Maleficent

The 2014 retelling of Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent, brought new depths to the villainous character Maleficent. By giving her a truly heart wrenching motive to become “the bad guy,” Maleficent becomes so much more believable than previous versions of the Sleeping Beauty tale.

The film also excelled at the lesson of “true love.” This movie does a great job of keeping you on the edge of your seat up to the end about how “true love” plays out in this story. I was worried they were going to disappoint like Snow White and the Huntsman. But where the retelling of Snow White failed to capture our hearts, Maleficent succeeded.. It was heartfelt and real.

My only real complaint about the film itself was the opening and closing narrations. From a writing standpoint, narrations are viewed as something to be avoided wherever possible. Although in this case I felt compelled to forgive it.

The visual displays during the narration were so vivid, clear, and enchanting, it made you want to forget the omnipresent voice in your head. Being a visually stunning film helped ease my annoyance at the taboo. I still felt the pull distracting me, but made a conscious decision to forgive it, because if you can't use “once upon a time...” in a fairy tale, where can you? They may have chosen to use narration to set the tone and remind the viewers of the classic stories while they take you on a whole new adventure.

While the critics had a very even mix of feelings on the film, audiences tended to be a bit more forgiving with a 72% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. On Netflix, I'd give the movie three stars. This is a movie I'd add my collection. It's great for kids and adults who want more dynamic villains in their fairy tales.

I, Frankenstein

Original Publication Date by T.S. Smead January 26, 2014 on http://www.tssmead.blogspot.com

Although I enjoyed this movie, it was obvious within the first 15 minutes why it received sub par reviews. They began the movie by breaking the narrative rule, which is to say don't use a voice over telling what's happened when it can be summed up in a brief scene showing what happened. And don't use the excuse that there wasn't enough time in the film. A creatively written scene can convey an entire emotional experience in 30 seconds to 15 minutes.

The second flaw I noted stems from it's inherent theme, the main character is someone far beyond the everyday type of person. Wrapping our brain around a completely foreign character requires us to see him through the eyes of those around him. Had the film opened with Doctor Frankenstein's facial expression when he looks upon his living creation and declares him a 'Monster', then we may have understood the character's plight better. Felt for him. Felt with him. This is a few concepts rolled into one solution the film could have taken. The main point being, if you aren't going to use your "every day guy" that people can relate to, then you need to give the audience a way to relate to them. The narrative is the cheap approach that often falls flat. (One example of narrative done extremely well is James Cameron's Avatar video log. It makes so much sense that most of us are completely willing to forgive the info dump.)

The backdrop of the whole world we're exposed to in I, Frankenstein also has this grandiose air about it that makes it harder to believe. I would have again solved this by including more humans. Watching them interact among Gargoyles unaware. Seeing Gargoyles saving the lives of humans--that never even noticed--would have gone a long way to make me believe there could be a world beyond what I see everyday. That would add to the emotion impact the film COULD have made, but didn't. To put it bluntly, the movie didn't quite feel real until we met Terra, a human.

All critiquing aside, as I said, I still enjoyed watching the film. It's always easier to see the imperfections in a finished product and it is to see them while your nose up against the page. In the end, it was still a movie worth seeing.