Friday, Oct. 18, marks the opening of “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil,” which depicts a fairy getting taken out of a jar and dissolved. Oh, you might ask, what was it doing in a jar? Actually, lots of fairies are in jars in this new “Maleficent,” all of them awaiting experimentation. A creepy scientist is trying to figure out what chemicals to use in order to kill them.
Then there’s a nice fairy godmother type who is gassed and dies inside a pipe organ, and lots of large woods creatures that are vaporized while flying in the sky, and human beings wiped out in a wave of destruction on a battlefield.
Yes, this is a children’s movie with a death toll.
Yet, it’s safe to say that no child watching “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” will be in the least traumatized, not because people are not as nice as they used to be, but rather because the movie makes sure that no one cares about any of those individuals.
[...] But the saddest thing about “Maleficent: Mistress of Evil” is that it’s not bad, but typical, that this emptiness — this immersion in mass numbification — is the modern style.
Yet as children’s entertainment, it’s insidious all the same. This isn’t Wile E. Coyote blowing up and coming back in the next scene, because that meant he wasn’t dead. Nor is this a generation getting a memorable and inevitable education in the pains of real life. This is a generation getting lessons in how to go dead inside.