What A Curious Little Beasty...

I watched a few movies over the last several days...thought I'd share my thoughts/opinions...maybe someone will find them useful!

First up is Disney's Maleficent.

I remember being ridiculously excited for this movie when I first started seeing trailers for it last year.

To me, the big selling point of this movie was that we would get to see a different side to the classic Sleeping Beauty fairy tale...I've always been a big fan of classic protagonists. For years, I maintained that it would be a brilliant paper topic to write about the happenings in The Phantom of the Opera from the view-point of the Phantom. Most people view the Phantom as the clear-cut villain in the story...after all, he terrorizes the opera house and it's patrons...and he kidnaps Christine! Call it the odd side of me, the side that can't help but be drawn to things that are melancholy and misunderstood...but I've always sympathized with the Phantom rather than despised him. His poor soul...the pain and suffering that he must have been made to endure, especially when he was a child...

/sigh...my views on Phantom could make up for a dozen posts on their own, and I'm getting away from the actual topic...

The movie begins by announcing to the viewers that the "true" story [of Sleeping Beauty] isn't quite as we've been told. Then we are shown a young Maleficent and are enlightened as to why she grows to be in conflict with the King [as we see in the beginning of Disney's animated Sleeping Beauty].

Now, I really liked the whole premise that this movie has set for why Maleficent becomes the villain that we are familiar with. I can't go into detail without ruining the story, my apologies. Just know that it's pretty good...I wouldn't say that it makes for a 'must own' DVD or BluRay, but I definitely feel as if I got my money's worth out of my RedBox rental! [Yeah, yeah...I know it's less than a whole $2, but when money's tight, money's tight...]

I've got no wings on me!

The only thing that I didn't really care for has to do with the classification of magical creature that the story has chosen for Maleficent. In this movie, she is said to be a fairy...the largest of all the fairies in the Moore. I'm sure that I'm discontent with this classification only because of what I've come to accept as fairies through stories and various books are very different than this 'fairy' version of Maleficent. Fairies are, in my mind, supposed to be tiny, wisp-like creatures with delicate butterfly-type wings...unless it's a dark fairy...that's a different story...

Anyway...I thought that perhaps this winged Maleficent would be better classified as a Valkyrie. But some quick research on the topic and I learned that this would not be a proper classification either.

Originating in Norse mythology, Valkyries were female spirits [helpers of Odin, if you would] that hoovered around battlefields and would select those that were to die in battle. Commonly depicted with wings on their helmets, but the Valkyries themselves do not have wings. [I mistakenly thought that they did] Turns out that this misconception is probably because the Valkyries were allowed to disguise themselves by taking the form of a swan...but if  a human were to see a Valkyrie in her true form, she would become an ordinary human and would never be able to return to Valhalla.

Soooo....yeah. Pretty sure this rules out Maleficent as being a Valkyrie.

If you're harpy and you know it...

My next thought was that maybe it would be more correct to label Maleficent as a harpy.

I remembered, from my World of Warcraft playing days, that harpies were female creatures with wings. [Vicious, vicious female creatures...] The fact that harpies have wings is pretty much where the similarities with the newest version of Maleficent end. Maleficent certainly did not have a bird-like body or feathers aside from her wings...

Soooo....nope. She's not a harpy either.

/Shrug

So, I guess she's a fairy. Why not.

Overall, it's a good movie. Give it a watch...maybe you'll be able to think up a better classification than fairy...if you do, please share!

I hadn't anticipated typing this much for just one movie...but it seems time has escaped me, so I'm going to have to save the other movies for another post. At least I'll have something to write about!