Yes, the movie has been out for so long that it's almost out of theaters and on Netflix at this point. But PT has not been impressed with the discourse about the movie, which is mostly because the vast majority of movie critics have penises. Yes, there are female movie critics. Some of them even gave this movie insightful, smart and pointed reviews. It was just hard to focus on those with all the bearish braying and stomping around from the men folk.
To wit, critics have been deeply, deeply offended by (spoiler alert, I guess, but if you were going to see it you would have by now) Maleficent getting her wings clipped. It was genital mutilation! Or rape! Or something! It was a violation of the happy, family-friendly HISTORY OF FAIRY TALES TENDING TO BE ABOUT RAPING AND KILLING PEOPLE.
What, you didn't notice? Yeah, if you read those Grimm's fairy tales, there was a lot of killing, and Little Red Riding Hood? The wolf was a different kind of hungry. And I think the woodsman cut the wolf in half with an ax or something.
No, the real affront here wasn't that the de-winging was a euphemism for sexual assault. What male movie critics largely danced around was that this was a studio movie that sent the message men don't matter. Sometimes they're sidekicks, or just meant to look pretty. How deeply offensive!
Of course, no one wanted to point out how unnerving it was to view the world the way almost every woman who has sat through a superhero movie has already seen it umpteen times. So, the focus was on the fact that "Frozen" covered the same turf but was a better film (no argument there), that the tone was all over the place (true) and the film's reliance on narration suggested a hacked-up script and poor direction. PT is not going to go to bat for "Maleficent" being a great film. It isn't. What it is, though, is a flawed film that's downright revolutionary -- especially coming from Disney.
"Maleficent" may ultimately be important for reasons that have very little to do with the pros and cons of the film itself. It's a live action film that sets out to pain men with the broad, unforgiving brush usually applied to women. It's a love story without a man in the mix (and worse, without the hot lesbian sex that makes men tolerate that sort of thing).
Most of the women I know who saw the film willfully tuned out the crap (bad writing, poor construction, a raven with all these scars for some reason we never, ever learned) to take away something more important -- the message that sometimes, if a female star is big enough (thanks, Angelina!), they can get a big budget studio movie that's mostly for them. Yeah, their dates can come, but they better shut up and stick their noses in the popcorn if they have any complaints. It's what women have been doing through all those "Transformers" movies, after all.
To wit, critics have been deeply, deeply offended by (spoiler alert, I guess, but if you were going to see it you would have by now) Maleficent getting her wings clipped. It was genital mutilation! Or rape! Or something! It was a violation of the happy, family-friendly HISTORY OF FAIRY TALES TENDING TO BE ABOUT RAPING AND KILLING PEOPLE.
What, you didn't notice? Yeah, if you read those Grimm's fairy tales, there was a lot of killing, and Little Red Riding Hood? The wolf was a different kind of hungry. And I think the woodsman cut the wolf in half with an ax or something.
No, the real affront here wasn't that the de-winging was a euphemism for sexual assault. What male movie critics largely danced around was that this was a studio movie that sent the message men don't matter. Sometimes they're sidekicks, or just meant to look pretty. How deeply offensive!
Of course, no one wanted to point out how unnerving it was to view the world the way almost every woman who has sat through a superhero movie has already seen it umpteen times. So, the focus was on the fact that "Frozen" covered the same turf but was a better film (no argument there), that the tone was all over the place (true) and the film's reliance on narration suggested a hacked-up script and poor direction. PT is not going to go to bat for "Maleficent" being a great film. It isn't. What it is, though, is a flawed film that's downright revolutionary -- especially coming from Disney.
"Maleficent" may ultimately be important for reasons that have very little to do with the pros and cons of the film itself. It's a live action film that sets out to pain men with the broad, unforgiving brush usually applied to women. It's a love story without a man in the mix (and worse, without the hot lesbian sex that makes men tolerate that sort of thing).
Most of the women I know who saw the film willfully tuned out the crap (bad writing, poor construction, a raven with all these scars for some reason we never, ever learned) to take away something more important -- the message that sometimes, if a female star is big enough (thanks, Angelina!), they can get a big budget studio movie that's mostly for them. Yeah, their dates can come, but they better shut up and stick their noses in the popcorn if they have any complaints. It's what women have been doing through all those "Transformers" movies, after all.
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