Where Have All the Bad Guys Gone...?

As I spent this week in London with my beloved, we toured some Tudor mansions, ate meat pies in a pub, and curled up on a couch together to watch a movie from the vastly superior European Netflix catalogue. I usually let my partner choose the flicks we watch because his taste is much more specific than mine, so while it wouldn't have been my first pick, we cuddled together and watched Disney's villainess prequel, Maleficent (2014).



Maleficent isn't my cup of tea- and my reviewing it would only make me sound like an annoying film snob, but the movie did make me think about a bigger cinematic issue: Why do movies keep un-villainizing our most cherished villains?

The character of the wicked fairy Maleficent in Walt Disney's original animated classic Sleeping Beauty (1959) is a wonder to behold. Silkily voiced by the superb Eleanor Audley (who also did the voice of the wicked stepmother in Cinderella (1950) and was Oli-vah's snooty mother in TV's Green Acres) and animated with a rich fluidity, Maleficent slid onto the screen amidst a sickly green cloud with her chin held high and her disdain for all the princess-normative nonsense on full display.

Maleficent was left off the guest list for the christening of little Princess Aurora... on purpose. So she shows up to the blessed event anyway and curses the baby to die on her sixteenth birthday- in her eyes, a perfectly reasonable response to such a public slight. Emily Post would have suggested nothing less. Maleficent was evil and unrepentant about it. And it made her glorious. So much so, that I felt bad when she got a sword in the heart at the end.

But these days, you can't have someone just be evil. Maleficent in 2014 (played with high-cheekbone realness by Angelina Jolie) has to be a wild fairy who was wronged by a duplicitous lover, so she holds a grudge and curses his kid. That grudge gets all complicated, however, when she spends some time with dazzling Aurora (properly blond Elle Fanning) and regrets cursing her, ultimately risking her life to save her. What? Maleficent lives happily ever after with Sleeping Beauty? Whatever happened to the grim in Grimm's Fairy Tales?

And it's not just this movie. Other iconic baddies have had prequels made about their sad beginnings in the attempt to explain how come they are so nasty. Darth Vader isn't a pitiless, power-hungry Sith Lord. In the tedious Star Wars prequels he's an annoying young man who throws a tantrum because the Jedis won't let him marry his sweetheart and who loses his shit over not being able to save his mom.

This doesn't make him embrace the fragility of life and cherish every moment. Nope. He goes and kills a bunch of kids and then all of his Jedi pals before burning to a crisp and being turned into the wheezing, metal monster we all know and love.

What about Oz's Wicked Witch of the West? It wasn't enough that she should be a green, vengeful witch who wants to get the pig-tailed girl (and her little dog too) who crushed her sister under a house. In the disastrous Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), Theodora (Mila Kunis playing her That 70's Show character in a pointy hat), jealous of Oscar's (the horribly miscast James Franco) attention to other women, is tricked into biting an apple to lose her feelings for him- but instead is turned into the broom-flying green baddie we are more familiar with.

Once again, being hurt and rejected by a man doesn't result in nights spent in front of the TV with a pint of Ben & Jerry's. Romantic disappointment for women equals murderous personality change.

This is just the tip of the villain origin story iceberg. Snow White's Wicked Queen, Hannibal Lecter, and Norman Bates have all gotten modern makeovers that delve into their pasts to explain the evil characters that previously appeared on the screen.

What's wrong with someone just being evil? Do we really have to be spoon fed an origin story to confirm why our big screen meanies are so mean? Maybe it's our attempt to explain evil in our fictional worlds, when we can't in the real one. Maybe we think if we can get a grasp on why Darth Vader used his death grip without a care, we'll understand the likes of Osama Bin Laden, ISIS, and Boko Haram. Or maybe studio execs just like to squeeze every dime they can out of film franchises. Either way, I am comfortable with Maleficent cursing newborns while wearing fabulous cloaks just cause she wants to.

For this classic film lover, it's good enough to just be bad

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