terrestrial organism) starts wrecking havoc and begins making it’s way across the Pacific Ocean.  Ford quickly makes his way back to America in order to help stop the advancing threat, but not before being informed by scientists, Doctors Serizawa (Ken Watanabe) and Graham (Sally Hawkins), that another monster is also following the Muto across the Pacific; it’s natural predator and ancient adversary: Godzilla.  What follows is a race against time between the monsters and the humans before an inevitable showdown in the city of San Francisco.

Naturally, with a film based off of a legacy like this one is, it’s going to have to face some scrutiny with comparisons to other films.  The movie, for me, is a mixed bag.  Is it bad?  Not really.  I can see a lot of people enjoying this one, especially when it gets to the climatic battle scenes.  Also, as far as Americanized Godzilla movies go, this one is light-years better than the Roland Emmerich version.  This movie, for one thing, doesn’t resort to using goofball hi-jinks with it’s human characters in order to entertain it’s audience.  This movie treats everything and everyone involved with the utmost seriousness; something that it probably does a little too well.  Let, me state right away what my biggest issue was with this movie, and that is it’s pacing.  It takes this movie a long time to build up steam towards what it intends to deliver.  For most of the film, you witness more of the aftermath of what these creatures are doing rather than the actual destruction.  There are a lot of instances where the movie cuts to news footage of the mayhem, which isn’t as effective as it would’ve been if the movie had actually let us see it up close.  Now, I do understand that most of the early Japanese Godzilla movies were structured like this as well; saving all the best action moments for the end.  Unfortunately, the movie isn’t effective enough during it’s monster-less moments to make this kind of structure work.

I do blame this more on the shoddy editing rather than on the strengths of the performances.  The human actors here unfortunately have little to do, other than to react to what’s going on.  The movie moves around so much that character development suffers, and many of the main cast usually just fall into stock characterizations.  Aaron-Taylor Johnson suffers the most because of this in his performance.  He’s a fine actor, but the movie never gives him the chance to show off anything interesting in his persona, so he just resorts to becoming your standard every-man protagonist.  Ford really doesn’t have anything to contribute to the movie until one course of action towards the very end, and even still, it’s nothing compared to what’s going on with the monsters.  It’s surprising that a cast this prestigious, filled with many award winners, comes across as so bland in this movie.  Only Cranston and Watanabe stand out in their roles, and just barely.  It may be a little unfair to make the comparison, but this is why a movie like Pacific Rim (2013) works so much better.  That movie managed to balance out the human story-lines with the fighting monsters plot perfectly, giving both the time and focus they needed to work and it kept everything simple.  In this movie, you’ll start getting impatient because the plot chooses to hold off on it’s monsters, which just makes 2/3’s of this movie feel like one, prolonged tease.

But, when it does get to that final 1/3 of the movie, it is indeed spectacular.  At that point, the film knows who the star is, and he doesn’t disappoint.  If people come away from this movie satisfied, it will be because of the final showdown at the end.  One of the many reasons why this Godzilla is so much better than the Emmerich version is because he looks the way that Godzilla should look.  While slightly modified, this Godzilla looks more like the classic version.  One thing that this movie does improve upon from all other Godzilla movies before it is the sense of scale given to the monsters.  His presence in this movie will show you exactly why he is called the “King of the Monsters.”  When Godzilla makes his first appearance in the movie, it is a chilling moment, and it perfectly illustrates why we love the monster in the first place.  You know you’ve done a good job with bringing the creature to life when Godzilla makes the audience break out in applause at certain points.  Also, I give the filmmakers a lot of credit for keeping Godzilla’s one-of-a-kind roar in this movie, because he wouldn’t be the same without it.  Even though the movie makes you wait long stretches for him, it does do right by the character.  That’s mainly why the film can be infuriating at times, because all you want is more of the big guy.  Maybe the filmmakers wanted to be careful and not spoil the character with too many scenes, but I think this is where caution should have been discouraged.

The film is especially well crafted, and does work well at portraying the mayhem caused by the monsters in the movie.  The film was made by Gareth Edwards, a former visual effects producer who’s only directed one feature prior to this one; the far more modestly budgeted Monsters (2010).  While I think Mr. Edwards still needs to refine his skills as a story-teller, I do believe that he has a remarkable vision when it comes to the scope of this movie.  He especially avoids the tiresome Michael Bay convention of shaky camera work, and lets the action play out in tightly controlled compositions.  We thankfully get very long and detailed looks at the monsters, which helps the audience comprehend what’s going on in every scene.  And again, the director’s sense of scale is very well displayed here.  The design team also deserves a lot of credit, helping to make this film feel right at home with the look of the original movies, while at the same time retaining that Hollywood gloss that we’ve come to expect from a big tent-pole film.  The Muto creatures are a nice hybrid of that modern design and traditional Japanese aesthetic that the movie is trying to accomplish.  I often thought that they looked like armor-plated versions of the Cloverfield (2008) monster, and they compliment Godzilla very well and make great foes for him in the end.  Where the movie falters in it’s story, it does indeed make it up in it’s visuals, and it can definitely be said that Godzilla has never looked better on the big screen.

If this movie becomes a big success, which indeed seems very likely, I’m sure we’ll see more Hollywood films centered around the big, green guy again.  My hope is that the filmmakers actually puts more of the focus on the creatures themselves, and less on the plots concerning the humans.  Maybe the filmmakers were living by the motto that less is more with regards to monster movies, but I think they went a little too far.  Yes, the showdown at the end is worth the wait (especially when Godzilla shows off his special trick), but it’s a long way to get there.  When your movie is named after a certain monster, you’d expect to see plenty of him throughout the run-time.  Oddly enough, more screen-time is devoted to the Mutos in this movie than Godzilla himself.  This is indeed how the original Godzilla movies structured, but I think it may have worked better in the movie’s favor if it broke from tradition in this sense.  More interesting human characters would’ve helped too.  It’s probably me being nit-picky, but I feel like the movie could’ve been better if it did something a little different.  That being said, it does a fine job living up to the legacy of the franchise and it will continue to make Godzilla a relevant presence on the big screen for many years to come.  It certainly does that better than the awful 1998 version.  Godzilla has been an influential force on western-based monster movies for years, such as Cloverfield (2008) and last year’s Pacific Rim.  Now the King of Monsters is here to be a force in American cinemas on his own, and let’s hope that Hollywood will serve right by him right in the future.

Rating: 7/10