Once Upon A Dream: The Story of Maleficent and True Love

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I have never been one for Disney movie remakes. In fact, I have always loathed them. This is because, generally speaking, Disney remakes, or any movie remakes for that matter, are made with the same perspective and retell the story with different actors and better looking sets and footage. This is not the case with Maleficent, however.
 
In the first ten minutes of the film, I heavily considered shutting my eyes and falling into the eternal slumber that Aurora falls into. A voiceover narrating all that was in plain sight assisted in my rocking to an inevitable drowse. An outcast, Maleficent was mildly bullied by other 'faeries', and had fallen in love with a human, a species of which she had never before seen even though her anatomical features closely resemble that of a human's, despite her 'I am a white independent fairy who don't need no man' approach to life. It was obvious what would occur next: he too will fall in love with her, they will go through complications but end up being together in the end despite all odds. Right?

 
Wrong. Disney movies and other fairtytales that end up making it to the realm of popularity in our world, defying Disney's claim on all things fairytales, revolve around the resolution of any magical problems with 'true love's kiss'. And in most fairytales, 'true love's kiss' indeed prevails and saves the day, or the affected heroine, rather. We have witnessed such occurrences in Shrek, Tangled and Frozen. What ends up happening in Maleficent stumped me entirely.
 
After getting through the first half of the story which actually resulted in Maleficent's heartbreak and her desire for vengeance and her acquisition of vengeance through laying a curse on Aurora which she then later regrets, my expectations were not met, in terms of my plot guesses. Firstly, Prince Philip was not Aurora's true love. His kiss did not work. My mother and I stared at each other, then stared back at the screen. How could this little boy not have been her 'true love'? It happened in the Disney movie? I was content, but also confused. My mother then predicted that Maleficent's raven in its human form, Diaval, would be her true love due to his affection to her when she was younger and his feeding of her when the faeries in her care would not do their duties because apparently looking after a human was too farfetched for these winged humans lookalikes.

 

I stood by that prediction too. I thought they would have made a perfect match, and that they would be deemed highly compatible due to his helping of her. I did not mind the age gap considering my grandparents are twenty-years apart in age. I was wrong, though. Diaval was not her 'true love' either, even though he had no chance in acquiring a kiss.

 

Who then, was her 'true love'? Disney never quite looked into familial love. In fact, most movies do not unless they are of a grotesque storyline and depict incestuous love. I did not suspect Maleficent to be one of the first cartoons to depict this. Despite believing throughout the entire film that 'true love' never exists due to her failed relationship with Aurora's father, Maleficent sent that loving to Aurora herself, and became her true love. Upon kissing her forehead, Aurora woke up and awakened within Maleficent a sense of warmth.

 

Of course, a happy-ever-after ending followed. But the fact that the notion of who a woman's -true love' is was challenged had contented me to say the least. I think a fourth wave of feminism is thus in order, that of which will occupy the rebellion of female figures in stories. Maleficent certainly began that wave. Thank you, Robert Stromberg, Linda Woolverton, Charles Perrault, Jacob Grimm, Wilhelm Grimm, Erdman Penner, Joe Rinaldi, Winston Hibler, Bill Peet, Ted Sears, Ralph Wright and Milt Banta for aiding in making this possible.