Maleficent

[blimix]

Back when I read that Hollywood actively discourages film scripts from passing the Bechdel test, I was pretty pissed off.

Today, we watched "Maleficent". It was wonderful. Angelina Jolie (with the help of a great script) almost made me cry a couple of times. Go see it. Also, the movie is Bechdel heaven: Most of the screen time involves women (who often talk to each other, not about men). So see it in the theater, and let your money talk about whether audiences can deal with watching women interact.

Because fuck the patriarchy.

Comments

[beth_leonard]

And yet, King Stephen's wife still does not have a name.

When Peter was very little, about 2, we received a nearly full set of Disney books including Sleeping Beauty. Peter was *very* into Mommies and decided that the queen must have a name. He named her "Queen Extasusa" and I still get a good giggle out of that.

I did enjoy Maleficent, although I would have liked it if there had been more motivation for King Stephen to send his daughter off with the other fairies. That part was a bit weak in the original, but didn't even make sense in the Maleficent version.

--Beth

True.

[blimix.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Stephen's wife wasn't really a character here; she just had to exist so that there could be a daughter. And later, her death serves to highlight his obsession and insanity. It is reminiscent of, though it doesn't exactly match, the "disposable woman serves as motivation for the male character" tropes.

I wonder whether she remained nameless in the background because treating a named, speaking character that way would have felt more rude. (Nameless characters can marry and/or die just to illustrate a situation, and aren't expected to have their own story.) Not that this would make it right, of course. Nobody except Soldier #36 cares about Soldier #36, but one would expect the queen to be of some import.

Her lack of character might, I suppose, have been a concession to running time (and budget/filming time) constraints. Giving her a name, however, would have taken less than a second.

Even though it seemed a little odd, I didn't regard as senseless Stephen's decision about Aurora's hideaway. He didn't/wouldn't believe in an unbreakable curse, which meant that there was a chance that he could keep her safe. He would want to hide her, to make it harder for Maleficent to personally carry out the curse if the original magic failed. It is odd that he trusted the fairies with this task, but perhaps their blessings impressed him, or maybe he thought that magical creatures would be better than humans at foiling another magical creature.

Re: True.

[beth_leonard]

Yeah, maybe the scene where they fairies tell Stephen that they can keep her safe better than any mortal because they are also fairy creatures, had to be cut due to budget constraints. That's a good way to look at it.

--Beth