Whay such angst over Disney's Maleficent?

[hinduwoman]

So I saw the movie Maleficent.
Gaping potholes in plot, over the top acting, patchy visual effects --- but still entertaining and 'true love's kiss' was a nice twist.
What I don't get is the reactions of a lot people who watched it.

Biggest group was wailing that their childhood had been tainted (!) because Maleficent is no more the evil villain they had seen in their childhood. Honestly that was just a cartoon and this one is a movie and revisionist; of course it is going to be different. They can just watch the cartoon again. But no they prefer to post and post and argue why it is so awful that an iconic villain has been ruined forever and they want the baddie back. They want her to turn into a dragon and get killed. Hysterics about how Disney is not faithful to the original --- apparently they don't know or care that the cartoon is a revision of original story! Makes me seriously wander about their mental age. On the other hand I confess I watched my first Disney cartoon at the ripe old age of 37, so probably cannot understand the great American trauma.


The second complaint (often along with the first) what about the men? This is a manhating film. The noble father of the princess (in the cartoon he gets 2-3 minutes of time at most!) is turned into a villain and the prince has no role. Maleficent's motherly kiss awakens the princess . All the men are shallow. This is the USA of today where women get everything and men are always shown to be bad and this is the stuff little children are forcefed. I had no idea that USA males are persecuted so much
Really it is more that Angelina Jolie is determined to elbow everyone else out of the screen, so the other female characters are one dimensional too.


Third group complains that good and evil are becoming blurred. Villains are given depth and redeemed/excused. Such shows are distorting moral compass so that people become sympathetic towards bad people and excuse all kinds of evil behaviour. It is also anti-love. IMO there seems to be religious overtones with implications about Enemies of USA and LGBT ; but maybe it is more that they prefer a simpler world?

Another very frequent is that the true love's kiss scene rips off Frozen. I really don't get it --- so a film uses a gimmick another film has used, so what?

 

[credoconsolans]

So I saw the movie Maleficent.
Gaping potholes in plot, over the top acting, patchy visual effects --- but still entertaining and 'true love's kiss' was a nice twist.
What I don't get is the reactions of a lot people who watched it.

Biggest group was wailing that their childhood had been tainted (!) because Maleficent is no more the evil villain they had seen in their childhood. Honestly that was just a cartoon and this one is a movie and revisionist; of course it is going to be different. They can just watch the cartoon again. But no they prefer to post and post and argue why it is so awful that an iconic villain has been ruined forever and they want the baddie back. They want her to turn into a dragon and get killed. Hysterics about how Disney is not faithful to the original --- apparently they don't know or care that the cartoon is a revision of original story! Makes me seriously wander about their mental age. On the other hand I confess I watched my first Disney cartoon at the ripe old age of 37, so probably cannot understand the great American trauma.


The second complaint (often along with the first) what about the men? This is a manhating film. The noble father of the princess (in the cartoon he gets 2-3 minutes of time at most!) is turned into a villain and the prince has no role. Maleficent's motherly kiss awakens the princess . All the men are shallow. This is the USA of today where women get everything and men are always shown to be bad and this is the stuff little children are forcefed. I had no idea that USA males are persecuted so much
Really it is more that Angelina Jolie is determined to elbow everyone else out of the screen, so the other female characters are one dimensional too.


Third group complains that good and evil are becoming blurred. Villains are given depth and redeemed/excused. Such shows are distorting moral compass so that people become sympathetic towards bad people and excuse all kinds of evil behaviour. It is also anti-love. IMO there seems to be religious overtones with implications about Enemies of USA and LGBT ; but maybe it is more that they prefer a simpler world?

Another very frequent is that the true love's kiss scene rips off Frozen. I really don't get it --- so a film uses a gimmick another film has used, so what?

Lot of people are uneasy with the idea however real, that villains aren't just villains.

They want a black and white universe where they feel free - being on the white hat good guys side - to kill or destroy the black hatted bad guys without having to worry about WHY they're bad.

They want to think bad guys just sprang out of the ground completely bad, with no redeemable characteristics so they can kill them with impunity and feel good about it.

Why do you think zombies are so popular right now?

People feel they can blow them away without worrying about whether they have loved ones or if they were misled or if they actually had an understandable and justifiable reason for doing what they're doing.

So the evil mythical Darth Vader is the grown up version of a whiny slave kid who was seduced because of his inability to mature.

So the evil Maleficent who was so evil she cursed a little baby, actually was just a powerful nature spirit who fell in love as a young thing and whose friendship with her would-be love was betrayed and spurned by her fickle friend who mutilated her.

Some people don't want complications or to see bad guys as anything other than bad.

They want a simple world that really doesn't exist.