Maleficent and her goddaughter Aurora begin to question the complex family ties that bind them as they are pulled in different directions by impending nuptials, unexpected allies, and dark new forc...
Maleficent Mistress of Evil lethargically flies away to Pandora 2.0 tasking Aurora with the narrative heavy-lifting. With the first feature tackling the events of the animated classic’s plot from the perspective of the supposedly antagonistic Maleficent, one would’ve anticipated a closed ending so that Disney could move onto tarnishing their other intellectual properties. However, with so much dollar being made, an inevitably unnecessary sequel was bound to be commissioned. Enter “Mistress of Evil”, a sub-title that applies to literally none of the characters whatsoever. After Aurora was crowned Queen of the Moors, the now re-casted Prince Phillip proposes to her and somehow invites her and Maleficent, without verbally communicating his desire to them, to an intimate dinner with his royal parents King John and Queen Ingrith. Maleficent begrudgingly attends only to be accused of witchcraft when King John mysteriously succumbs to the same curse that Aurora was plagued with years ago. The Queen rages war against all things fairy whilst an injured Maleficent is rescued by other Dark Feys, as her species plot a retaliation against the humans. Thus consequently bestowing a war across the kingdoms.
Rønning, responsible for the latest forced instalment of the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ franchise, unabashedly equips the same forced narrative pulling for this unnecessary sequel. The plot, stretched to nearly two hours, gradually subsides from weak character-driven fantasy to mighty generic world-building again, just to showcase the artificial digitised fauna and flora that Lickspittle (no, not my safe word...), a de-winged pixie forced to produce red powder through alchemy that disintegrates fairies, becomes fascinated with. Whilst the ambitious fantastical creations are admirable and aesthetically pleasing, it’s shrouded in surface level purpose and distracts from the titular character. For example, a hedgehog-like creature named Pinto (who resembles Sonic pre-media-uprising-change) seemingly garners more screen time by being trapped in a glass bottle than Maleficent does in the film’s entirety. Exaggeration? Maybe. But if the film is to be called “Maleficent”, make her the central character.
She seems tertiary in this sequel, with Jolie taking a mighty leap to the backseat position, leaving the other actors to carry the narrative without her impressively physical stance. Her penetrating cheek bones and chic costume design still exude elegance and power, yet her emotionality towards specific scenes was lacklustre to say the least. Whilst Maleficent is flying around the set of ‘Avatar 2’ with a guided tour, Fanning steps up to the plate and gives a much improved performance as Aurora. No longer is she the flat one-dimensional princess that allows her limitless beauty to perform the communication, but now a stupendously independent queen whom singlehandedly saved this sequel from being catastrophic. Pfeiffer as the supposedly antagonistic queen (because the “Mistress of Evil” is now in full protagonist mode) was delicious with her sinister self-righteous line delivery. Her thirst for power truly came through her wobbly British accent, despite the fact her plan shouldn’t have worked considering the spindle from the original film was not cursed but instead Aurora, which also conveniently offered the princess convenient explanations as to whom inflicted the curse upon King John even though the curse had quite clearly dissipated after the eye-rolling maternal “true love” kiss moment from its predecessor. Which in turn allowed her to convince Prince Phillip that his mother is a murderous psychopath and instead subconsciously seek peace with the neighbouring kingdom. But, semantics.
Anyway, all this talk of war between the Dark Fey and humans soon surmounts to a climactic third act that thoroughly wipes out half of the population. No kidding! Magical denizens are sprinkled with red crimson powder, returning them to their natural dead state. Dark Feys vaporise into nothingness when contacting the aforementioned powder. Humans tumbling to their deaths from lofty heights. Sacrifice, rebirth and peaceful happiness once again. But who cares? None of these characters had any substantial development or whimsical motivation, particularly the barrage of newly introduced individuals, consequently providing no allegiance to either the humans or Dark Feys. Just excessive visual splendour for that needless extravagant third act.
Arguably entertaining, but borderline redundant. The same can be applied to the entirety of this sequel. Not necessarily the worst creation in Disney’s live-action library, with some improvements sprinkled throughout, but certainly one that really didn’t need to exist. A far cry from ‘Sleeping Beauty’ that should’ve just been called “Aurora”...
