Movies repeatedly show themselves to depend on a certain use of their visual element – whether it is intended to creep subtly up on a viewer, or whether it essentially mugs you and leaves you for dead (that’s you, Pacific Rim) – and for a film that had to follow a story that has existed in hearts and imaginations for decades, the visual aspect of Maleficent in particular was always going to be one of its most important features. Of course, we don’t want directors to just ensure that something looks good on the surface – script, plot, delivery etc. are just as essential if a film wants to achieve real cinematic greatness – and Maleficent’s failings do have to be acknowledged. But it is amazing how much we can take from a film – no matter what it is- when we allow the visual element the proper amount of credit; what we were looking at during the movie will always naturally be what we remember most vividly at first. And there is no doubt that Disney history has been made in Maleficent; Angelina IS Maleficent, and the film’s beauty lies not just in the visible splendour of some of its scenes, but in the very fact of seeing something brought to life in a way that only live-action cinema can.
The world is currently watching very carefully the approach of this summer’s Marvel blockbuster, Guardians of the Galaxy. In the long anticipated full-length trailer (seen below), in amongst all the planet-hopping, machine guns, spaceships, comedic lines and bomb-building raccoons, there is a brief glimpse of talking-tree-man Groot carefully releasing into the air what looks to be a cloud of glowing fireflies, or embers – it is a snapshot of exquisite, gentle beauty within what promises to be an onslaught of the highest Marvel calibre. Whatever else happens when the time comes, we already know from this that Guardian’s heart is in the right place. As, in the end, was Maleficent’s.
