Truth: I’m much more excited than my children are about this week’s opening of Disney’s new movie Maleficent.
Her name alone is awesome. Eat her dirt, Evil Queen [a title, dearie, not a name] and Lady Tremaine [seriously, how wicked can one be with a name like that?]. Only Cruella de Vil holds a creepy candle in the name department.
Maleficent has been my favorite villain [favorite villain – that’s a thing, right?] since I first saw Disney’s 1959 animated Sleeping Beauty as a child. I’m not sure why – something about her horns or her dragon-morphing or her use of the succinct-yet-scalding catchphrase, “Fools!” … I don’t know. I guess I find her elegant, in a badass, Mistress-of-All-Evil sort of way.
So the new telling of Maleficent’s backstory – complete with pointy prosthetic cheekbones and imitation goat-eye contact lenses – has me thrilling, no lie. And the previews [of which I might have seen all, many times over] are visually stunning. Now I just hope the original script holds up to the art direction.
I mean, those wings? Fairy, please.
