(This review includes spoilers for Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty, 1959, so be aware if you don't want to know yet how this particular version of the story ends.)
Sleeping Beauty was one of the last Disney Princess movies I watched, and of course I really enjoyed it. For one thing it's one of the most visually beautiful movies I have ever seen. The set design, those delicious green effects whenever Maleficent's casting an evil spell – wow. I love the theme of love being the most powerful force imaginable, a message I would love to see shown more often, and I recall laughing or sitting on the edge of my seat almost the entire time. It was entertaining, engaging... and yet, there was still one very big problem, one problem keeping me from being fully drawn into the story as opposed to just enjoying it, and that problem was with one of the very fundamentals of good storytelling. There was a huge problem with the character development.
Not with everyone's character, of course. Kings Stefan and Hubert made wonderful side characters and were very funny the way they played off each other, and “the Queen” had exactly the meek, quiet persona you would expect from someone who has her amount of plot relevance and screen time, and is so blatantly refused a name each time her husband's is given. As for Maleficent – what can I say? She automatically became one of my favourite Disney villains, and might just be my favourite character in the movie, except of course that I couldn't root for her. So ruthless and cunning, so over-the-top and fabulously evil, and all because she wasn't invited to a party, a delightful over-the-top pettiness that works so much better than any tragic backstory or sympathetic motivation ever could. And she does it all with such villainous style!
And the personalities of the major good characters were great as well. The fairies were wonderfully engaging the way they played off each other, Flora and Merryweather's more forceful natures at odds while Fauna's gentleness patiently waits them out, or impulsive Merryweather played against the (I presume) older, more experienced, and cautious Flora and Fauna. But therein lies the problem, that I had so much time to get to know the fairies' personalities, more than I did for either Aurora or Phillip. Not only did the fairies take up half the movie's screen time (at least!), they were also the only good guys making anything happen. Aurora and Phillip are established as heroine and hero but end up with less screen time and plot function than most side characters; Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather are established as supporting roles but have the screen time and plot relevance of protagonists. Sleeping Beauty is essentially a story with no protagonist at all.
Now, there would be nothing wrong with a movie where the protagonists were indeed three fairies charged with protecting a princess from an evil fairy bent on killing her out of vengeance. (Although I would still want to see more of this princess, so I would know who my protagonists were devoting so much of their time and energy to, and why I was rooting for this girl to make it!) But in order to feel like someone is the protagonist, we need to see them established in certain ways first. We really don't know anything about the fairies' lives, where they come from or how they met, how their powers work or what individual goals they might have in life outside of their current mission to protect Aurora. We have no sense of any internal goals or conflicts going on inside the fairies, which the external story could then help them work through. Everything we know about them and everything we see them do centres on Aurora, clearly establishing them as characters whose main purpose in the plot is to help out our heroine, not to tell their own stories. They're supporting characters.
Aurora herself I found so engaging and intriguing – in the one scene where we actually get to see her, that is. It's crazy how the entire plot of the movie centres around Aurora – it's even named after her, Sleeping Beauty – and yet we barely get to know her. It wouldn't be a problem for Aurora to be a Disney Princess but not the protagonist of her own movie. You don't have to be the protagonist in order to be a Disney Princess – Jasmine wasn't. (Which again makes me wonder why perfectly valid non-protagonist candidates like Meg and Esmeralda were excluded from the lineup.) But Jasmine, Meg, and Esmeralda were all still very major characters with wants and needs and beliefs about the world, and more than enough screen time to explore their personalities. Aurora seemed like such an interesting character – she had this sly, knowing smile suggesting she knew what was up when no one expected her to, and like maybe she was secretly laughing at someone. She could summon the animals of the forest simply by singing, like her voice was some kind of magical superpower. She took in everything around her with such lively interest, always living in the moment and enjoying whatever happened to be in front of her, while at the same time she was a firm believer in the power of dreaming, and in that way she was unwilling to let the fairies and their rules control her life entirely. This is definitely a character I like, someone I want to know and love and follow throughout her story! But there isn't any chance to follow her, because apart from that one scene where we see what an interesting character she could have been, she spends the entire movie offscreen, as an infant, in an enchanted sleep, or too sad to function.
