Let me spoil Maleficent for you

[seriousfic]

Disney: Hey mofos, you ready for a story that replaces the childish black-and-white morality of the original Sleeping Beauty with moral ambiguity, shades of gray, and three-dimensional character work?

Audience: Yeah!

Disney: Well, once upon a time, there were two kingdoms, one of evil, violent humans and one of innocent, peace-loving fairies...

Audience: Oh boy...

Disney: Oh, what, you want Maleficent to just be utterly, one-dimensionally evil for no reason? This is the new millennium! Villains have to have sympathetic backstories and justifiable reasoning for even the most evil actions! Unless they're white men, of course.

Stefan: Hi there!

Audience: ...

Stefan: Man, I sure do love Maleficent.

Audience: ...

Narrator: But then Stefan got a taste of evil and decided it was great!

Stefan: I HATE MALEFICENT!

Audience: So, in forty years, is there going to be a movie where Stefan is the hero and, say, one of the Fairies is the villain...?

*The Human King goes all Ferngully on the forest, but Maleficent repels them*

Human King: This is going so poorly, considering the movie's said iron is Kryptonite to the fairies and we're all armed with iron! So to them, it should be like we're using lightsabers.

Maleficent: I hate this senseless loss of life, but I must protect fairy borders!

Human King: Why don't you just go an impassible wall between your land and our land, like you do later in the movie?

Maleficent: Hey, who nitpicks a fairy tale?

Human King: Who spends two hundred million dollars or so making a live-action fairy tale with constant CGI, multiple epic battles, and an A-list star?

Maleficent: Touche.

*Since the Human King is dying, he offers his crown to whoever kills Maleficent. Stefan overhears and goes to Maleficent, pretending to still love her before drugging her and cutting off her wings to use as proof of her death, all in the pursuit of power.*

Stefan: So, uh, how many movies is this where a guy chooses vague fortune and glory over being in love with Angelina Jolie, who is extremely wealthy and powerful anyway? I mean, same thing happened at the end of the second Tomb Raider movie?

Angelina Jolie: You're not suggesting I have a complex, are you? *drinks blood*

*Enraged, Maleficent turns a crow human so he can serve as her familiar.*

Diaval: That's me! Wait a minute, are all animals sentient in this world? Do humans still eat meat? Jesus, we need to get on this! Every day, mankind is unknowingly perpetuating mass murder!

Maleficent: *turns him back into a crow*

Diaval: Well, at least you'd better not use me in my bird form for a bunch of animal reaction shots. How hacky would that be?

*Now dressed in black but inexplicably not green, Maleficent goes to the christening of Stefan's daughter*

Maleficent: Wait, the three fairies? What are you doing here? You do know you're blessing the daughter of the guy who date raped me in the metaphor, right? And how come your special effects look worse than Tinkerbell did in (HOLY SHIT YOU ARE OLD)?

Fairies: We want peace!

Maleficent: Peace with a pure evil tyrant? Glad to know we've retconned the heroines of the original movie into Vichy France. Anyway, I CURSE AURORA TO DIE ON HER SIXTEENTH BIRTHDAY! I MEAN, TO FALL INTO A DEATH-LIKE SLEEP ON HER SIXTEENTH BIRTHDAY! I MEAN, UNLESS SHE RECEIVES TRUE LOVE'S KISS!

Fairies: Didn't we used to do something here?

Maleficent: No, in this movie you're simply comic relief/terrifying CGI.

Fairies: But in the original, we were the heroines! We were on screen the most, we did all the work assisting Philip--Sleeping Beauty doesn't need a feminist retelling because the original already was feminist!

Maleficent: Yeah, but you're old and fat. I'm sexy, so--

Stefan: Wait, hold on a minute. This is all because I cut off your wings, right? Why don't you just take them back, kill me, and call it a day?

Maleficent: Take them back? What, you think they'll just plug into my back again like USB drives? That's completely ridiculous! It would render my entire character arc basically meaningless!

Later in the movie: Uh, bad news...

Maleficent: Oh, and Aurora's going to prick her finger on a spinning wheel, though the curse is going to go to so much trouble to compel her into pricking her finger and assembling a spinning wheel that I might as well just say she'll fall asleep from blinking. Laters.

*In his hatred of all fairies, Stefan gives Aurora to... the three fairies. Thus there's no father-daughter relationship between the villain and one of the heroines, so no ambiguity to his climactic death*

Stefan: I'll also go mad with power, so it's completely okay to kill me!

*The three fairies raise Aurora, but they're so inept that Maleficent has to step in to keep Aurora from killing herself. Eventually, Aurora grows into a young woman, who's been raised by three mothers, has had presumably no or very limited contact with the outside world, is full of hormones, and knows that she's been cared for as long as she can remember by Angelina Jolie*

Aurora: Really? What is it about me that just screams femslasher catnip? I get Mulan, she dresses like a man...

*With Aurora now a young and inexperienced teenager, the dark, powerful Maleficent literally sweeps her off her feet, taking her to a magical land of fairies where Aurora can marvel at the wonders of a world she's never known*

Aurora: But not in a gay way!

