Maleficent: The Power of Evil, harmless curse (review)
The sequel to Maleficent is an average fantasy film, which does no harm but has little ambition.
M6 will devote its Friday evening to Maleficentfrom 9:10 p.m., broadcasting the most recent first, The Power of Evilthen the original film at 11:15 p.m. When it was released in 2019, the editorial staff of First was a little disappointed by this sequel, while the first opus worked well, moving away from the cartoon to offer a story new to the cinema. Above all, Angelina Jolie was spectacular in the lead role, whereas here, she is in the background, having the spotlight stolen by the big villain played by Michelle Pffeifer. Here is our review of Maleficent 2… while waiting for news from #3 ?
Maleficent is a remake of Frozen and one of Angelina Jolie’s best roles
Jessica Rabbit said “I’m not bad, I’m just designed like that“, and the first Maleficentreleased in 2014, seemed to stem from this line by reversing Disney archetypes in a funny way: its original villain, the model for all the studio’s villains, Maleficent, became the unwilling stepmother of Princess Aurora, victim of violence men over women—her mutilation of the black fairy wings was a thinly veiled metaphor for rape. On arrival, Maleficent did not go much beyond its status as a commissioned film signed by an SFX specialist (Robert Stromberg). What do we have left? The overwhelming figure of Angelina Jolie and the beautiful score of James Newton Howard.
Five years later, The Power of Evil is still signed with a yes man -in this case, Joachim Rønning, co-director of the rather thrilling last episode of Pirates of the Caribbean. On the score, James Newton Howard was replaced by Geoff Zanelli, another yes man since he was playing Hans Zimmer on the last Pirates of the Caribbean. The Power of Evil : a film of second knives, of replacements? Not quite, since the script is co-written by Linda Woolverton, a Disney veteran for whom she wrote Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Mulan… But also the first Maleficentand both Alice in Wonderland in live action. She is credited here with Noah Harpster and Micah Fitzerman-Blue, screenwriters of the future A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood with Tom Hanks as a legendary kind TV presenter. Okay, but that doesn’t make it an exceptional film either. Just average.
Now, Princess Aurora, who reigns over the kingdom of Lande populated by fairies, will marry Prince Philippe who will inherit the human kingdom. Maleficent, Aurora’s stepmother, refuses the union: so much the better, since Philippe’s mother, Queen Ingrith, is planning a genocide of the fairy people in Loucedé. At the same time, Maleficent (Angelina Jolie, still a producer, is curiously not present on screen) will find her people of winged fairies and discover the mystery of her origins.
The good idea is to have made Michelle Pfeiffer the big baddie of this Power of evil (we assume that the Mistress of Evil of the original title, it’s her), a great militarist villain who precisely breaks the inevitability of appearances and character design which locks you into a destiny; the rest is such a classic fantasy story that it could have been written by a synopsis generator. The bestiary is also without much imagination (unless you consider that casting Warwick Davis in the shoes of a grumpy, handyman gnome seems to you to be the idea of the century), not much renewed compared to the first film. The people to which Maleficent belongs are not a bunch of cool angels of darkness but a gang of barely badass rastas, without this being an issue in the story (apart from their religion: they idolize literally a twist in the scenario, you will understand when you see the film).
The Power of Evil fails to inject chaos into the game of appearances, and the film appears quite harmless. Planned from his potential daring, deprived of blood in his veins. Paradoxical for a film which precisely wants to shake up the imagination of fairy tales. There remains a very beautiful image: Maleficent forced to veil her horns in black so as not to shock at an official dinner. The fabric then gives her the appearance of a lady of darkness emerging from a miniature of a nightmare medieval book of hours. It’s beautiful, but it’s little, it’s all the time AVERAGE and that’s a shame, because Disney has the strengths necessary to make a fairy tale film that is neither on autopilot nor in crash test WTF: the lovely fantasy tale The Nutcracker and the Four Realmswhich went unnoticed last year and co-directed by Joe Johnston (Rocketeer, Captain America), had much more charm, originality and style. No, definitely, Maleficent: The Power of Evil isn’t a bad movie, it’s just made that way.
Angelina Jolie on Maleficent: “This scene is a metaphor for rape”
