Maleficent is a 2014 American dark fantasy film directed by Robert Stromberg from a screenplay by Linda Woolverton, and starring Angelina Jolie as the title character with Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, and Lesley Manville in supporting roles. Loosely inspired by Charles Perrault's original fairy tale and Walt Disney's 1959 animated film Sleeping Beauty, the film portrays the story from the perspective of the eponymous antagonist, depicting her conflicted relationship with the princess and king of a corrupt kingdom.[4]
Walt Disney Pictures announced the film's development in 2010, with Joe Roth as producer and Jolie, Don Hahn, and Michael Vieira as executive producers. Principal photography took place between June and October 2012. The film's special screening took place in London on May 9, 2014, at Kensington Palace.[5] Maleficent premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood on May 28, 2014, and was released in the United Kingdom that same day. The film was released in the United States on May 30, 2014 in the Disney Digital 3D, RealD 3D, and IMAX 3D formats, as well as in conventional theaters.
While the film was met with mixed reviews from critics, it earned praise for its visuals, costumes, musical score, and Jolie's performance. Overall, it was a commercial success, having grossed over $758 million worldwide, becoming the fourth-highest-grossing film of 2014 and the highest-grossing film starring Jolie. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Costume Design at the 87th Academy Awards.
A sequel, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, is in production and set for release on October 18, 2019.
Plot
Maleficent is a powerful fairy living in the Moors, a magical forest realm bordering a human kingdom. As a young girl, Maleficent meets and falls in love with a human peasant boy named Stefan, whose love for Maleficent is overshadowed by his ambition. As they become older, the two grow apart and Maleficent becomes protector of the Moors.
When King Henry tries to conquer the Moors, Maleficent mortally wounds him and forces him to retreat. As he lies dying, he declares that whoever kills Maleficent will be named his successor and marry his daughter, Princess Leila. Stefan visits Maleficent in the Moors, drugs her, but is unable to bring himself to kill Maleficent. Instead, he cuts off her wings with iron, which is lethal to fairies, and presents them to the king. Devastated by Stefan's betrayal, Maleficent turns the Moors into a dark kingdom and recruits a shapeshifter named Diaval as her spy and servant.
After some time, Diaval informs Maleficent that Stefan, now king, is hosting a christening for his newborn daughter, Aurora. Bent on revenge, Maleficent arrives uninvited and curses the infant princess; on her 16th birthday, she will prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and fall into a deep sleep from which she will never awaken. When Stefan begs for mercy, Maleficent mocks him and offers an antidote; the curse can only be broken by true love's kiss, which Maleficent and Stefan are sure is nonexistent.
Fearing for his daughter's safety, Stefan sends Aurora to live with three pixies—Knotgrass, Thistlewit, and Flittle—until the day after her 16th birthday, while he destroys all the spinning wheels in the kingdom and hides their remnants in the castle dungeon. Stefan sends his armies to find and kill Maleficent, but she surrounds the Moors with an impenetrable wall of thorns. This causes Stefan to slip into madness and paranoia, trying to prevent the curse, even neglecting to see his wife on her deathbed.
Despite her initial dislike for Aurora, Maleficent begins to care for her when the bumbling and neglectful pixies fail to do so. After a brief meeting with the young Aurora, Maleficent watches over her from afar. When Aurora is 15, she encounters Maleficent. Knowing that she is being watched over, Aurora begins to call Maleficent her "fairy godmother", an act which cause Maleficent to try and undo the curse, but is unsuccessful, as the curse proves to be unbreakable by any means other than true love's kiss. In the forest, Aurora meets a young prince named Philip, and the two are attracted to each other.
On the day before Aurora's 16th birthday, Aurora tells Maleficent that she would like to live with her in the Moors. When Aurora returns to the cottage, the pixies inadvertently tell Aurora of her past and Maleficent's true identity. Aurora runs to her father's castle, upset that Maleficent had neglected to confess about the curse. After a brief reunion with his daughter, Stefan locks her away in a room for her own safety while setting up a plan to kill Maleficent. However, the power of the curse draws Aurora to the dungeon, where a spinning wheel magically reassembles itself. Aurora pricks her finger and falls into a deep sleep, fulfilling the curse. Maleficent, intent on saving her, abducts Phillip and infiltrates Stefan's castle, but Phillip's kiss fails to awaken Aurora. At her bedside, Maleficent apologizes to Aurora and kisses her forehead. Aurora awakens, as Maleficent's motherly feelings towards her count as true love.
However, as Maleficent and Aurora attempt to leave, they are ambushed by Stefan and his guards, with an iron net dropping on her. Maleficent transforms Diaval into a dragon, and he battles Stefan's guards, but is eventually caught as well. Stefan taunts Maleficent, who is dizzy and sick from the iron, his former love for her fully gone.
Before he can deliver a final blow, Aurora finds Maleficent's wings and releases them where they fly to Maleficent and reattach themselves. Maleficent carries Stefan to the top of the castle's highest tower but cannot bring herself to kill him. Stefan attacks Maleficent as she turns away, however, and both plummet from the tower, entwined. Maleficent opens her wings and Stefan loses his grip, falling to his death.
In the end, Maleficent returns the Moors to its former glory, and Aurora is crowned queen to unify the two kingdoms. Prince Phillip stands by as she is crowned and the two jovially smile at one another.
Angelina Jolie as Maleficent, a fairy and the former queen of the Moors. Maleficent is loosely based on the wicked fairy godmother from the original fairy tale.
