MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL (2019) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

maleficent: mistress of evil (2019) movie

Genre              |   Fantasy

Classification   |   PG

Running time   |   119 minutes

Released         |   17 October 2019

cast

​Angelina Jolie ... Maleficent
Michelle Pfeiffer ... Queen Ingrith
Elle Fanning ... Princess Aurora
Harris Dickinson ... Prince Phillip
Ed Skrein ... Borra
Chiwetel Ejiofor ... Conall
​Sam Riley ... Diaval

director

​Joachim Rønning

writer

​Micah Fitzerman-Blue ... (screenplay by)
Noah Harpster ... (screenplay by)
Linda Woolverton ... (screenplay by)
Linda Woolverton ... (story by)

cinematographer

​​Henry Braham ... director of photography

music

Geoff Zanelli ​

film editor

Laura Jennings
Craig Wood

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box office result

Worldwide               $​491,730,089

Australia                 $​6,249,404

North America        $​113,929,605

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movie minutiae

To be released on the 60th anniversary of the original SLEEPING BEAUTY (1959).

​With the addition of this film, there is a grand total of 10 films released by Disney in 2019.

​On March 6, 2019, Disney released the first teaser poster featuring Maleficent, along with a new release date for the film set for Friday, October 18, 2019. The film was originally scheduled to open seven months later on May 29, 2020.

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MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL (2019) MOVIE IMAGES

Images

Posters

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Posters

MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL (2019) STORY SYNOPSIS

MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL is a fantasy adventure that picks up several years after MALEFICENT, in which audiences learned of the events that hardened the heart of Disney’s most notorious villain and drove her to curse a baby Princess Aurora. The film continues to explore the complex relationship between the horned fairy and the soon to be Queen as they form new alliances and face new adversaries in their struggle to protect the moors and the magical creatures that reside within.

MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL (2019) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 16 October 2019

Pop ​Movee Rating

MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL sees the return of Angelina Jolie as the titular character whose claim to infamy turns out not to be as worthy as generations of Disney fans have come to believe in a film that is far more entertaining, not to mention interesting, than its 2014 predecessor.

MISTRESS OF EVIL continues down the path established by the first film, switching Maleficent from antagonist to protagonist.

While the retrospective revamping of the Brothers Grimm Little Briar Rose story, and the 1959 Disney Princess adaptation, may seem a little too PC for either literary enthusiasts or the Mouse House’s legion of animated purists, shifting the cinematic Maleficent into a more positive light opens up a wider variety of storytelling opportunities. The film’s scribe Linda Woolverton, along with other credited writers Micah Fitzerman Blue & Noah Harpster, add some new, interesting twists to Mistress of Evil’s backstory, transforming her into a character with a complex history and a bona fide mythological context that explains her extraordinary power.

MISTRESS OF EVIL forever  transforms Maleficent from her origins as a Fairy Witch...

Angeline Jolie has a great time with Maleficent. In addition to maintaining the powerful presence she created in the first film, MISTRESS OF EVIL allows her to play the role more broadly this time around, injecting some genuine emotion and playing up the humour generated by the character’s stern, literal interpretation of human behaviour.

She doesn’t quite break the Fourth Wall, but there’s an underlying mischief in Jolie’s early scenes that make her more relatable, far more likeable and let the audience know that she’s in on the deal...

Maleficent’s attempts to make herself more accessible to those from beyond the Moors, for the sake of Elle Fanning’s soon-to-be-married Aurora, are genuinely funny. Jolie’s sarcasm demonstrates, once again, that she’s an actress of great talent whose personal life has, perhaps, thanks to more than one sensational tabloid headline, created a perception among the public that she’s not the most down-to-Earth person…

This time around, Jolie has a lot more star-power support to help MISTRESS OF EVIL serve up a greater level of action and entertainment for the viewer…

Michelle Pfeiffer has been a star in her own right for a long time but, more recently, she’s stepped into supporting roles to help fill out the roster of big budget, studio-backed movies.

Last year she was an integral supporting player in Marvel’s ANT-MAN AND THE WASP. 

This year it’s MISTRESS OF EVIL, and Pfeiffer proves she’s more than up for the task as the rather tetchy Queen Ingrith.

Pfeiffer’s Queen has a plan and she’s not going to let anyone get in her way, especially not Maleficent.

The relationship that develops between the two main characters early in proceedings frames the entire story and allows Director Joachim Renning, off the back of Woolverton & Co’s script, to change everyone’s mind about Maleficent while - simultaneously - delivering an action-packed story that is as good as anything served up by other recent cinematic Fantasy fare.

Given MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL feels like it’s pitched at a younger, female-skewing audience, it’s no surprise that male characters play a secondary role in the story. That’s perfectly okay. What’s not okay is how bad some of the male performances are…

A couple are so bad that they drag the entire film down.

Take the character of Prince Phillip.

In the 2014 film, he was played by Brenton Thwaites.

This time around, it’s Harris Dickinson, soon to be seen in a leading role alongside Ralph Fiennes in THE KING’S MAN, Matthew Vaughan’s prequel to his popular Colin Firth/Taron Egerton KINGSMAN movies.

Not even the addition of young up and coming heartthrob is enough to elevate the character of Prince Phillip to anything other than mediocre and generic. He’s as bland as bland can be…

A scheduling conflict was cited as the reason why Thwaites wouldn’t return for the sequel. It was probably for the best…

Ed Skrein and Chiwetel Ejiofor don’t fare any better.

Neither actor is done any favours with the heavy prosthetic make-up they have to work under, but both characters are so one-dimensional that it would have hardly mattered who played their roles. 

One area in which MISTRESS OF EVIL doesn’t lack is production design.

Like this year’s ALADDIN or the 2017 live action adaptation of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, a Disney Princess film is license for production designers, set designers, art departments, costume designers and make-up artists to push the envelope of reality to deliver the Director the most regal, colourful accoutrements imaginable.

Highly regarded Production Designer Patrick Tatopoulos marshalls all of his skill and experience on MISTRESS OF EVIL and, with no doubt, it’s obvious that his experience with visual effects is a key reason why the film’s practical effects blend so well with the post-production elements. The balance between the human characters and the fantastic creatures is a necessary part of the story, but the interaction between the real and the imagined never feels like the audience is being forced to endure VFX overload.

MISTRESS OF EVIL also benefits from the collective editing skills of Laura Jennings and Craig Wood...

Both Film Editors have been in and around various parts of Disney organisation for some time and their knowledge of how the Studio likes films put together is apparent when reading through their collective work for the Studio…

Three PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movies, three GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY movies including the upcoming 2021 installment, THE LONE RANGER (2013), TOMORROWLAND (2015) and the upcoming Marvel ETERNALS (2020), plus Jennings’s sensational work on the hugely under-rated EDGE OF TOMORROW (2014), add up to a very impressive resume of projects. 

In spite of some weak supporting performances, the return of Angelina Jolie and the addition of Michelle Pfeiffer escalate MISTRESS OF EVIL well beyond the scope of the first film. Maleficent is now a character whose potential for future films is without question. Disney has spared no expense lifting a second-tier character to a prized place in their live action adaptation film roster.

Here’s hoping it doesn’t take another five years in between visits to the Moors...

MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL MOVIE (2019) USEFUL LINKS

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil - Wikipedia
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019) - IMDb​
​Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (2019) - Rotten Tomatoes​

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