The protagonist is the one from whose perspective we get the story.
Just came back from Maleficent. Eye candy and a layered retelling of Sleeping Beauty.
Someone I knew murdered his wife. He strangled her. It was one of those, “He seemed like such a nice guy” kind of stories. T said it takes a lot of anger to do that. I said, “He is terribly broken to have done something like that.”
This was no excuse; just an acknowledgement that one had to have been some other place and taken a variety of paths to end at this moment; this time; this place.
Disney’s “Sleeping Beauty” begins with Maleficent’s curse. “Maleficent” is about what brought her to that point, and fills what happens in the after. No easy love-at-first-sight; no kiss-from-a-stranger solves all.
There seems to be a trend of reimagining old stories and making them less tidy, more layered…more interesting. Perhaps, despite all the fantasy, more real.