I watched both of these movies back to back this weekend and I could not help but compare different aspects of them.
The animation, layout, and design in Sleeping Beauty (1959) are absolutely phenomenal, the music is great, but the story feels extremely lacking. To me it seems unfortunate that it took nearly 10 years and 6 million dollars for something so lacking in interesting narrative. The visuals are amazing, and impressive given the tedious process necessary to achieve them, but the actual story was incredibly boring and stale. Every time Maleficent was on screen was a lot of fun though, the vocal performance and writing/animation of her character was so entertaining I was rooting for her and felt saddened when she falls of the cliff and dies.
The Maleficent (2014) movie was a lot of fun, but suffers from being made in the 2010s, although the vfx are actually better than those in some recent big budget movies. Some of the shot layouts are really awesome as well. The nuance provided to the story is much more interesting than in the original, but they seemed to really want these big action sequences which felt kind of unnecessary. Also when maleficent is fighting towards the end she doesn’t use a lot of magic she kind of just fights hand to hand which sucks because her magical powers are the coolest part. Although I suppose they had to make her less powerful so that they can humanize her character. Also the king feels lame narratively as a villain towards the end. I think it improves on the original story but I feel it could perhaps be improved further by giving a better conflict and more depth to characters besides Maleficent. The music also really really sucks in Maleficent, it’s very 2010s and lacks the gravitas of the original soundtrack.
That being said, I very much enjoyed the movie and think it improves on story elements from the original, although the original will always be an iconic visual spectacle and have amazing score. One doesn’t necessarily have to be better than the other, we can enjoy both as separate movies with their own redeeming qualities.
