Maleficent (2014) – Review

Revamping classic fairy tales has quietly turned into Hollywood’s favourite safety net. We’ve seen it with Snow White and the Huntsman, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, and Oz the Great and Powerful, all of which look expensive and feel hollow. The assumption seems to be that visual splendour will do the heavy lifting, and with Maleficent, Disney leans even harder into that idea. This time with a familiar villain rebranded through the now very fashionable “misunderstood anti-hero” lens.

Maleficent is no longer the “Mistress of All Evil,” but instead a wide-eyed, winged fairy living in the Moors, a magical realm that looks like it was designed by someone who just discovered glowing mushrooms and decided to never stop. As a child (Isobelle Molloy), she befriends a human boy named Stefan (Michael Higgins). They grow close, then fall in love, because that’s what stories like this insist must happen, even when it clearly won’t end well. And it doesn’t. Stefan’s ambition to become king overrides any affection he once had, proving once again that monarchy is less about divine right and more about who is willing to do the most morally questionable thing in a forest.

Tip for Safe Ruling: Invading a magical kingdom defended by giant creatures who can squash your army like bugs feels less like strategy and more like a very expensive suicide note.

When King Henry (Kenneth Cranham) launches an attack on the Moors, Maleficent defeats him, prompting the dying king to promise his throne to whoever kills her. Now older, Stefan (Sharlto Copley), apparently decides that murder-adjacent betrayal is good enough, drugs Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) and cuts off her wings using iron, which is conveniently lethal to fairies. He presents the wings as proof of her death and becomes king. This is treated as a legitimate career move. Maleficent, understandably upset about being mutilated and emotionally wrecked, rescues a raven named Diaval (Sam Riley), turns him into her shapeshifting assistant, and settles into a life of bitterness and revenge.

“I’m going to be the Mistress of All Evil…well, at least good adjacent.”

That revenge arrives in the form of a baby. At the christening of Princess Aurora, Maleficent crashes the event and curses the infant to fall into an eternal sleep before her sixteenth birthday. Not death, mind you, just sleep, because we’re softening edges here. The curse can only be broken by true love’s kiss, which Maleficent delivers with a smirk, fully confident that such a thing doesn’t exist. King Stefan responds by hiding Aurora with three pixies—Knotgrass (Imelda Staunton), Flittle (Lesley Manville), and Thistlewit (Juno Temple)—who are so incompetent that Maleficent ends up secretly raising the child herself just to keep her alive.

So yeah, not exactly a vengeful creature of darkness.

As Aurora (Elle Fanning) grows, she comes to see Maleficent as her fairy godmother, which is either touching or deeply unsettling, depending on how much you think about it. Maleficent, meanwhile, develops genuine affection for the girl and begins to regret cursing her in the first place. She even attempts to revoke the spell, only to realize she boxed herself into a “no power on Earth” clause. Meanwhile, Prince Philip (Brenton Thwaites) shows up to fulfil contractual obligations as “romantic interest,” contributing very little beyond standing around looking earnest.

“I’m in the fairy tale, so they had to work me in somehow.”

On Aurora’s sixteenth birthday, the curse activates. She pricks her finger on a spinning wheel because, despite Stefan’s obsessive destruction of every spinning wheel in the kingdom, one somehow survives in the castle basement like a forgotten prop. Aurora falls into a deep sleep, and Maleficent, now fully remorseful, attempts to save her. Philip’s kiss fails, because of course it does, and it is ultimately Maleficent’s own maternal love that breaks the spell. This leads to a final confrontation where Stefan, now completely unhinged, tries to kill Maleficent, Diaval turns into a dragon (because apparently that’s Maleficent’s job now), and after a brief scuffle, Stefan falls to his death. Maleficent restores peace, crowns Aurora queen, and we are told—by an older Aurora—that this is the true story of Sleeping Beauty.

This is one way to rewrite history, I guess.