And yet Aurora is definitely established as someone the movie will centre on. The film begins with her birth, the plot's set in motion when she's cursed, and everything the other characters do is on account of her. Everything that happens in the film springs from Aurora's backstory, and we know exactly where Aurora comes from and where she's going to. We even get some sense of what she wants out of life, when she sings about wanting a romantic partner like all the animals she knows have, and expresses frustration that her fairy aunts never let her see anyone. And yet, Aurora is not the protagonist, because she wouldn't even be the least active protagonist ever – she simply never gets any opportunity to drive her own story or have a say in her own life! Aurora is definitely the main character, as in the person the story revolves around, but she does nothing herself to move the plot forward the way a protagonist does. (The terms are often interchangeable, but protagonist and main character mean slightly different things.) Most of the big decisions regarding Aurora's life are made when she's barely a week old and could hardly have any say in the matter, and these decisions take up too much of the film's main action to just qualify as her backstory. She's kept isolated her whole childhood and clearly doesn't like it, but as that part of her life is completely skipped over, there's no point in the story where she could protest or try to sneak off or argue with her fairies about why she still has to follow their rules. The one big turning point for her – finding out she's a princess and needs to leave her old life behind – is kept pretty much out of her hands, and honestly I think she was treated pretty unfairly, with nobody even giving her a hint that she might need to uproot her entire life one day. Here Aurora makes one of the few decisions she gets the opportunity to make – and it's the decision to go along with what others have planned for her without a word of complaint or a single attempt to express what she might have wanted. Shortly after this she falls asleep, unable to take any part in her own story's climax.
For a character who promises to be this interesting, Aurora's role becomes disturbingly like one of those incredibly boring “beautiful and virtuous” females whom all the rest of the characters move heaven and earth for and revolve their whole lives around but who herself has all the personality and drive of a paper cutout. Which is such a waste since Aurora was so much more than just a boringly virtuous paper cutout. Personally, I don't think it's a good message to send, if everything that happens to the heroine is decided for her, and she just goes along with it, and the movie never once calls out this behaviour or shows us any negative consequences. In spite of the stereotypes surrounding the Disney Princesses, Aurora is the only one who doesn't get to take any active role in deciding what happens to her. Whether you look at Snow White rebuilding her life after being forced to flee her castle and taking advantage of any magic wishing objects she came across, or Cinderella building a support group of small animals and figuring out a way to get a suitable dress for the ball, or Ariel pursuing her passion for the human world no matter what her father says, or Jasmine running away from the palace and continually refusing to choose a suitor she doesn't want, or Tiana working long hours as a waitress to save up for her restaurant, every other princess I can think of does something to move her life in the direction she wants it to go. Aurora never gets a chance to show us how she might go about getting what she wants out of life – or even to tell us what she does want. She's told with no warning and no chance to adjust to the idea that she has to leave behind everything she's ever known, uproot herself, adjust to a radically different lifestyle involving responsibilities she was never trained for and having tons of people around when she's used to near-total isolation, and accept two total strangers as her father and mother with no guarantee she will even get along with them. If it weren't for the lucky chance that she had already met Phillip in the forest and fallen in love with him, it would also mean that on the very same night, she'd have to give her heart and body to a complete stranger with no guarantee she'll like him either – and Aurora didn't even have the small advantage of being raised to expect an arranged marriage. But apart from being sad this upheaval means she won't get to be with Phillip (which then turns out to not even be a problem!), we never see what Aurora feels about all this, or get any indication that she feels anything at all. It's as if we're meant to assume she would definitely be fine, that being a princess would automatically appeal to any girl – okay, I can see your point there, but realistically there would be far more involved than just pretty ball gowns! And Aurora is meant to symbolize all that is good and innocent and pure, so to have her get absolutely no say in how her life unfolds and then tell us everything turned out fine... well, that treads dangerously close to implying that lack of agency and total compliance is a sign of goodness and will lead to a happy life. Not exactly a healthy message for the audience, a message I don't think was meant to be there – and wouldn't have been if this story had been shown to us through a more active heroine.
