Anyone who knew Maleficent only through Disney’s Sleeping Beauty had every reason to remember her as pure evil. She appeared at a royal celebration, cursed an innocent baby, and looked exactly like the sort of horned creature fairy tales teach children to fear.
Maleficent makes that old judgment feel incomplete. Once the events before the curse and Maleficent’s actions afterward are revealed, a small apology to the villain of childhood may be in order. She was never simply the wicked witch she appeared to be.
Strictly speaking, she is not a witch at all. She is a fairy. Calling her human would not be biologically accurate, of course, but she is certainly capable of very human behavior: making mistakes, being consumed by anger, regretting what she has done, and changing. Perhaps humane is the better word—although that may be almost the same compliment. In any case, having horns is hardly a moral offense.
Young Maleficent looks unmistakably fairy-like. The adult Maleficent, dressed in black and carrying herself with considerably more menace, can easily be mistaken for a witch. Yet the person beneath that appearance is neither an embodiment of absolute evil nor a flawless guardian. She is a wounded fairy with anger, affection, regret, and a conscience.
Her first meeting with Stefan contains one of the film’s strangest little questions. Stefan enters the Moors and takes a jewel from the water. The narration describes him as a young thief, so there is certainly a case against him.
Still, Maleficent retrieves the jewel and casually throws it back into the pool. That makes its value rather difficult to judge. Was it really a treasure, or was it little more than a pretty pebble in a land where sparkling stones were common? A child can hardly be blamed for picking up a shiny rock. Then again, if Stefan already knew that the Moors were rich and entered deliberately searching for valuables, thief would be exactly the right word.
His next action makes him much easier to like. After learning that iron burns fairies, Stefan removes his iron ring and throws it away so that he can touch Maleficent without hurting her. For a poor boy with few possessions, the gesture appears meaningful, and Maleficent is clearly moved by it.
They remain close as they grow older, but Stefan eventually leaves in pursuit of status and advancement. Maleficent waits, and Stefan finally returns as an adult. Unfortunately, he has not come merely to visit the friend of his youth. The dying king has promised the throne to whoever can kill her.
Stefan cannot bring himself to murder Maleficent, perhaps because some part of their old bond remains. What he does instead is cruel enough. He drugs her, cuts off her wings, and takes them back as proof of her death. The boy who once threw away his ring for her sake has become a man willing to take her wings for a crown.
After losing them, Maleficent is no longer herself. Her anger at Stefan blinds her, and she directs that anger toward his newborn daughter, Aurora. At the christening, Maleficent first declares that the child will grow in grace and beauty and be loved by everyone she meets. Then comes the curse: before sunset on Aurora’s sixteenth birthday, she will prick her finger on a spindle and fall into an enchanted sleep.
The curse is meant to punish Stefan, but Aurora is the one who must suffer from it. She has done nothing to deserve it. Maleficent is acting under the influence of betrayal and hatred, but that does not make the curse harmless.
What matters is that she does not remain trapped in the same hatred forever.
Stefan sends Aurora away to be raised by three pixies. Maleficent watches the child grow from nearby, at first as an observer and eventually as a protector. When Aurora is in danger of falling from a cliff, Maleficent saves her. She remains close throughout Aurora’s childhood, quietly watching over the very child she once cursed.
Aurora comes to believe that Maleficent is her fairy godmother. The title begins as a misunderstanding, but it is not entirely wrong. Maleficent has followed Aurora’s growth, protected her from danger, and become the guardian she never intended to be.
The hatred that produced the curse gradually gives way to affection. Maleficent tries to revoke the spell, but her own words have made that impossible. She declared that no power on Earth could change it, and even she cannot remove it after coming to regret what she has done.
Aurora eventually pricks her finger and falls asleep as foretold. According to the old fairy-tale pattern, the solution should be a prince and true love’s kiss. Prince Phillip is brought to her, but he has met Aurora only once. A kiss from a young man who barely knows her cannot automatically become true love simply because he happens to be a prince. His kiss fails.
The kiss that succeeds comes from the person least expected: Maleficent herself.
She approaches Aurora, says goodbye, and kisses her gently on the forehead. Aurora wakes. Maleficent’s kiss has years of affection behind it. She has watched Aurora grow, protected her, cared for her, and tried to save her from the curse she herself created. The fairy who caused the danger has also become Aurora’s guardian.
The comparison with Frozen is difficult to miss. Both films move away from the familiar assumption that an almost instantaneous romance must provide the truest form of love. Anna is saved through the love between sisters, while Aurora is awakened by the fairy who has watched over her for years. A prince who has barely met the princess is no longer automatically granted the power of true love.
This is also where the film’s central idea becomes clearest. Maleficent had once been judged entirely by what could be seen from the outside: her horns, her dark appearance, and the terrible moment when she cursed a baby. That image was real, but it was not the entire person.
A Korean proverb says that one may know the depth of deep water and still fail to know the depth of a person’s heart. Maleficent’s frightening appearance was visible. So was her cruel action at Aurora’s christening. What could not be seen in the older story were Stefan’s betrayal, the loss of her wings, the hatred that overwhelmed her, the regret that followed, and the years she spent protecting Aurora.
Seeing only the curse made Maleficent look like absolute evil. Seeing the circumstances, the consequences, and the changes that followed makes such a judgment much harder to maintain.
That does not mean outward appearances are always false, or that one good action erases every bad one. Maleficent truly does curse an innocent child. Yet a single appearance and a single act do not reveal everything about a person—or, in this case, a fairy. There is a history behind the anger, a conscience beneath the frightening exterior, and a capacity to change that the original tale never allowed the audience to see.
The older Sleeping Beauty showed a horned figure placing a curse on a baby. Maleficent shows the betrayal that came before, the remorse that came afterward, and the affection that eventually became strong enough to break the curse.
She may still resemble the witch remembered from childhood. After learning what lies beneath that appearance, however, it becomes surprisingly difficult to hate her.