Maleficent

While looking for something to write about this week I came across an article about Maleficent, a new live-action Disney movie spin-off of Sleeping Beauty. There has been talk about the movie being directed by Tim Burton after the success of Alice in Wonderland and of Angelina Jolie playing the title character.

After reading and discussing Coover’s Stepmother this seemed especially interesting to me because the movie would tell the Sleeping Beauty story from the perspective of Maleficent, the villain in the story. This goes along with what was mentioned in class about the book of fairy tales that included retellings from the perspective of the stepmothers in Disney world. Someone mentioned that this book, like Coover’s, had made the stepmothers seem less evil and cruel, and more like concerned parents.

This article mentioned how Maleficent is one of Disney’s darker and more evil villains, and it left me wondering how they would approach the story. Maleficent is also, in my opinion, one of the more mysterious Disney villains, and so there are a lot of different ways that her story could go. Would they retell the story leaving maleficent evil, or would they take the approach that Coover took in his story and provide justification for the evil deeds that she does commit?

I think that it is very interesting that movies are now following the model set out by oral and written stories which involve retellings from many people and different points of view. Each new director and writer offers his or her own unique perspective on the same story, just like each narrator and author did. Changing the focus within the story, from the hero to the villain, has been a more recent development, but it has already been explored in writing. After the success of Alice in Wonderland, which put a new spin on a familiar tale and focused a little more on the peripheral characters including the evil ones, it is not surprising that Disney wants to move forward with more similar projects.