Maleficent (Disneycember)

(The Disneycember logo is shown, before showing clips from Maleficent)

Doug (vo): I kind of rolled my eyes when I heard they were making a Maleficent movie. I mean, it just seems like a pointless thing to do. Maleficent is a great villain, one of the great villains. She's so charismatic and evil and loves every minute of it and is elegant and clever and diabolical. She's given just the right amount of screen time in the original Sleeping Beauty. So the idea of learning more about her past didn't seem too bright, but at the same time, I was open to it, I guess. When the film finally came out, it became very obvious what they were trying to do. It's the Wicked formula again, trying to take a fairy tale we all thought we knew and tell it in a different way where the bad guy doesn't look so bad. When I figure that out, which you can very quickly in this film, I just sort of shrugged and said, "Whatever. Just give me some pleasing eye candy." It did, and I didn't think too much of it. But then later, when I really thought about it, it started to piss me off, like, really piss me off. I thought about what they were trying to do to one of the great villains, one of the great Disney icons, turning the Mistress of All Evil into a simple case of misunderstanding, turning three of the most likeable comic reliefs into these idiotic morons, turning an iconic Disney fairy tale that has its flaws, but was still pretty damn creative, into every other poorly CG-ed stale story that comes out about fairy tales nowadays. You know what? This movie really sucks! A lot!