What makes Maleficent: Mistress of Evil so boring? Is it the ramshackle plot that flits from character to character, building up a giant climax without stakes or interest? Is it the strangeness of grafting large action pieces and violent character death onto children’s story characters? Is it the focus on world-building and mythology over character development or coherent motivations? Is it all of the above or is it something more? Some special, odious ingredient or a particularly bold misstep that transforms all the random pieces into a great goose egg.
We may never know; if such causes were obvious, they could be avoided, and no one would need to suffer through a Maleficent 2 ever again. But like a black hole passing and engulfing a solar system, even if you can’t see the cause, the results are more than obvious.
The result in Mistress of Evil is exposition, a lot of it, starting with Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) herself explaining how — despite turning against her evil ways and saving her adopted daughter Aurora (Elle Fanning) in the previous film — she has been re-vilified by the people (Maybe everyone who saw her save the kingdom with their own eyes was coincidentally murdered, who knows).
Don’t expect much explanation about that, you’ll never get, because instead the focus will be on where she came from and a brewing war between her people and the humans (again) after she is framed by an evil Queen (Michelle Pfeiffer) for an attack on the king. Discovering she is not the last Dark Fey in existence, Maleficent must choose between her daughter — due to marrying the son of her attacker — and her people, peace or war, good or… well, you get the point.
And if you don’t, don’t worry, it’s going to be explained to you. A lot. The screenplay by Linda Woolverton, Noah Harpster, and Micah Fitzeman-Blue retains a lot of the worst elements from Woolverton’s ill-fated Alice Through the Looking Glass. As with that film, a mediocre but harmless adaptation of an early Disney triumph has somehow necessitated a sequel, so one has been created without any clear idea of what would happen to the characters after the credits rolled.
That’s a particularly potent question for a film that casts its villain as the hero. With no good ideas, the filmmakers have reverted all of the characters back to their previous states, letting us know that Maleficent has been rewritten as the villain stories cast her as in most people’s minds, even though the actions of the previous film only happened a few years ago.
When Prince Charming nee Phillip (Harris Dickinson) finally asks Aurora to marry him, Maleficent tries to put those wounding words aside and give Aurora what she wants, only to run into the warmongering of Philip’s mother (Pfeiffer), who seems to have a special hatred for magical creatures. It’s one of the few moments when Mistress of Evil comes alive as Pfeiffer and Jolie square off to snarl over ownership of Aurora, casting everyone else into the shadows through the strength of their own personalities.
It’s also one of the few times either gets anything to do, particularly Jolie, who disappears for long stretches of the movie and, even when she returns, spends most of her time staring at other people while they talk to her. Mistress of Evil has decided that it’s not enough for Maleficent to simply exist in the world, it must be explained where she came from necessitating a larger and larger mythology for her origins. The result is regressive as the film always looks backward, never forward, and spends most of its time telling and not enough showing.
This is unfortunate as director Joachim Rønning (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) makes a good-looking action film. He’s got all the toys in the world to play with in constructing Maleficent’s backyard and he doesn’t waste any of them. The scenery is luscious, the effects are outstanding, and the set pieces are first-rate. Production Designer Patrick Tatopoulos, in particular, seems cursed to provide incredible work to substandard films.
From Ulsted’s gothic palace to the home of the Dark Fey — a warren of giant, twisty bird nests — the world of Mistress of Evil looks as fantastic as its writers seem to want the explanations to be. That is, when we can see it, as tremendous amounts of the film are set at night. Cinematographer Henry Braham (Guardians of the Galaxy) does his best with it, but the prime answer seems to be having every night be a full moon. As with much of the film, the request seems to be, “Don’t think about it too much.”
Except for the bits they want you to think about. Mistress of Evil is simultaneously overdone and undercooked, with a lot of the customary mistakes of giant studio entertainment. Someone, somewhere has spent a lot of time talking about why the world should look like it does, why the backstory should be what it is, but not enough time figuring out why anyone should care.
MALEFICENT: MISTRESS OF EVIL REVIEW RATING: 5/10
The Walt Disney Studios released Maleficent: Mistress of Evil in theaters on October 18, 2019. Click here for all our Maleficent: Mistress of Evil coverage.
Joshua Starnes has been writing about film and the entertainment industry since 2004 and served as the President of the Houston Film Critics Society from 2012 to 2019. In 2015, he became a co-owner/publisher of Red 5 Comics and, in 2018, wrote the series “Kulipari: Dreamwalker” for Netflix. In between, he continues his lifelong quest to find THE perfect tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwich combination.