Maleficent from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty
I’m doing something very different this year for my Woman of the Month posts: for the first time I’ll be showcasing twelve female villains throughout 2025. And how could I start with anyone other than Maleficent, the Mistress of All Evil, and without a doubt the most effective and terrifying villain of the Disney Animated Canon?
If you look at her involvement in various retellings of the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale across the centuries, you’ll note she’s had a rather illustrious career. The name Maleficent (a mash-up of “malevolence” and “magnificence”) was invented for the Disney movie, but older versions of the tale refer to her as the Fairy of Red or Carabosse. More modern adaptations have also called her Makemnoit, Arachne, Pernicia or Odelia.
And yet if you go even further back, does the story of a powerful goddess who gatecrashes a party to wreak havoc because she wasn’t invited sound familiar? A possible genesis to this wicked fairy is Eris, the Goddess of Strife. In her case, events led to the Golden Apple of Discord and the Trojan War, but here things remain on a slightly smaller scale: a deadly curse placed upon an infant girl.
And that’s precisely part of what makes Maleficent so memorable. It’s not just Eleanor Audrey’s cold, sharp voice, or the staggering levels of power she wields, or the aesthetic formidableness of her cloak and staff, her mountainous castle, her army of hobgoblins – to me, it’s also the striking blend of petty vindictiveness and terrifying allegiance to nothing less than Hell itself (I’m not exaggerating, she declares at the film’s climax: “you must contend with me and all the forces of Hell!”)
All this drama is because she wasn’t invited to a Christening, which escalates into a deadly curse, a sixteen-year reign of terror, the attempted murder of a teenage girl, the kidnapping of a prince, and turning herself into a dragon to thwart her enemies. Has any other villain put this much effort into just messing with a single royal family? She has no motivation beyond For The Evulz, and that’s what makes her so scary.
Contrary to popular assumptions, Maleficent isn’t a witch or a sorceress – she’s an evil fairy, and so in a way it’s unusual that she’s leaden with so much demonic symbolism. There’s her horned headpiece, the green hellfire, the terrifying dragon she transforms into... Based on some of her dialogue, you’re left wondering if her power derives from Satan himself. At some point of her career, did she enter into a Deal with the Devil? Was she once a good fairy before she got corrupted? Is she really an emissary of Hell, as she claims?
Then there’s her style. You cannot deny that Maleficent knows how to make an entrance: the eerie green light, the flowing cloak, the echoing clang of her staff on the flagstones, and especially her sinister, teasing motif. Apparently this music is even diegetic, as the strains of it tips off Maleficent’s presence to the good fairies later in the film.
She’s also the instigator of the most frightening sequence in all of Disney animation: the luring of Princess Aurora from her room and up the spiral steps to the tower where the spindle awaits her. The music, the suspense, the panic of the other fairies, the excruciatingly slow walk of Aurora – it’s matched only by the scene of abject cruelty in which Maleficent taunts Philip with the promise of setting him free... in a hundred years’ time when he’s too old to do anything.
And obviously her transformation into the terrible dragon. My favourite detail is that even as she’s dying, she takes one last snap at Philip before she goes over the cliff.
That she has no decent motivation beyond petty offense, her malevolent blend of small-minded spite and demonic power, her gloriously evil aesthetic... all of it comes together into one unforgettable figure of evil. I remember the derision when the Game of Thrones script for the final episode described Daenerys as “her Satanic Magnificence,” a descriptor which far better fits Maleficent, the self-described Mistress of All Evil. I couldn’t start this Year of the Villainess with any other character. She sets the tone for what’s to come, and in a world that’s filled with so many real-life jerks, it’s a balm to remind oneself that none of them would be able to handle any of the forthcoming women.
