The second Maleficent works as a fairly typical sequel to its predecessor, meaning that it is similar to the first in style, function, and theme, while expanding its world and heightening its effects. The problem with that this time around is that the first one already had a bit too much breadth and artificial imagery.
Set five years after the first dark fantasy (appropriate, since it has been five years since the first movie), Mistress of Evil begins with Prince Phillip asking Queen Aurora to marry him. Maleficent and Ingrith -- Phil's royal mother, played by a particularly delicious Michelle Pfeiffer -- are not too happy about this arrangement, and at a family dinner they verbally spar to provoke violent reactions. The dinner ends disastrously: Maleficent is wounded fleeing the castle, and Ingrith is revealed to be a bigoted, genocidal villain. Maleficent rallies the fairy forces and launches an assault on Ingrith's castle Ulstead, unaware that the bitch has discovered a way to kill fairies.
And if a plot that goes from an awkward dinner party to fairy genocide seems bizarre to you, that's only the beginning. Maleficent, in reimagining the fairytale, mostly told a familiar story from a different angle. This sequel, however, adds to an ended story a wholly new chapter, a thankless task that tries desperately to combine fan service, artistic integrity, and novel entertainment. What it accomplishes more successfully, however, is artistic excess and a dizzying mix of impressionistic shorthand in both plot and design. If only it had leaned in and embraced its own heady weirdness, we could have had a new camp masterpiece.
Alas that we are left with the sundry pieces of disparate fantasies. While the central story is thick enough -- mother/daughter relationships, geopolitical strife, racist allusions, genocide and war -- it packs in suggestive imagery and themes that are as bizarre and unwelcome as they are clever and interesting. The Dark Fey, as the race of Maleficent-like horned fairies are apparently called, live in what appears to be a giant floating cocoon of woven reeds with a magical cave with various biomes packed tight together. Their leaders (Chiwetel Ejiofor and Ed Skrein) have a strange MLK/Malcolm X approach to their human oppressors. It seems the flowers that bloom where fairies have died can be crushed into a dust that can kill other fairies. A particularly weird subplot involves a little mushroom pixie and a porcupine imp getting abducted and tortured before falling in love. In the climactic battle, Ingrith locks a bunch of lovely forest creatures in a church and gasses them to death using organ music.
The list goes on, and each example gets a bit weirder. Perhaps the most irritating to me are the two big plot points late in the film. First, Ingrith's scheme to frame Maleficent for cursing her husband is undone when it is revealed that she herself pricked the king with the same spindle that cursed Aurora. So, apparently, even though Maleficent's curse specifically identified Aurora as the recipient, somehow it also worked against her soon-to-be father-in-law? Second, when Maleficent sacrifices herself to save Aurora, she is revived from death due to her bloodline, apparently passed down from a legendary Phoenix. She is revived as a giant phoenix, and really it's just awful that she didn't get to become a giant dragon.
Despite its maze of half-baked allegories and attempts at relevant imagery, Mistress of Evil manages to keep its pace, its sense of style and fun, and our interest. It continues to make an iconic villain a misunderstood antihero, which I'm ambivalent about, but certainly can't be said to be forgettable.
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