Sleeping Beauty And Maleficent Critical Analysis

The Hidden Story of Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent

A love story is a genre of popular fiction in which characters fall in love. Although, the basis of Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent are love stories, there are more important themes to these stories than the romance portrayed in these fairytales, which Disney touches on, but Robert Stromberg brings more emphasis to; evil from different perspectives, the act of rape, and the theory that love conquers all.

In Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent is the typical evil character like in all the other Disney films, but in Stromberg’s version, it shows how evil arises in different characters throughout the film including Maleficent. In the original movie, Maleficent calls herself “Mistress of all Evil”, which

Stefan is technically the evil one since he betrays Maleficent’s trust and cuts her wings off of her for the current king, so when he passes, he can become king. It could be argued that Stefan is toying with Maleficent ever since he met her. Even though his intention when he is young might not have been to deceive her, he always wanted to live in the castle; in other words, he always wanted power. This angers Maleficent. She wants revenge. In this situation that reaction is normal, but she takes it a little too far and takes her anger out on a baby. She curses his daughter into a deep sleep where only true love 's kiss can awaken her. Even though this is an evil deed, in Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent curse is much harsher. As years pass, Stefan darkens by the paranoia and vengeance while Maleficent watches over the child as she grows up living with three fairies in the forest. Overtime, she finds herself to care for Aurora and tries to

However, in the Disney film it targets the audience of children; therefore, the directors hide the true meaning even deeper so it won’t scare them and isn’t so obvious. In Sleeping Beauty, Aurora is kissed while unconscious by prince Philip, who is basically still a stranger to her, but this is seen as a romantic gesture to the audience. As for in Maleficent, the moral of rape stands out more when Stepfan cuts off her wings after first putting her in a drug-like state. In this movie, Maleficent’s wings symbolize her power and strength. So when Stefan takes them, he also takes her power and her trust. From this movie, it is arguable that since in Sleeping Beauty Maleficent doesn’t have wings at all and she is completely evil, that the wings are a sense of good self power rather than an empowerment over anyone around her. So when her wings get cut off, it cuts off the good in her and turns into vengefulness. After years, she gets over what Stefan has done and reclaims her power internally. In a way, Aurora helps Maleficent overcome what has happened to her by having a loving bond between them so it healed her heart. Although Aurora and Maleficent are not literally raped, that is the backstory of these two