"Sleeping Beauty", everyone knows this well-known fairy tale classic.
Disney started the process of changing animations to 3D real people long ago, and the Maleficent series is one of them, and it is quite successful.
Like "Alice in Wonderland", "Sleeping Spell" does not play cards according to common sense, and makes extensive changes to the original fairy tales, which brings a lot of freshness and reversal to the audience. Especially the first "Sleeping Curse", not only changed the relationship between the witch and the princess, but also changed the core part of Sleeping Beauty's prince kissing the princess. Fortunately, this adventurous change also made you familiar with it. The audience of the story was surprised and moved.
Now "Maleficent 2" is released. I originally watched it with normal expectations. I didn't expect the power of the sequel and the extended story background to still be wonderful. The mother-daughter relationship between the Black Witch and Aurora has also been tested and sublimated. , The special effects are more than one level higher than the previous one, and the final battle moment is more passionate and grand. Of course, as a family-friendly Disney movie, if the character's motivation and logic are really studied, the plot is really only at the elementary school level, especially the ending part is back to kindergarten.
It is said that Disney’s fairy tale live-action movies for so many years have such a tonality. It has created its own fairy tale kingdom with all-encompassing creativity and classic fairy tale IP as the guide. The film production has an excellent team, so to speak. The animated-to-live-action film series has become Disney's iconic movie merchandise.
Therefore, if you like Disney's tonality, like the black witch and the cute heroine in the film, then "Maleficent 2" is still worth watching. In order for everyone to better enter the analysis of Maleficent 2, let's briefly explain the plots of the first and second parts, and then all involve spoiler analysis.
The story background of Maleficent is based on the contradictory relationship between humans and elves. Melphison (the black witch) naturally belongs to the kingdom of elves. When the black witch was a child, he fell in love with a human boy named Stephen. After growing up, Stephen decided to betray and sell the Black Witch due to the expansion of his personal desire for power. After that, Stephen successfully ascended to the throne and became the new king. As a result, the Black Witch lost her wings and never believed in love again.
After Stephen successfully sat on the throne, he got married and gave birth to a daughter named Aurora. The Black Witch who learned of the incident went to make trouble and set a curse. On the 16th birthday of Princess Aurora, she would be stabbed by a spinning machine and died like death. Like a deep sleep, unless there is a kiss of true love to wake up. During the curse period, King Stephen gave Aurora to the three little fairies to raise Aurora in order to protect Aurora from the spinning machine.
In the process of Aurora’s growth, the Black Witch inadvertently became Aurora’s guardian, taking care of and protecting Aurora’s growth. This also made the Black Witch more and more regretful for the curse she had laid.
But fortunately, Aurora and a nonexistent Prince Philip fell in love, and the Black Witch regarded Philip as a curse solver and found a solution.
Sure enough, Aurora fell asleep after being pierced by a needle from a textile machine at the age of 16. There must also be a big fight between the Black Witch and the humans. Finally, the bad guy Stephen died accidentally in the fight. There is no sense of existence for Philip to kiss Aurora. It turns out that the kiss of true love fell on the black witch's mother's love for Aurora. This highlight can also be said to be the finishing touch of "Maleficent" .
In the second part, the Black Witch has given way to Aurora, and Aurora has become the queen of the Elven Kingdom. At this time, Prince Philip, who has no sense of existence, comes to propose, and the two lovers finally get married and prepare to get married. And Aurora's mother-in-law is not a fuel-efficient lamp. The queen always thinks that the black witch and elves are a threat to humans, and intends to use Aurora to get rid of them.
So the queen invited the Black Witch to attend the engagement banquet, if only the Black Witch had seen the Hongmen Banquet.
As a result, the queen designed the Black Witch in a game, provoked the feelings between her and Aurora and shot the Black Witch. The development of the story to this is actually quite routine, and it is a stupid human looking for nothing to provoke the incident.
However, the injured Black Witch was rescued by a similar winged fellow. After that, the film opened the door to imagination and expanded the background of the story. It turns out that the Black Witch is not alone. There is a whole winged race like the Black Witch. , Living away from human beings in a paradise. When the film showed this section, it really took a lot of effort to build the world of this population, which made the film more curious.
On the human side, the wedding of Philip and Aulaora was held as scheduled, but this was just a trap set by the queen. The purpose was to annihilate all the elves and the black witch in one fell swoop. At this time, the winged black demons also decided to launch a general attack on humans. Then the third act of the movie is the standard decisive moment. Overall, this decisive battle is quite exciting, especially the red ink used by humans to destroy the elves. When these red inks are shot in the air as cannonballs, it is like a wedding celebration. The fireworks, the decisive battle and the wedding echoes fit exactly together.
And the moment when the Black Witch finally transformed into a black phoenix was amazing.
Exquisite special effects production and bold story background creation have become the advantages of "Maleficent 2". However, the shortcomings of the film are as obvious as the advantages, and perhaps this shouldn't be called a shortcoming.
For Disney, it may be more suitable to call Disney features. After all, this work is aimed at audiences of young people around the world, and it is still based on a fairy tale background, so it can’t be too dark in the narrative and too dark in the style of the movie. Personality, it is impossible to play too sinking in the shaping of characters. Therefore, this has also led to "Maleficent 2" looking at it with a more serious judgment, and there are indeed flaws that cannot be avoided, such as the inexistent Prince Philip that I have always emphasized, and even the king of his father. It's also a silly white sweet. Basically, their father and son's role is to be responsible for walking the scene. Previous fairy tales were basically about princes saving princesses in order to highlight the importance of male characters, but Disney followed the weather vane of political correctness and once again did not let us "disappointed". This movie once again used male characters as vases, and treated the king and prince. Completely reduced to a materialized role.
Here I am not against equality between men and women, nor do I have any opinion on women, but from the perspective of film character creation, is it really good for the film to flatten male characters in the whole film? Some people may say that the Maleficent series can be regarded as a female film. Perhaps it is understandable. However, the theme of female films is not to blindly portray male characters as young, transparent and ignorant images. On the contrary, in female films In the middle, if the secondary male characters can be enriched, it can reflect the three-dimensional feeling of the female characters.
In general, if you do not delve into the film’s story logic and character creation, and simply feel the film’s smooth narrative and wonderful special effects, "Maleficent 2" can indeed become a movie with a little touch of laughter. Whether the movie is worth watching or not, now you should know it in your heart.
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