Photo: Walt Disney Studios
In retrospect, cinephiles didn’t fully appreciate what they had with 2014’s Maleficent, a live-action retelling of a Disney animated classic that actually added something new to a tale as old as time. In addition to the pitch-perfect casting of Angelina Jolie as Maleficent, the horned villain from Disney’s 1959 animated classic Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast screenwriter Linda Woolverton added a daring feminist spin to the source material. Since Maleficent’s release, Disney’s live-action remakes have gotten progressively less and less original, culminating in 2019’s abysmal shot-for-shot remake of The Lion King. Thankfully, Maleficent is back to inject some much-needed originality into the House of Mouse’s live-action slate in the…