Stray Observations:

• Stefan’s big plan is to not kill Maleficent but still claim he did, and somehow no one checks this. Medieval HR standards were clearly very relaxed.
• The three fairies happily attending the christening of Stefan’s child raises some uncomfortable questions about loyalty. Their friend and protector was brutally betrayed by this man, yet they still show up with gifts like it’s a baby shower.
• The three pixies are then entrusted with raising a royal baby and immediately prove they cannot feed, clothe, or supervise her without divine intervention.
• Aurora trusting the horned, glowing figure lurking in the woods is either innocence or a complete lack of survival instinct.
• Prince Philip exists, technically.
• Stefan becomes consumed by paranoia, which is the film’s way of saying “we need a villain now that Maleficent isn’t one.”
• Giving Maleficent a weakness to iron is fair enough; that’s classic fairy lore. But having her forced to escape the King’s clutches, like she’s in a medieval version of a horror chase scene, is… less inspiring.

“I don’t escape people, people escape ME!”

The idea of a Maleficent origin story didn’t begin as a cynical exercise in trend-chasing, even if that’s what it ultimately feels like. Initially conceived as an animated exploration of the character from Disney’s 1959 animated classic, Sleeping Beauty, the project shifted direction as the industry became increasingly fascinated with revisionist villain narratives. The success of the Broadway musical Wicked, which reframed the Wicked Witch of the West as a misunderstood outsider, clearly left an impression. Disney, never one to ignore a profitable template, leaned into that same concept while also riding the momentum of their own stage success with Mary Poppins in London’s West End. The result is a film that feels less like a natural creative evolution and more like a strategic pivot.

Note: Maleficent not turning into the dragon herself feels like ordering a steak and being handed a picture of a cow instead. And while the dragon we get looks fine, it’s not a patch on its animated counterpart.

This is how you end a movie.

Tim Burton was attached at one stage, which makes an almost suspicious amount of sense given his fondness for gothic whimsy and outsider protagonists. But with Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows occupying his schedule, he stepped aside. Enter Robert Stromberg, a production designer making his directorial debut. And that right there explains a lot. Stromberg has an extraordinary eye for visual composition, but storytelling is a different beast entirely. This remains his only feature film as a director, which feels less like a coincidence and more like quiet industry commentary.

He’s like a king, riding one single futile charge against the odds.

Visually, Maleficent is undeniably impressive. The film strikes a careful balance between practical effects and CGI, creating a world that feels textured rather than entirely synthetic. Rick Baker’s work on Maleficent’s horns and facial prosthetics gives Angelina Jolie a striking, almost sculptural presence. The costumes, designed by Anna B. Sheppard, draw heavily from Renaissance art, particularly French and Italian influences, resulting in garments that feel both regal and otherworldly. Every frame looks like it belongs in a gallery.

The film does look rather beautiful.

And yet, all that effort is in service of a script that can’t quite justify it. The film’s central idea—humanizing Maleficent—undermines the very thing that made her compelling in the first place. In the original animated classic, she is pure, unapologetic evil, a force to be overcome rather than understood. Here, she is softened into an anti-hero, which means she can’t be allowed to do anything truly monstrous. Even her curse is toned down from death to sleep. The result is a character caught between two identities, never fully committing to either.

“Who wants a death curse? Oh, you want a death curse.”

As for the cast, Elle Fanning brings the required sweetness to Aurora, though the character herself is written with all the complexity of a porcelain ornament. Sharlto Copley commits fully to Stefan’s spiral into madness, but the role is so narrowly defined that he ends up less a character and more a function, stepping in as the film’s villain once Maleficent is softened. The three pixies, meanwhile, test the limits of patience, their bumbling antics landing closer to irritation than charm. The film ultimately belongs to Angelina Jolie, whose commanding presence does most of the heavy lifting. She looks extraordinary, fully embodies the role, and manages to find genuine emotion in a character whose central action remains… questionable at best. Because no matter how much the film layers in betrayal and regret, we’re still dealing with someone who cursed a baby, and that’s a difficult hurdle for any performance to completely overcome.

“I look magnificent, what more do you want?”

In conclusion, Maleficent is a film at war with itself. On one hand, it is a visually rich, meticulously crafted fantasy with a committed lead performance and moments of genuine emotional resonance. On the other hand, it is a narrative that bends over backwards to reframe a character who arguably never needed reframing. By stripping Maleficent of her unambiguous villainy and replacing it with a familiar tale of betrayal and redemption, the film loses something essential. It trades mythic clarity for modern relatability, and in doing so, diminishes the very figure it seeks to celebrate. There’s admiration to be had for the craftsmanship, and Jolie’s performance alone makes it watchable, but the lingering question remains whether this story needed to be told at all.