How Maleficent Spreads Its Wings: A Contextual, Feminist Analysis Dec 2025
---
Maleficent (2014) is a Disney live-action retelling of the story of Maleficent, the infamous villain from the 1959 animated Sleeping Beauty film, which adopts the original 1697 fairy tale. It stars Angelina Jolie, Elle Fanning, Sam Riley, and Sharlto Copley, and was directed by Robert Stromberg and written by Linda Woolverton. The film has a moderate runtime of approximately 90 minutes, and was a major box office success, but with varying critical reviews. It follows the reimagined story of the fairy Maleficent as she navigates adulthood, betrayal, and power in her magical realm, the Moors, alongside the human realm. Maleficent provides an emboldened outlook on breaking the cycles of abuse and predatory patriarchy with the victory of feminine justice; this is embodied by its titular character's complex but rewarding relationships and her reclaimed matriarchal strength.
The movie beautifully captures the interest of both child and adult audiences because of the striking visuals and the multitude of its themes; among the most important of these is the key rewritten detail that Maleficent is able to regain her humanity after evil is done to her, whereas Stefan, her former lover and eventual enemy, does not. The prologue introduces Stefan as a human boy who ventures into the Moors, winning over Maleficent’s friendship and heart with his earnest nature. After a failed attempted invasion of the Moors by the current human king, he proclaims whoever kills her will win the throne. Stefan, hungry for power, is still unwilling to do so, so he instead brutally cuts off her wings while she sleeps peacefully by him as proof for the king. This treachery is the catalyst for Maleficent’s wicked turn and her own ultimate act of malice — the cursing of Princess Aurora, Stefan’s daughter.
A unique aspect of the film is the influence of its writer and lead actress — Woolverton and Jolie, both notably female — who intentionally rebirth the reimagined Maleficent in a modern, feminist context. First examining Woolverton’s work, she is notable for her “strong female characters,” particularly within the Disney sphere. She has defined them as “somebody who is proactive in their world, who affects their world, isn't a victim, even victimized by it — or if they are victimized by it, they take action to change that for themselves” (Erbland). Maleficent begins her story as a powerful leader, but her trusting nature is shaken after she is violated and mutilated by Stefan. With this, we see her transformation into her iconic evil self, but ultimately, she is able to peel back the layers of her pain to act out of love, rather than vengeance. By saving Aurora and almost single-handedly bringing peace and unity to the two realms, Maleficent proves herself as a bringer of justice and change, exemplified both by her internal values and external actions.
Maleficent thus differentiates from other female archetypes in film that reduce women to their fulfillment of a role revolving around and feeding into power dynamics a male-centered world. For instance, a beautiful love interest’s purpose is to be chased and won, which we see in the popular notion of “getting the girl.” Though these tropes are more commonly subverted in modern film, many still often end up tokenizing female characters who only serve as character development for the male characters, especially in comic, sci-fi and fantasy genres (eg. Gamora in Avengers: Infinity War (2017), Buttercup in The Princess Bride (1987), and Sakura in Naruto). Woolverton’s framework instead positions women as self-serving agents who take action, rather than receive it. Admittedly, at the end of the day, Maleficent is still a fairy tale, and it embraces many of its genre’s popular cliches. However, its character dynamics are notably more mature than in classic narratives — Maleficent’s spite and mercy towards a pained Stefan, her hatred, guilty obsession, and eventual motherly love of Aurora, and snarky but touching companionship with Diaval all enrich the message of femininity’s depth and complexity.
Jolie’s mark additionally permeates the film; she was the sole actress considered for the leading part because of her ability to portray Maleficent’s layers and nuance. This talent, paired with deliberate filmic elements, strengthens the raw impact and sincerity of the tragic backstory as a part of Maleficent’s development. At the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict, Jolie — a UN Special Envoy — explained that the loss of Maleficent’s wings was a “metaphor for rape”, and that the core theme of the film was abuse and recovery (Lee). In the scene where Maleficent awakens to find her wings gone, she is alone in the dim, misty forest with desaturated and cool low-key lighting; it is reminiscent of the visual setting during the attack on the Moors only 10 minutes prior. This equates to how in this act of war, it is Maleficent who lost. We wake up with her in a medium shot at eye level, and the audience notices alongside her that her back is mysteriously bare. Switching the camera behind her, we then fully realize the damage that Stefan has done. The non-diegetic soundtrack is minimalistic and emotional, emphasizing Maleficent’s primal, animalistic wail of misery.
