*spoilers!*

I’ll admit I watched Disney’s Maleficent a bit late in the game. I watched the reviews come in, and was disappointed to see that, according to the oracle that is RottenTomatoes, it just wasn’t all that good.

And then I watched it. And yes, I see why others may not have liked it. It relies on heavily-worn tropes, and the titular character switches from sympathetic protagonist to villain without much introspection in between. It’s a jerky and forced transition, despite Ms. Jolie’s best attempts to endow it with some emotional gravitas. Maleficent’s counterpart, King Stefan, is also so cartoonishly a “bad guy” that the showdown between the two has some nearly laughable moments. To have a compelling antagonist, you need more than an undeveloped, yelling, be-accented outline of a man.

So yes, there are problems. But none – NONE – of these made nearly the impression on me as the clear and incredibly hopeful message Disney is sending itself: “Time to re-write our own fairy tales.”

Many reviewers, advocates, and womens’ rights activists have seen hope in recent Disney films like Brave and Frozen, which give leading character status to women, and do not require them to have a love story at all (Brave) or be saved by a man (Frozen). In fact, in the latter instance, it’s women who save each other – men (and their reindeer) be damned.

But women being afforded leading roles is only half the battle. Those roles have to actually speak to women’s strength, struggles, and personhood. In other words, if Maleficent was the main character, but still ultimately a villain to be disposed of, that would hardly be cause for feminist celebration.

So it’s a quality role that we look for – and here’s the reality: Maleficent delivers.

Disney made its mark on the collective childhoods of the western world by adapting fairy tales – many of whose original origins have been erased from popular consciousness as a result. The 1959 Sleeping Beauty on which Maleficent is based is an adaptation of Tchaikovsky’s opera of the same name, which was itself an adaptation of Charles Perrault’s story (which, depending on which scholar you read, came from various iterations within folklore).

The Sleeping Beauty story of pre-Disney whitewashing was a gory affair, and one in which the princess is raped – yes, raped – by the Prince Charming whom she is to eventually marry. In some versions she wakes up having given birth to his child. In other versions still, the villainess takes the form of an ogre who is the wife of the Prince, and who tries to eat the princess out of jealousy.

Thus we have the origins of Maleficent as a character: ogress, jealous wife, and later, witch with medievalist demonic associations (think the horns and the little devils she has as minions in the 1959 version). Disney’s sanitizing of the source material of the story meant that the rape (again: RAPE!) was removed, and dear old Prince Philip was endowed with hero status. But Maleficent as a character retained much of her nastiness.

So here’s what’s revolutionary about Maleficent: in the credits you will see that it uses as source material, its own Sleeping Beauty AND Charles Perrault’s more grisly tale. Why is this important? Well, the rape scene is back. But it’s Maleficent who is the victim.

(Let me interject here to somewhat impatiently address the whole “Is it or isn’t it a rape scene” question bouncing around reviews of the film. It is. Maleficent is drugged, and a man she trusts takes something without permission, and in doing so violates her body).

So let’s recap: Disney has gone back to adapt itself, and in so doing also pays homage to the original work that fueled it’s own 1959 movie. Maleficent is therefore both an adaptation of the movie of the singing Aurora, and of the Perrault version. Disney is realizing that in order to adapt its own film in any sort of ethical way, it needs to go back to the source – and it needs to realize that the “princess in the woods” story is no longer going to cut it.

Instead, what this adaptation means, is that Disney recognizes that Maleficent the character was worth adapting, not just from their own movie, but from the source material.

So they made Maleficent a character with a backstory. Realizing, perhaps, that Aurora, as Disney made her, was never going to provide a site for full character development (her role in the Disney Princess canon is the one with the fewest lines), the writers give Maleficent a past, and an entire world to rule.

In a somewhat essentialist but still interesting move, Maleficent rules the fairy world which is decidedly “feminine” – it’s earthy, pretty, full of flowers, and brimming with fairies of all shapes and sizes. On the other hand, Stefan – her once lover – rules a decidedly masculine world of iron, swords, and general male rage. The dichotomy is so clearly drawn as to be somewhat boring.

But this is why I was blown away: it’s DISNEY doing this! The company made famous for reducing princess waistlines and telling little girls that they need princes to save them. Here, Disney has made the masculine kingdom an unattractive place – for Disney this is downright revolutionary! The film makes woman who is a victim (see above re: rape scene) of the masculine world victorious over it.

For she does, of course, end up victorious (Disney hasn’t gone so far as to venture into real tragedy yet). And in doing so she presides over the union of the male/female binaries as represented in their lands –albeit with, again, a woman – this time Aurora – in charge (and really, Maleficent still behind her throne as well). The masculine and feminine are united, and – lest the “feminists hate men” trolls begin their usual lament – the happy ending rests on it being a true union of equals.

Moreover, the film continues what Frozen and Brave started: the idea of women saving each other. Like the past two films, Maleficent posits that “true love” need not be romantic, and female love is powerful and positive.

(Here I will admit that the idea of Maleficent being redeemed through a type of parenthood is problematic, to say the least, but it does set the stage for her “true love’s kiss, which replaces Philip’s).

Adaptation is tricky business: no matter what you adapt, there are political choices to be made. Who gets the spotlight? If you shift the spotlight, is that a statement about the text being adapted? How much do you pay homage, and how much do you criticize?

In Maleficent Disney has, of course, paid homage to itself (the film can’t really be read as overtly critical of Sleeping Beauty), but in doing so it implicitly criticizes the valuation of male/female which they set up in 1959. No matter how hard Disney tries, it can’t escape the fact that to capitalize on Elsa and Anna’s financial success and create new female protagonist in Aurora’s world, it MUST inherently admit the gendered problems in its original conception of that world.

And that, dear reader, is why, despite some of the more superficial problems with the film, I am firmly on team Maleficent.