But Phillip's arc I was the most disappointed with. He starts out with such promise – the first Disney Prince to be given interactions with other characters besides his princess, sufficient dialogue and screen time to get a real sense of who he is, actual opinions, and (shocking, I know) a name. Yes, his pickup lines are a little hard to believe would actually work (I certainly wouldn't appreciate being told by a strange guy that I absolutely had to fall in love with him because he was definitely the one I'd dreamed about and there was nothing I could do about it!), but that could easily qualify as a character flaw and make him more endearing (although I still don't understand why Aurora suddenly changed her mind about whether she appreciated his pickup line or not with zero prompting! I remember watching that scene and my exact thoughts were: “Waaay too much too soon, Phillip, girls don't like it when... oh. Okayy... I guess we do... never mind, then.”). But honestly, I liked Phillip, and I wanted to see what he could accomplish. It's established early on that only True Love's Kiss can break the spell on Aurora, setting Phillip up nicely as the hero who will defeat Maleficent's evil plot and break the spell. That's emphasized when Maleficent kidnaps Phillip and the three good fairies realize how essential it is that they go after him immediately and bring him back. We know it had better be a mortal who ultimately defeats Maleficent, too, because it's established very clearly at the start of the movie: Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather are powerless against Maleficent. They can't do anything to fight off evil magic because they can only use their spells to bring about love and happiness. That's why they need to hide Aurora for sixteen years, which wouldn't be anyone's first choice because it robs her parents of the chance to ever see their long-awaited daughter growing up, so of course the fairies would never have gone with that option if they'd had the choice of just going off to fight Maleficent and destroying her before she had a chance to do any harm.
Before watching the movie, I had heard that Phillip slays Maleficent in dragon form, and that the only help the fairies give him was to provide him with sword and shield, with which he battles her and eventually deals her a fatal blow, causing her to fall off a cliff to her doom. Phillip saves the day, Phillip is the hero. A nice thing to see considering the first two Disney Princes have so little screen time they barely get the chance to speak, much less do anything heroic. But... that wasn't quite how things turned out. From the moment Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather release Phillip from Maleficent's dungeon, they never even give him the chance to become a hero. Maleficent throws spell after spell at Phillip designed to trap or kill him – all turned to harmless things by our Good Fairies before Phillip can even try to think of a strategy on his own. He's clearly willing to face the threat, he's clearly brave enough, but he's never given the chance to prove what he can do. Which, I mean, makes sense given the fairies' motivations here, they want to get him safely to Aurora and why would they risk losing him just to give him a chance to prove he can fight his own battles, but from a story perspective I found it decidedly unsatisfying. Especially once we see that the Good Fairies are more than capable of handling anything Maleficent throws at them, so the movie began to feel as if the Good Fairies are unquestionably stronger and more capable than our villain is, so I very quickly lost any sense of suspense, tension, or excitement from wondering whether Phillip will survive this next attempt on his life. (And we're not following any protagonist in quest of a personal goal here, so there weren't even those type of stakes riding on this battle...) And it raised questions about the story consistency: if they're so powerful against her when they're actually fighting her, how was there nothing the Good Fairies could have done about Maleficent before now???
So there I was feeling less than satisfied with the final battle, and then Maleficent turns herself into a dragon. Things started to get a little more exciting. Phillip makes an attempt to battle her with his sword, but is quickly forced to concede that Maleficent is too powerful for him. I was eagerly awaiting him rising above this challenge to victory. And then... Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather enchant their magic sword to fly straight out of Phillip's hand and into Maleficent's heart.
