Reply To: EW Scan – First Look At The Queens of Darkness

[Slurpeez]

And that’s the problem fro me. This is not supposed to be Disney Live Action TV. It’s OUAT. It was sold as your favorite stories come to life–not your favorite Disney movies, which is why we had an array of characters in season one, even those not popularized by the Great Mouse. This isn’t creative or new and fresh. It’s just a Disney carbon copy plopped down, complete with all the trappings. Shouldn’t have to be instantly recognizable. She should be THEIR Mal, not the one I could watch on my Disney DVD

Well, Once now is Disney live-action, ever since they decided to include all the cartoon charcters come to life from Frozen. Sure, Ingrid was a nice adaptation of the original Snow Queen fairytale by Hans Christian Anderson, but her entire back-story with her sisters was pretty much just the same conflict that Anna and Elsa faced in the cartoon. Frozen was a big cash cow for Disney, which is probably the real reason A&E wanted to include it (to try and increase viewership).

So, now Maleficent no longer visually resembles the fresh, original version who appeared in 1×2; instead, she visually resembles Angelina Jolie’s version. We’ll see if her characterization remains original, since as @Watcher pointed out, that Mal was pretty much reformed already. I’m guessing that Mal is going to have fully relapsed as she seeks revenge against Emma for killing her and mostly against Regina for entrapping her as a dragon beneath the town library for 30 years. Since Kristin Bauer van Straten is a great actress who specializes in portraying villains, I have faith she’ll keep her portrayal of Maleficent as distinct as possible from Angelina Jolie’s portrayal; yet, if A&E are going to change the writing of the character and her behavior to match that of the 2014 film version, then there is only so much that Kristen will be able to do as an actress to keep her portrayal feeling fresh and unique.