Maleficent

It’s a wonder Disney have taken so long to come out with a film for Maleficent, the much beloved (if that’s the right word) villain from Sleeping Beauty, with Angelina Jolie in the title role. In 2004 Maleficent was voted number one in Disney's top 30 villains and, yes, Guillermo Del Toro has said that, along with Vermithrax from Dragon Slayer, she's his favourite cinematic dragon. But at the same time, producing a film with a villain as the main character is a very strange - and very interesting - thing for kiddie-orientated Disney to be doing. 

Quite distinct from the classic bright and dreamy Disney aesthetic, the trailer for Maleficent looks downright sinister; more nightmarish than dreamlike. Of course, this isn’t the first time Disney have made a film in a dark style; the titular character of Tim Burton's Frankenweenie, for instance, is a re-animated corpse of a dead dog. But while Tim Burton attacked this style using stop-motion animation, Maleficent is all live action; Burton's corpse dog was comfortingly unreal, the world of Maleficent looks unsettlingly human.

Jolie, judging from the trailer, relishes in the villainy of her character, frightening yet deceptively sexy. Other than Jolie though, the film's cast is surprisingly non-Hollywood. Imelda Staunton, Miranda Richardson, Kenneth Cranham, Sam Riley, Peter Capaldi, Juno Temple and Lesley Manville are all honest-to-goodness Brits, while the rest of the main cast list only comprises one more American, Elle Fanning (as Aurora, the Sleeping Beauty), and a lonley South African, Sharlto Copley from District 9. Well, everyone knows the Brits are best at playing evil.