Further building on the violation, the mise-en-scene shows Maleficent laying near the base of a tree; this position powerfully contrasts the scene of Maleficent’s introduction, where she perches within a tree’s lofty branches and basks in the golden sun. In essence, Jolie intimately conveys that the metaphorical rape is a loss of freedom and light, as Maleficent is robbed of a different kind of innocence — forced to realize that human, male greed has no bounds. The iron that Stefan cuts with, a fairy’s weakness, can also be understood as the iron fist of patriarchy that women are controlled by. Here, Maleficent becomes an object upon which Stefan acts to obtain the throne; the rest of the film follows her journey to reclaim this lost agency.
From her grudging but intense love of her “god-daughter” Aurora, Maleficent adapts a uniquely matriarchal devotion, alongside deciding on her purpose of bringing back good by undoing her own curse; her victory completes her arc of redemption and justice. After Aurora pricks her finger on the deadly spindle and the Prince’s kiss fails, the camera frames Aurora’s sleeping body and her bed’s golden, draping curtains to center the all-black, dimly lit Maleficent. We watch from a fixed, distant full shot as she tearfully murmurs “Not a day shall pass that I don’t miss your smile” (1:16:41) and kisses Aurora’s forehead; the lack of involved camerawork conveys a mood of resigned defeat. However, the shots switch to closeups of Maleficent and Aurora’s expressions as she awakens, and a shallow focus depicts their parallel realizations that Maleficent was the one with true love. With this twist, we understand that deep down, Maleficent was strong and loving enough to be capable of her own transformation. Though she does end up battling and killing the obsessed Stefan and reuniting with her wings, we understand from this poignant scene that the most valuable part of her revenge is instead finding herself again.
Maleficent’s route of maturity additionally diverges from the path of Stefan, Aurora’s real father. He begins the story with a mixed conscience but descends into maniacal evil, losing the rest of his humanity; this starkly opposes his image as a benevolent, flawless king in Sleeping Beauty. By having men fail to save the day, but while also not completely flattening their involvement or morality, Maleficent subverts and critiques patriarchy in a post-modern style. With Aurora crowned as the new queen, we can further understand that with the righteous triumph of unabashed femininity, power is genderless, and women are equally capable of taking the lead — no questions asked.
Inspired by the Broadway musical Wicked and released in the same period as other strong female-led films such as Disney’s Frozen (2013) and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), Maleficent’s empowering themes reflected the modernizing cultural climate, which marked a diversion from traditional stories and an energized appeal to female audiences. It can be thought of as a darker and more mature sister film to Frozen; they both follow two female protagonists, employ the same twist on true love, and utilize themes of family, betrayal, and self-discovery. However, Maleficent defiantly resists the “Disney formula” trap, whereas Frozen can be interpreted as a repackaging of traditional gender dynamics. Despite her feminine exterior, scholars have noted Elsa is coded with hegemonic, masculine traits of stoicness, aggression, and dominance over her sister Anna (Arnold et al. 15-16). In contrast, though Maleficent does exhibit these characteristics at various points in the film, she grows beyond them. For instance, she treats Aurora as an equal by letting her walk away after she learns the truth of the curse, rather than lashing out at her, as Elsa does upon being insulted by Anna. Thus, Maleficent evolves Disney’s feminism by dismantling stereotypical roles of any nature and rewriting our expectations of what a modern fairy tale should be.
Though Maleficent suffers from criticism of being overproduced, lacking imagination, and being predictable, what it completely owns is a potent message of a “horrible sort of truth” about the world, in the words of a Roger Ebert critic (Seitz). It is pained and evocative, yet hopeful at heart for a change in the systems of power. Maleficent breaks the cycle of “hurt people hurting people” with the love she gives and is given, and she inspires perseverance without victimhood, despite the acknowledgement of insidious evil in the world. Despite being full of fantastical magic, Maleficent tackles deceptively realistic problems in a profound, thoughtful manner. Going forward, we can take away an understanding that no matter what they’ve faced, women can become themselves, and become free.
Arnold, Larisa, et al. “Hegemony, Gender Stereotypes and Disney: A Content Analysis of Frozen and Snow White.” DigitalCommons@CSP, digitalcommons.csp.edu/comjournal/vol2/iss1/1.
Erbland, Kate. “Disney’s Most Valuable Screenwriter Has Had Enough of the ‘Strong Female’ Trope.” IndieWire, 23 Oct. 2019, www.indiewire.com/features/general/linda-woolverton-disney-screenwriter-lion-king-beauty-beast-maleficent-1202182354.
Lee, Esther. “Angelina Jolie: Maleficent Wing-Tearing Scene Is Rape Metaphor.” Us Weekly, 7 Dec. 2017, www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/angelina-jolie-maleficent-wing-tearing-scene-is-rape-metaphor-2014116.
Seitz, Matt. “Maleficent Movie Review and Film Summary (2014).” Roger Ebert, 29 May 2014, www.rogerebert.com/reviews/maleficent-2014.
Author’s note: I did not use any Generative AI — I just really like em dashes