Maleficent, Part IV: The New Movie, Act Three

[choclytgremlins]

Link to Part I
Link to Part II
Link to Part III

Well, by popular demand, I have returned to finish spending way too much time dissecting this piece-of-shit movie.  Enjoy Part IV: The Big Damn Snoozefest of a Climax, with Bonus Rage-Filled Tangents!

Comments

[aesthetic_ennui]

I mean, it's consistent, though, right? She turns Diaval into stuff. It's like her thing.
And in a warped retelling, the point is _not_ to pay homage to the original.
I will agree, though, that without actually seeing it, it sounds like they spent way too much time on making it look awesome and way not enough time on giving it Disney-empathy-worthy characters or, y'know, consistent themes. (e.g. The whole iron net over the castle thing makes me want to see it for the same reason that I went to the theater to see all of the Transformers movies)

[anonymous]

So I read this:

Stefan, whose motivations other than just being a dick are still entirely unclear seventy-five percent of the way into the movie, does not appear at all perturbed that his daughter is dead, for all intents and purposes, and is mainly annoyed that Maleficent has won their sixteen-year pissing contest.

Yeah, thanks a lot for making me snort my lunch and freak out my officemate, dude.

Also, having seen the original only during daycare as an eight-year-old while principally preoccupied with Legos, I'd forgotten that it was Maleficent who turned into the dragon originally. While it is consistent with the rest of this version that she turns Diaval into one (because I'm sure Disney is every bit as concerned with internal technical consistency of magic usage in fantasy movies as I am), it seems like, ohh, the exact opposite of female-empowering that now the man gets to be the giant fire-breathing superweapon, no? I mean, he isn't actually very helpful, but that's just kind of...nobody-empowering.