*Aurora grows to love living with Maleficent, and when Maleficent says that she can leave the Three Fairies to spend the rest of her life with her, Aurora is overjoyed!*

Aurora: But not with any scissoring! Right, Maleficent? Right?

Maleficent: Look, I'm just glad the bit where I knocked you unconscious and magically dragged you back to my home didn't merit any adoption jokes.

*Aurora also meets young Prince Philip, who is taken by her beauty and grace*

Aurora: See? SEE?

*She also finds out that Maleficent cursed her and can't revoke it, prompting her to angrily break things off with Maleficent!*

Aurora: HA! How many romances have the lovers breaking up at the end of the second act, only to get back together and reaffirm their love?

*The Three Fairies turn out to be SO MINDBOGGLING STUPID that they take Aurora back to the castle on the last day that she could possibly be cursed*

Stefan: Those IDIOTS! Don't they know that the remains of every spinning wheel in the land are held in the dungeon? Quickly, men, lock Aurora up somewhere! But don't restrain her, put one of my massive army on guard duty, or spare any other effort to keep her safe for the remaining three or so hours of vulnerability. I mean, let's not go overboard here.

*Aurora is locked up, but the spell unlocks the door--you know the rest. Meanwhile, Maleficent finds Philip and knocks him unconscious to take to Aurora, which the movie depicts as a race against time despite the only reason they have for getting Philip is to administer True Love's Kiss AFTER she's cursed*

Philip: So wait, if I'm unconscious and Maleficent lugs me around through all the heroism I should by rights be doing, what's the point of me even being here?

Maleficent: Your penis. In fact, I would also love to do many touching and feeling things with your penis if you weren't already spoken for, because THERE IS NO LESBIAN SUBTEXT IN THIS MOVIE. *uncrosses fingers*

*Maleficent gets Philip to Aurora's bed, where the movie decides not tell him that the only thing that will break the curse is True Love's Kiss, making his mouth-meet with her strangely rapey. Oh, and it doesn't work*

Femslashers: There's the wind-up...

*Now alone with the cursed Aurora, Maleficent tearfully confesses how much she's grown to care for Aurora, how sorry she is, how she'll miss her laugh...*

Femslashers: And the pitch...!

*Maleficent kisses Aurora on the forehead, which is a KISS OF TRUE LOVE THAT BREAKS THE UNBREAKABLE CURSE*

Femslashers: AND IT'S GOOD!

Aurora: You guys know I'm sixteen, right?

Maleficent: And yet, compared to my relationship with Billy Bob Thornton, this does seem rather wholesome, doesn't it?

*And so, it turns out that love and forgiveness are more powerful than hatred and revenge, and so we should all strive to forgive our enemies, and choose peace over*

Stefan: MWAHAHA! YOU FORGOT ABOUT ME! TIME FOR OUR BIG BOSS FIGHT, MALEFICENT! I'VE GONE MAD AFTER SIXTEEN YEARS OF BEING SEPARATED FROM MY DAUGHTER AND WORRYING THAT SHE'S BEEN CURSED TO DIE!

Aurora: That actually seems pretty reasonable? Is the movie going to give him sixteen-odd years to redeem himself?

Stefan: No! I'll just die trying to kill Maleficent after she spares my life, so it's not really her fault! MORAL AMBIGUITY!

*Maleficent turns her crow sidekick into the famous dragon, even though that's the coolest thing about her, and together they prove... strangely ineffectual against about twenty humans. Until Aurora frees Maleficent's wings to reattach to her so she can fly*

Maleficent: Aurora! Your love for me has given me wings! Let's soar together!

Aurora: Us and Philip, you mean. Right?

*And so, the human and fairy kingdoms are merged, as Aurora is crowned queen of both lands*

Maleficent: And I, King. Ha, what a witty callback to Gia, one of my most famous roles. Bet you guys didn't think my first cinematic gay wedding would be in a Disney movie, eh? Eh, audience?

Aurora: What? No, we're not getting married, I'm just getting crowned queen.

Maleficent: Yes. Of both our kingdoms. Which are obviously being joined by marriage. And you're the only ruler of the human kingdom--I'm the only ruler of the fairy kingdom--we shared true love's kiss...

Aurora: No, look! There's Philip in the crowd! See? I'm smiling at him!

Maleficent: But we've already canonically established that you two barely know each other and his kiss didn't break the curse. It'd make no sense for you two to be some sort of item, age-appropriate or not.

Aurora: But you're some immortal, supernatural being!

Maleficent: So was Edward Cullen. Didn't stop him from knocking up Bella a week after she was legal. Speaking of, we're adopting the crow.

Narrator: And so, everyone lived happily ever after, and you can decide for yourselves if Maleficent and Aurora were totes gay for each other or not. But it really is the only reasonable conclusion one can draw from the text.

Aurora: But I like penises!

*Maleficent picks up a twig, which turns into a LONG, HARD SHAFT OF WOOD IN WHICH ALL HER POWER RESIDES*

Aurora: Oh, okay then.

Comments

[geekykitsch.livejournal.com]

Maleficent: So was Edward Cullen. Didn't stop him from knocking up Bella a week after she was legal. Speaking of, we're adopting the crow.


Haha! Excellent!

I just saw the film a couple of days ago and while it was alright, you've done the perfect synopsis. Cheers!