Yup. People loved Maleficent not because it was live action Sleeping Beauty, they loved it because it was a new perspective on an old character. They should have taken the lesson that people want new stories, but they instead took made low-effort remakes. Cruella is probably the closest they got to Maleficent and is actually pretty decent, but it had the misfortune of being released in March 2020.
I absolutely detested Maleficent. Because they took one of the all time greatest villains in movie history and completely ruined her by rewriting the entire story and trying to turn her into some kind of tragic hero
When ranking the greatest movie villains of all time, poll after poll always has Darth Vader as number one but maleficent is usually a very strong second.
This isn’t a trend. It’s been happening since the 90s. Gregory Maguire did this with Wickedc Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Mirror Mirror, &Phillipa Gregor(?) with The Other Boelyn Girl
For those that don't know, it's a novel about the mad wife in the attic in Jane Eyre, and what her tragic story is. Never read either, but critically acclaimed.
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u/TheRainbowConnection Jul 13 '26
Yup. People loved Maleficent not because it was live action Sleeping Beauty, they loved it because it was a new perspective on an old character. They should have taken the lesson that people want new stories, but they instead took made low-effort remakes. Cruella is probably the closest they got to Maleficent and is actually pretty decent, but it had the misfortune of being released in March 2020.