Let me repeat that. Phillip did nothing while Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather enchanted the sword to go where they wanted it to. The sword would presumably have flown into Maleficent's heart the exact same way no matter who had been holding it, or even if no one had been holding it at all.
I have no words. What kind of heroic moment is that?! Phillip never even had the chance to prove himself or become the hero he was set up to be! And if it was so easy for the fairies to kill Maleficent with their magic, why didn't they just go and defeat her sixteen years ago?? If they just need a mortal to hold the sword before their magic can hurt anyone (and the movie never establishes this is the case), I'm sure it wouldn't have been that difficult to find a knight in search of a quest or something... because Phillip's happening to have the sword in his hand while the fairies enchant it to go wherever they want does not count as Phillip's doing something! I thought we had established their magic couldn't do that, that it was impossible for them to hurt or kill anyone with their powers no matter what (I hadn't noticed it at the time, but we'd had some warning this was about to happen, when Merryweather is somehow able to turn Maleficent's raven into stone despite supposedly not being able to hurt anyone). I think this would have worked if the movie had built up to it so that the fairies come to realize throughout the course of the story that their magic can actually be used to defeat Maleficent if they go about it the right way. Which might also have turned them into protagonists, if they'd had had an arc about realizing just how much their magic was actually capable of. But instead the magic system rule which was made such a big deal of and determined the course of the entire plot in Act 1 went completely ignored in Act 3.
The battle and its effect on the characters ended up feeling very unsatisfying. Phillip's development as a hero had no closure, it went literally nowhere, while the three fairies who didn't need a big heroic moment at the end of the story, who weren't going through any arc that would make this either a believable or a satisfying conclusion for them, did everything. I remember my exact words, after the final battle scene once Phillip and the fairies make it to Aurora's bedroom, were, “Are they going to kiss her for him, too?” At this point they might as well have, for all Phillip got to do. Poor Phillip. I can only imagine how humiliating and emasculating this whole situation must have been for him....
It would have been so simple to make Phillip a real hero, too. Have the scene start out with the fairies changing all of Maleficent's spells so that they can't hurt Phillip (we had established before that this is what their magic is supposed to do), but also have it so they can't stop absolutely everything and Phillip is forced to use his own ingenuity or strength to avoid most of them. Then Maleficent turns into a dragon, perhaps realizing the fairies will always beat her at defensive magic but are powerless when it comes to combat. Phillip is trying to battle her, but she's far too powerful for a mere human, so the fairies step in. But they can't hurt Maleficent. We get to see for ourselves how their magic can't do anything to harm another living being. Eventually they are forced to retreat, unable to do anything but stand by and watch as it seems Maleficent is about to kill Phillip.
But Maleficent doesn't want to kill Phillip just yet – not without stopping to gloat. She taunts him about how he thought a puny mortal like himself could defeat her – her, the mistress of all evil (she should totally call him a fool during this speech, too). Then she rears up to laugh, to show Phillip just how ridiculous and puny she thinks he is... And Phillip sticks the Sword of Truth straight into Maleficent's unprotected heart.
There you go. A very easy way to give Phillip something real to do and become the hero he was supposed to be, all without changing the story structure or adding anything onto the running time.
Characterization, making sure we care about and are rooting for the main leads (and knowing which ones the main leads are!) is so essential for storytelling. Without it, how do we know who we should be rooting for, what we want to happen to them, or why we even care? And once we do care about the lead characters, don't we want to follow those people in particular as they defeat their challenges and emerge not only victorious, but stronger than before? If I'm perfectly honest I find it kind of shocking that a movie from such a high-quality studio would have missed something like this.
So would I watch the movie again, after everything I just said about it? Oh, yes, I would. I would probably first go for a lot of the others where the characters' roles are better established, but I would definitely rewatch this. It does still have all the other great elements of a Disney Princess film, and I am very fond of Aurora and Phillip – in more of a protective way, now, considering how the movie sidelined them. It really is a shame, because otherwise Sleeping Beauty is a beautiful movie.
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