Maleficent Mistress of Evil (2019)

Maleficent was already a revision of the Disney take on the classic fairy-tale Sleeping Beauty. It was a self-contained re-imagining of the story which was already a re-imagining of a tale told for centuries. So what does one do when one is tasked with coming up with a sequel? As far as I am aware there isn't a precedent for a sequel to Sleeping Beauty. And Maleficent changed enough about the story to take the whole thing in a different direction. So they just came up with something new.

And what they came up with ends up being an unabashedly queer fairy-tale. It tells the story of conflict between the "humans" and the "fairies," many of whom have rainbow coloured wings, and all of whom are less than subtle analogues for aspects of the LGBTQ2S+ community. The story employs aspects of how chosen family is created and honoured yet how those relationships are devalued and disparaged by the mainstream society. It explores characters who seek to "shape-shift" their forms and set their identity despite how other's label them. It contrasts the heteronormative progression of the princess' traditional story arc with that of the wild fairy. And it centres the latter, making the "other" the beautiful heroes of the story.

Also the art-direction, costumes, and visual effects are stunning. Mistress of Evil is a gorgeous film in all ways. Take the queerness of that as you wish.

And the moral of the story is the way the "human" society needs to be queered. It isn't until the kingdom is transformed from its rigid, polite culture into something wilder, that it is saved. Like a Shakespeare marriage play, the nuptials at the end don't come until the characters have been sufficiently wilded, until they earn it. The "true love" that saves the day isn't what the fairy-tale tells us, it is the love between mother and daughter (and not the biological kind) which is all encompassing.

The lush story is efficiently told and moves as an entertaining pace. Mistress of Evil is a surprisingly engaging film, unnecessary sequel which actually improves the story and perhaps offers something richer with a moral to the story that is far more radical than a Disney blockbuster usually manages to be.

Maleficent Mistress of Evil
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Michelle Pfeiffer, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley, Harris Dickinson, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Ed Skrein, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple, Leslie Manville
Director: Joachim Ronning
Writers: Linda Woolverton, Noah Harpster, Micah Fitzeman-Blue