Well now, things are starting to look just a little bit better for Maleficent. That’s a good thing because for a while now we film fans have been getting gritty big-budget versions of popular fairy tales…with mixed results. On paper it seemed like a winning formula too.
“Go dark.” they said. “Go gritty, it worked for Batman!” To which we clamored “Ohh, brooding!”. Well Snow White and the Huntsman was one of the more recent highly anticipated (and dark) features but is was also spectacularly boring and a huge let down. So when it was announced that the classic tale of Sleeping Beauty would be the next property to get a prequel/origin story things didn’t sound entirely promising, especially coming from the Mouse House who didn’t have much luck with their trip to Oz. Yeah and the first trailer didn’t help matters either.
So enter one Lana Del Rey and behold…the beauty/magic of advertising. Del Rey breathes in nostalgia and breathes out this smokey little rendition of “Dream” which adds a sultry backdrop to the new trailer for Maleficent making it, we think, all the more enticing. Enjoy…
Now there’s nothing wrong with adding a song to mask any of the questionable narrative jumps and make a trailer more appealing than the actual movie – seems half of trailers these days are just music videos – but this song just hits the right tone. Here’s hoping this is the first step in the right direction. It’s not great looking but it’s some steps away from bad. Guess we’ll find out what it really is in May. For a limited time the song is available for free on Google Play – click here to download. Thanks to IndieWire for the heads up.
Starring Sharlto Copley, Elle Fanning, Imelda Staunton, Juno Temple and Angelina Jolie as the titular dark fairy, Disney has slated Maleficent for wide release this Spring on May 30, 2014.
