While previous trailers for Maleficent focused on the surrogate mother-daughter relationship between the titular sorceress (Angelina Jolie) and Princess Aurora (Elle Fanning), the newest video for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty retelling, which hit the web yesterday, stresses war and magic.
Of particular awesomeness are the giant eagle wings that Maleficent sprouts in this new trailer. She sadly confesses to Aurora, “I had wings once. They were strong, but they were stolen from me,” which means that she gets them back at some point before leading an infantry of tree-monsters to battle against an army of royal knights. (The tree-monsters might be the trailer’s best revelation; they look as great as anything by Peter Jackson.) There’s also a fun little moment when Maleficent carelessly flicks her tiny rival fairies (Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather) away.
This trailer’s focus on battle scenes suggests Maleficent could hew close to 2012’s Snow White and the Huntsman, which also combined romance, family drama, and war epic to turn one of the most passive characters in the fairy-tale canon into a cavalry-leading, sword-wielding heroine.
It’s getting hard to wait for May 30th.
Watch the new Maleficent trailer:
