Can Maleficent be actually truly good?

Back in 1959 when Disney created the animated Sleeping Beauty it was, or rather it were pretty unambiguous that Maleficent is an evil witch that needs to be destroyed. Now it’s a cartoon based on the brothers Grimm fairytale and it really is expected from a witch to be angry that she wasn’t invited to a child’s birthday so she casts this horrible curse at the infant. This is how it happens in the original Grimm story “Little Briar Rose” and partially in  Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. There are small hints in the 1959 classic that the story isn’t as simple as that. This might be a stretch, but bear with me.

So why was Maleficent not invited? She is after all evil. However, there’s this one scene where the mother of Aurora, asks Maleficent:

“And you are not offended Your Excellency?”

She clearly is. I mean, CLEARLY!

Now, I am thinking you don’t go around calling evil witches “Your Excellency”, but hey, they are royalty, I guess well manners are everything. Also in a scene just before this one Maleficent calls the three benevolent fairies (Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather) “the rebel”. Why rebel? Were the three good fairies under her ruling? Was Maleficent also good?

The trailer for Disney’s new “Maleficent” states that “we all know the story” but not like this, implying that there’s more to the than just the simple “evil” storyline. We can see that Maleficent is in fact a ruler of a forest kingdom full with faires, pixies, wooden dragons and other feral creatures that are under her command. Seems that the father of Aurora overstepped the boundaries and war was waged between the two kingdoms.

In the war I guess Maleficent was the looser and that makes her mighty hungry for revenge. What exactly did she lost in that war is the real question, what made her bitter and evil?

But most important, can someone who enacts her revenge upon an infant or a child be a good person?

Or who is the bad guy here? Could it be Auroras father, The King?

When looking at the trailer it is obvious that the Maleficent isn’t a mere remake, but a complementary story, one really scene through the eyes of the “bad guy”.

The visual style, colors, and design also corresponds within the two films.

You liked the video? Get 10 awesome wallpapers from Maleficent here.

This all can also be a well planned strategy of Disney to get as much audience as possible. FOr example their last few films weren’t quite “princessy”. Tangled and Frozen even avoided using the names “Rapunzel” or “The Snow Queen”, the stories upon the two films are based in order to gain the boys to watch the film. It appears that this is a similar step to that trend where the main protagonist isn’t the princess, but the evil witch.