Clash of divas

Actress Angelina Jolie spoke candidly about her character at a press conference, saying: “Most women, most people aren’t born with a certain hardness and aggression; something happens in your life where you lose trust, you don’t feel safe and you start to fight and you protect yourself in a different way.” A villain isn’t born, it’s made – be it Joker or Maleficent.

The self-described ‘Mistress of Evil’ – a spin-off to Disney’s live-action of 1959’s Sleeping Beauty and a sequel to the 2014 global hit Maleficent, begins pretty straightforwardly with an impending marriage of Aurora (Elle Fanning) and Prince Phillip (Harris Dickinson). This marriage is a cause for celebration in the human kingdom of Ulstead and the neighbouring fairyland Moors, as the wedding serves to unite as a “bridge” joining the two worlds.

Aurora’s grandmother Maleficent is anxious about her family being pulled in different directions by the peace-making marriage. An appeasing engagement dinner at King John (Robert Lindsay) and Queen Ingrith’s (Michelle Pfeiffer) castle, at which Aurora and Maleficent are the honoured guests, turns out to be a catastrophe.

Maleficent and Aurora take opposite sides in a great war – a journey of their own testing loyalties, finding true selves, overcoming their fear of ‘the other’ and embracing segregated identities and communities as a family not made of blood.

Director Joachim Rønning, who co-directed Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, conveys a fairly simple cutesy fairy folk tale of good-versus-evil that is being carried on the shoulder of Disney’s world class heavy special effects.

We get an extravagant introduction of the heroines and anti-heroines; beautiful paradise fairyland of the fays and magical creatures, gorgeous, riot of colours in the battlefield and a CGI-laden, MCU epic battle sequence of the fairies, humans and flying creatures. In short, this is a clash of divas between Jolie and her ‘90s contemporary ‘film noir goddess’, Michelle Pfeiffer. Yet, we miss all the mysteries, make-believes and magic, where we believe what you see is not what you see.

Elle Fanning’s archetypal Disney Princess Aurora in a pink dress beautifully keeps her soft and feminine. She seems vulnerable on the face of it but that’s her strength. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Ed Skrein make a strong impression as winged creatures.

Stealing every scene, Pfeiffer’s Queen Ingrith skilfully portrays a weak and fearful character who believes that surviving means destroying ‘the others’.

Jolie’s malevolent Maleficent is as evil as she is dark, but as small as concerned mothers when it comes to her relationship with her human granddaughter Aurora. She is both and complex. She is ‘wicked’ fun to watch too. Every time the film reduces her screen time to introduce new characters it tumbles. In Maleficent 2 the Mistress of Evil is a lot more munificent than maleficent.