I’ve written about this before elsewhere, but in a few years, Disney will have enough live-action variations of its classic cartoons to basically do anAvengers-style team-up film if they so chose, featuring James Franco from Oz: The Great and Powerful, Mia Wasikowska from Alice In Wonderland, and now Elle Fanning as Princess Aurora as Sleeping Beauty from this villain-centric revamp Maleficent. Toss that in with their planned Peter Pan revamp, Peter and the Starcatcher, and you’ve got a massive cross-over just waiting. Obviously the big draw is the casting of one of the very biggest female movie stars on the planet to play one of Disney’s most iconic female villains.
While the trailer above basically reaffirms that Disney is basically retellingSleeping Beauty from the perspective of the villain (note all of the iconic imagery from the original, such as the thorned forest), it is worth noting that we have a genuine female-centric fantasy film opening as one of Disney’s big summer releases. They have been on a mad quest for awhile to chase the young boy demographic, often seemingly shunning their core princess-loving female audience in the believe that that audience is locked anyway. Hence we see Disney marketing Tangled like a boy’s adventure story, allegedly swearing off princess fairy tale cartoons, cancelling The Little Mermaid‘s wide 3D reissue, and spending hundreds of millions on boy-friendly would-be franchises like John Carter and Prince Of Persia.
With this release, along with Thanksgiving’s Frozen, it seems that Disney has perhaps realized that they can’t just frown upon their core demographic while chasing the boys who won’t go to the Disney parks when they are older anyway. As someone who goes to Disney Land 2-3 times a month, I see far more teenage or college age girls than I do boys of that age. Boys don’t stick with the Disney brand for as long as girls do, no matter how many revisions you make to Gaston’s Castle. Disney can ill-afford to become the Democratic party, jumping through hoops to please everyone but their base under the assumption that said base would never think to jump ship. Of course, the Democrats seem to be learning that lesson just a little bit too. Oz: The Great And Powerful split the difference, telling a proverbial male’s hero’s journey but surrounding him with major female supporting characters and giving them the big action climax.
It doesn’t matter if films like this are good, no one cares when boy-centric blockbusters like Battleshipend up being terrible, merely that they are being made. And frankly, the generic and CGI-looking fantasy environments don’t look all that impressive. But if I may callback, maybe it plays better in a movie theater. The film was originally slotted for July 4th weekend until being moved to May 30th when Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur got moved to late 2015. Even if the reshoots overseen by John Lee Hancock spell trouble for the $200 million project, it’s good to see an explicitly female-centric fantasy film like this being positioned as a major summer tent pole. Of course, if I may editorialize, maybe they’d have less issues with the first act if they had hired a veteran director (a female veteran perhaps?) instead of again entrusting a massive project to a first-time director like Robert Stromberg, but that’s a personal pet peeve.
It’s good to see Jolie getting another major star vehicle. Shockingly this will be Angelina Jolie’s first onscreen appearance since her December 2010 role in The Tourist. Of course she directed the ambitious Bosnian war romantic drama In the Land of Blood and Honey in late 2011 (I’m not a fan, but I respect the hell out of what it was trying to do) and is currently helming the World War II drama Unbroken. She has perhaps reached the stage of her career where she is picky enough about her projects that each starring vehicle becomes an event in-and-of-itself, akin to Jodie Foster from 1994 to 2005. Maleficent debuts May 30th, 2014. As always, we’ll see.
Written by bglions.com
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