Joachim R\u00f8nning (Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales<\/em>) \u2014 taking over directorial duties from Robert Stromberg \u2014 has turned in a film that\u2019s essentially a Disney-fied Game of Thrones<\/em>, meaning any semblance of character development is lost in a morass of complicated plotlines and showy action sequences (that happen to be a lot more violence than one would expect from a PG movie.) Also, although the film is titled Maleficent: Mistress of Darkness<\/em>, screenwriters Linda Wolverton (a Disney veteran), Micah Fitzerman-Blue, and Noah Harpster give Maleficent very little to do here. The character\u2019s entire arc feels like an afterthought, to the point that it could almost be cut entirely without anyone in the audience noticing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The gist is this: Five years after the events of Maleficent<\/em>, the aggressively bland Prince Philip (Harris Dickinson) proposes to Aurora (Elle Fanning, who feels incredibly well-cast here) without bothering to seek the approval of her godmother, Maleficent. Maleficent may have been misunderstood for all those years, but she\u2019s still got a temper that\u2019s easily triggered, and she\u2019s not happy at the thought of her beloved daughter marrying a filthy human, even if he is royalty. (\u201cBut I\u2019m human,\u201d Aurora protests, to which Maleficent snaps back, \u201cAnd I\u2019ve never held that against you.\u201d) Prince Philip\u2019s parents, Queen Ingrith and King John (Robert Lindsay), invite Maleficent to their castle for dinner as a gesture of supposed goodwill, but as is often the case when in-laws get together, things don\u2019t quite go as planned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Queen Ingrith icily suggests that it will be good for Aurora to have a \u201creal mother\u201d after all these years, Maleficent flies into a rage, and by the time she\u2019s left the castle, King John has been cursed to eternal sleep. Of course, things are not quite what they seem: If there\u2019s a lesson to be learned here for the kids (and adults, for that matter) back at home, it\u2019s that you can\u2019t automatically trust a wealthy white woman dripping in diamonds, even if she\u2019s telling you exactly what you want to hear and is coded to seem noble \u2014 and that people who look \u201cdifferent\u201d or stereotypically scary (horns and wings and all) might have kind hearts after all. Not bad lessons by any stretch, but you can probably see where this is going\u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n The one place Maleficent: Mistress of Darkness<\/em> does shine is in the costume and set design departments: There\u2019s something especially whimsical and lovely about the title sequence and its sweeping, swooping establishing shots of the lush woodlands and the incredibly detailed super-spindly, spire-covered Gothic castle. Fanning\u2019s costumes and styling are perfectly dreamy without being too on-the-nose, while Jolie\u2019s and Pfeiffer\u2019s wardrobes feel truly fit for their characters\u2019 diva personas. One can\u2019t help but think: If only the filmmakers had spent the same amount of time worrying about the storytelling. C-<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Once upon a time (wait, actually just this week), Disney released a live-action sequel that literally no one asked for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":568,"featured_media":12795,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[340,1381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/568"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12794"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12794\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/crookedc.png\")
<\/p>\n\n\n\n1 hr., 58 min.; rated PG for intense sequences of fantasy action\/violence and brief scary images.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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