How Maleficent Became Sleeping Beautys Breakout Character

How Maleficent Became Sleeping Beauty’s Breakout Character

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The dark sorceress Maleficent is the breakout villain from the movie Sleeping Beauty, and has become one of Disney’s most popular characters.

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How Maleficent Became Sleeping Beautys Breakout Character

Maleficent might be the evil villain in Sleeping Beauty, but the femme fatale Mistress of Evil became a breakout character and one of Disney’s greatest villains of all time. Maleficent curses Princess Aurora to fall into an eternal sleep after King Stefan fails to invite her to the baby’s christening. Maleficent’s enduring popularity after Sleeping Beauty, and her resurgence in the live-action remake Maleficent starring Angelina Jolie is a sign that there’s more to the villain than meets the eye – and that Maleficent has earned her place among Disney’s greatest characters.

Maleficent immediately stood out from Disney’s other villains due to her design. Instead of the standard depiction of witches and hags, she’s animated by Marc Davis as a striking combination of a femme fatale and a vampire bat. Her outrageously campy and powerful voice performance by Eleanor Audley elevates her from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ Evil Queen. Maleficent’s predilection for skulking around a crumbling, abandoned castle in the middle of the Forbidden Mountains (as well as cursing infants because of an invitation snub) is the embodiment of campy villainy. Maleficent, a fiercely powerful horned sorceress who transforms into an equally terrifying dragon, has endured for over sixty years since Sleeping Beauty – and her popularity has even outpaced the original movie.

Maleficent gave Maleficent a different, tragic backstory and a level of nuanced character development that was missing from the original film – but it also missed why the original Maleficent is so iconic. Despite the success of Maleficent and its sequel Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, the character is best remembered in her original iteration: the cruel, wicked, conniving dark fairy who cursed Princess Aurora to an eternal sleep.

Maleficent Is Sleeping Beauty’s Mistress of Evil

How Maleficent Became Sleeping Beautys Breakout Character

Sleeping Beauty was Walt Disney’s third animated princess film. Much like its predecessors Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Cinderella, the primary villain of Sleeping Beauty is a woman. Maleficent follows in the wicked footsteps of the Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Lady Tremaine from Cinderella as a cold, vicious villain who does terrible things in pursuit of power.

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Maleficent is a dark fairy (although she’s also described as a witch) that styles herself as the Mistress of Evil. She curses the infant Princess Aurora without a second thought after King Stefan fails to invite her to the christening. Although Maleficent is sometimes referred to as an evil queen, that’s not technically true: she might have taken over an abandoned castle, but she isn’t actually the queen of anything at all. In Sleeping Beauty, she and her evil soldiers try to track down Princess Aurora so they can enact her curse and send Aurora into an eternal sleep. Maleficent captures Prince Phillip, so he can’t wake Aurora with true love’s kiss, and imprisons him in her castle in the Forbidden Mountains.

She tries to keep him from the princess, first with a wall of thorns and then when she transforms into a massive dragon. Prince Phillip ultimately defeats Maleficent when he throws his enchanted sword into her chest and mortally wounds her, before she falls off the crumbling cliff to her death. Maleficent is an evil, malevolent fairy that both King Stefan and King Hubert try to pacify, only descending from the mountains to continue living up to her reputation as Mistress of Evil.

Maleficent’s Origins & Magical Abilities Explained

How Maleficent Became Sleeping Beautys Breakout Character

Maleficent is based on the evil fairy godmother from Charles Perrault’s fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. In Perrault’s version, she’s an evil, old fairy who was left out of the princess’ christening because she hadn’t left her tower in years, and most of the kingdom thought she was dead. The same villainess appears in the Brothers Grimm version as well, and in all versions of Sleeping Beauty she curses the princess to an eternal sleep. However, in past versions of the fairytale, she’s described as an old hag, much closer to what the Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs becomes instead of the sinister yet elegant villain.

In Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent was transformed into the femme fatale archetype, with a stunning re-envisioning into an elegant, sinister dark fairy. Maleficent has a cruel and conniving personality – and she’s also prone to drama, swanning around her crumbling castle, snapping at her servants, and summoning lightning and green flame. Her animation is dramatic and flamboyant, and her wild personality combined with her dark and elegant design turns Maleficent into a perfect villain.

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Maleficent’s powers seems to be limitless. She curses Aurora before her sixteenth birthday, transforms her soldiers into stone with a snap of her fingers, and surrounds a castle in thorns without a second glance. Maleficent can shape-shift, first into a floating ball of light that lures Aurora to the spinning wheel and then into the dragon. She can summon lightning with her staff, teleport across the kingdom, and seems to see the future in certain moments. The three fairies, Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather, imply that Maleficent is the most powerful fairy in the land when they fail to undo the curse that she’s placed on Princess Aurora.

Why Maleficent Is So Popular

Maleficent became Sleeping Beauty’s breakout character, and remains to this day one of Disney’s all time most popular characters. She’s been featured in countless Disney properties since her initial appearance in Sleeping Beauty, including a major storyline on Once Upon A Time, the film series The Descendants, and the live-action movies Maleficent and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil. Maleficent is also a major at the Disney parks, with her dragon-form appearing in both of the Fantasmic! shows at Disneyland and Walt Disney World, as well as a prominent appearance in Mickey’s Boo-to-You Halloween Parade.

Her popularity can be attributed to her instantly-iconic design – which, at the time, was unlike any other character in popular media – and her outsized personality with a complete commitment to pure evil. Unlike other Disney villains, which might have a semblance of redemption, Maleficent is doing evil just for the fun of it. Her power is limitless, and she uses it constantly, for the smallest possible slight, and with style. Her flamboyant characterization and camp-tendencies elevate her over every other Disney villain – and certainly over the other characters in Sleeping Beauty.

Maleficent quickly became the breakout character of the 1959 film Sleeping Beauty. Her predilection for dramatic flair, outsized personality, and sheer commitment to villainy make her a perfect foil to Aurora, and a memorable antagonist. Maleficent has appeared countless times across Disney’s various properties and evolved into one of their most popular characters out of both heroes and villains. Maleficent’s enduring legacy of sheer evil and her flair for the dramatic helped turn the Mistress of Evil from Sleeping Beauty into a breakout character with a legacy all her own.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/maleficent-sleeping-beauty-origins-powers/

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