Like FernGully and Avatar, Mistress of Evil uses its fantastical race of creatures to contrast the beauty of nature against the cold brutality of humanity. The dark fae evolved to live in different climates, and they range from sand-colored desert dwellers to jungle fae with rainbow-hued macaw-esque wings. Now, however, they all reside in a nest-like haven high up in the mountains. Though Norwegian director Joachim Rønning (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales) is still beholden to some of the worst designs from Robert Stromberg’s 2014 film — including Aurora’s plasticized trio of comic-relief fairy aunts — he adds welcome tangibility to his new locales. That includes making clever use of both horizontal and vertical space in the dark fae’s impressively cavernous home.
Plot-wise, that’s just scratching the surface of a film that’s packed to the gills with subplots, including a small role for fantasy-film stalwart Warwick Davis. The biggest problem with Mistress of Evil is that it lacks a center to hold all of its intriguing ideas and images together. Because the film doesn’t want to walk back Maleficent’s anti-heroine charms or commit to making her a full-on villain, she winds up as a curiously passive figure. Jolie is just as fantastic as she was in the first film, but Maleficent spends far too much time watching two fae leaders — bellicose Borra (Ed Skrein) and diplomatic Conall (Chiwetel Ejiofor) — debate the merits of war and peace without contributing anything to the conflict herself.
While the first film explored prejudice and cycles of violence on an interpersonal level, Mistress of Evil expands those ideas into an exploration of full-on warfare. The film builds to a massive, lengthy action climax that calls to mind World War I dogfights, alongside that Holocaust imagery. Though the battle is consistently compelling to watch, it quickly becomes clear that Rønning and the screenwriters have no idea how to meaningfully wrap up the weighty themes they’ve laid out. Instead, they make the absolutely wild decision to explore the brutalities of bigotry and genocide, then dive right back into a sitcom tone for an eventual happy ending.