maleficent mad madame mim Maleficent is a truly classic fairy tale villain. She is evil for the sake of being evil, but doesn’t seem to be actively trying to conquer anything, though she’s certainly quite capable of doing so. But when she’s overlooked as a prospective godmother for the Princess Aurora, she gets really ticked off, ticked off enough to do some heavy duty cursing. It seems like a minor thing to get so worked up over, but it’s really a matter of Pride, something that villains seem to be particularly sensitive about. Visually, she is Gothic masterpiece, a tall, pale personage dressed all in black and purple, with a horned headdress that roughly suggests her more dragonish side. In human form, she radiates coldness and power, prone to giving spine-tingling portents of doom and being twistedly sadistic for fun. She also has a pretty effective maniacal laugh. Maleficent is a very high profile villain. Everyone knows where she is (high, scary mountain), what she’s plotting (kill off princess), and when she’s coming (Aurora’s sixteenth birthday). The problem is, nobody can do anything about it. Humor is not one of Maleficent’s strengths. She has a crow as a familiar, who acts as spy, ally, and lapcat, but the real funnies are her gargoyle-styled troops, a bumbling group of stupids who don’t appear much in the movie. Her weakness is a simple one: she doesn’t know much about love or kindness, thus can’t conceive of what actions might be taken to keep Aurora out of sight. This, however, isn’t what foils her in the end. The problem she runs up against at the end is sheer overconfidence. She underestimates the three good fairies, forgets that Philip can kill her in dragon form, and most importantly, figures she can’t lose. Unfortunately, losing happens to be the purpose of her existence. Maleficent was based on the similarly slighted fairy from the original fairy tale, but there was no dragon, no giant castle, and no climax. In fact, her counterpart virtually disappeared after the initial cursing scene. In film, she has become one of the most frightening members of the Disney canon and one of the hardest to forget. 991229 what's it to you? who go blather from