Isobelle Molloy as Young Maleficent
Ella Purnell as Teen Maleficent
Sharlto Copley as Stefan[6]
Michael Higgins as Young Stefan
Jackson Bews as Teen Stefan
Elle Fanning as Aurora
Vivienne Jolie-Pitt as Aurora (5 yrs)
Eleanor Worthington Cox as Aurora (8 yrs)
Sam Riley as Diaval[6]
Imelda Staunton as Knotgrass[6]
Juno Temple as Thistlewit[7]
Lesley Manville as Flittle[6]
Brenton Thwaites as Prince Phillip[8]
Kenneth Cranham as King Henry[6][9]
Production
Angelina Jolie had long been attached to the project since March 2010, when Tim Burton, who had tentatively planned to direct, chose not to pursue it.[10][11] Jolie's desire to play this role stemmed from her love of the character when she was a little girl.[12] Linda Woolverton was commissioned to write the script for the film.[13] On January 6, 2012, Disney announced that Robert Stromberg, the production designer of Alice in Wonderland and Oz the Great and Powerful, would direct the film.[14] Joe Roth, Don Hahn, and Richard D. Zanuck were hired as producers, although Zanuck died later that year.[15] Roth said the film would not have been made if Jolie had not agreed to take the title role: "She seemed like the only person who could play the part. There was no point in making the movie if it wasn't her."[16]
In March 2012, Elle Fanning was reported to be in talks for the role of Princess Aurora, the Sleeping Beauty.[17][18] Her casting was officially announced in May 2012, along with Sharlto Copley as the male lead, King Stefan, Princess Aurora's father, then described as the half-human, half-fairy son of a human king, along with Imelda Staunton; Miranda Richardson as Queen Ulla, then described as a fairy queen who is Maleficent's aunt with a dislike of her niece; Kenneth Cranham as a king; Sam Riley as Diaval, a raven who changes into human form and is Maleficent's right hand; and Lesley Manville.[6]
Director Stromberg highlighted the "wonderful" contrast between the two lead actresses, Elle Fanning and Angelina Jolie, calling the character of Aurora the "beacon of light" that he was looking forward to blending with the darkness of Maleficent.[19]
Writing
Linda Woolverton's screenplay went through at least 15 versions as the film progressed in the production.[21] Director Robert Stromberg said: "I met many times with Linda Woolverton, the writer. We did lots of roundtable discussions and sort of cut out the fat as much as we could and sort of purified the storyline as much as we could".[22] In some earlier versions of the story, Stefan was the half-human, half-fairy bastard son of King Henry. The version of the screenplay that went into shooting originally included two characters called Queen Ulla and King Kinloch, the fairy queen and the fairy king of the Moors, and the aunt and uncle of Maleficent.[6] Miranda Richardson and Peter Capaldi were cast and shot the Queen Ulla and King Kinloch scenes, but their roles were cut in the editing process together with more than 15 minutes of the first act of the film. Stromberg said: "We spent a bit more time originally in the fairy world before we got into the human side of things ... we wanted to get it [the film] under two hours. So we cut about 15 minutes out of the first act, and then that had to be seamed together with some pretty basic reshoots."[23]
Stromberg later claimed in an interview that he employed an "age-old" emotional storytelling for the film and called it "the biggest thrill" against all technology advances.[19] "And the way we play with that is we have somebody who's perhaps in love but betrayed and doesn't believe that true love exists. So the moral to it is we can all feel dark ourselves but not to lose hope because there is light in places where we might not be expecting", he explained.[19]
Filming
Principal photography began on June 13, 2012.[24] Some filming took place in the Buckinghamshire countryside.[25]
Reshoots
John Lee Hancock assisted Stromberg with reshoots for the film. Hancock, who had just finished overseeing the final postproduction stages of Saving Mr. Banks, was approached by producer Joe Roth, with whom he had worked on Snow White and the Huntsman. Roth said: "He's not directing. He wrote pages, and I hired a first-time director, and it's good to have him on set." Roth was asked why a "film of this magnitude was entrusted to a novice director", and he noted that Stromberg won Academy Awards for production design on Avatar and Alice in Wonderland. Roth said: "The movie is gorgeous to look at, and the last 75 minutes are really entertaining. The issue was the opening, which was reshot over eight days."[26]
Visual effects
As a previous production designer, Stromberg sought to balance the use of practical and computer-generated effects. For example, while Maleficent's horns and facial prosthetics were created by makeup artist Rick Baker, Digital Domain took facial capture of Imelda Staunton, Lesley Manville, and Juno Temple for the three pixies to be generated with high authenticity with the help of special rigging by Disney Research in Zurich.[19] For the visuals, Stromberg wanted to make it "a bit more grounded" and "not too surreal" because it could be distracting from the simplicity of the story.[19] He also regretted not employing bigger sets and allowing actors to work in a more tangible environment, on "real sets with real lights".[19]
Music
James Newton Howard was hired to score the film in October 2012.[27] On January 23, 2014, it was announced that recording artist Lana Del Rey would be covering the song "Once Upon a Dream", from the 1959 film Sleeping Beauty as the title song for Maleficent. The song "Once Upon a Dream" is based on the Grand Waltz from ballet "Sleeping Beauty" written by Russian composer Tchaikovsky.[28][29]
Del Rey was handpicked by Angelina Jolie to perform the song.[30] The single was released on January 26 and was made available for free for a limited time through Google Play
