Subject: This I agree.
Author:
Posted on: 2015-06-23 12:16:00 UTC
But I think Maleficent has more to do with the recent obsession with retelling the villains to be more sympathetic. I guess it's due to value dissonance between what was collected back in 19th century and how Disney wants to portray all characters as rich in detail and have every reason for their evil.
Because to me, it felt like it had all the hallmarks of a mediocre or bad fanfic. From whitewashing Maleficent to demonising and bastardising the King and fairies. The movie felt like it could've been a great morally grey movie (where both sides had their flaws and understandable reasons) if it chose to stay away from the black and white routine (by just switching the roles).
She didn't even turn into a dragon in the end! *cries*
Remember Hollywood is a business, so it might be that their focus testing has determined that the public do not really want new ideas, and would prefer to see the same things. Take for example this:
Ex Machina a very good, new, experimental film dealing with artificial intelligence, and what makes a human, human. It took about $ 36 Million world wide. Now lets compare this to Jurassic World, which is a sequel to Jurassic Park. Not a bad film, but no where near as good as the original. It has been out less than two weeks and has grossed over $1 billion dollars. Lets also look at the other top grossing films this year. Furious 7 and Age of Ultron. Both sequels. It seems that that is currently what the people want.
A list of top grossing films not adjusted for inflation
Looking at the top 100, there are 63 sequels and 13 stories based on well known tales. Or, put another way, 76 of the highest grossing films are derivative, in some way, shape, or form. 76%. It seems to me that the majority of what people want is the seemingly unoriginal stories. It might be the consumers, not Hollywood then.
I hadn't thought of it before, but yeah, it does have an awful lot in common with a certain subset of bad fanfics.
I didn't think it was a very good movie. I got a sense of what it was trying to do and it was very admirable, but I thought it was very poorly executed. Good ideas killed by sloppy and messy writing.
But I think Maleficent has more to do with the recent obsession with retelling the villains to be more sympathetic. I guess it's due to value dissonance between what was collected back in 19th century and how Disney wants to portray all characters as rich in detail and have every reason for their evil.
Some of the best villains ever were complex characters which you can despise for their actions but understand why the way they are.
I guess it all depends on how the tools of writing are used. The movie's attempt at humanising Maleficent isn't the worst, it's just that it came at the expenses of other characters' personalities.
But there's nothing wrong with villains who have no sympathetic reasons for their actions. Joker and Disney's version of Claude Frollo are examples of such. The first has such a mysterious background it is hard to tell if he a poor guy who went insane one day or a monster who only got worse one day while the second is frighteningly realistic like Huns from Frozen and Mother Gothel and there's hardly any reasons that excuse his actions.
Ands I hope the trend doesn't go like the 80's and 90's obsession with anti-heroes, and darker and edgier in comics (most tried pulling off Watchmen without understanding that the darkness and edginess was the by product of a compelling and well thought out story, and not that dark and edgy made the story work).
*hesitantly scoops up Huns the for-now-mini-Olaf*
But I like more the idea of mini-snowmen, the ones from Frozen Fever.
Isn't this the woman who condemns an infant to death and then stalks her for the rest of her life? Sure, she starts out and ends up 'good' (though she's still pretty violent about it at the end), but she goes through one heck of a dark patch in between. Nor were the fairies 'demonised', from what I remember - they were dim-witted, certainly, but not evil.
I thought it was a brilliant film, myself - a fantastic look at an old story from the other side, as it were. Yes, it changed things around some - but I don't think it's as black-and-white as you read it as.
hS
I believe she condemn the girl to go into a coma. The original was the one that had her condemn to death until one of the fairies changed it.
I made an error in the last post in that I should have said that the King was demonised while the fairies were bastardised... still doesn't stop them from being irresponsible, unfunny and annoying characters that somehow can't pay attention enough to notice when a child takes tumble off a cliff because they're slapping each other.
Still feels like a fanfic that had a good idea but only pulled it off decently at best and missed the mark by a yard at worst, at least to me. Then again, talking about the movie is like bringing up the Hobbit movies for both book and movie fans, the new Mass Effect for fans or Metroid: Other M for Metroid fans; lot's and lot's of debating and arguing ensues.
Mass Effect Andromeda or Mass Effect 3? From what I have seen Mass Effect Andromeda seems to have pretty solid expectations all around, ME3 was polarizing for a lot of people, but really only for the last 30 minutes or so. That's what people argue over, well usually, or if you are me then you argue over Vega. But from comments I have seen since its release, most people really have issue only with the last bit, now for some it ruined the entire game, others not so much.
Then again I am also not including the whole DLC Ending/Regular Ending. And I also forgot the day one DLC.