Disney Princess Review: Sleeping Beauty

Sleeping Beauty

Honestly as a film Sleeping Beauty will always be an artistic bit of brilliance but as a Princess Movie, it's one of the hardest to talk about. This is because as a princess, Aurora does the least of any princess. This isn't to say she is a bad character, like Sakura from Naruto she has the problem of not having anything to really do which was the same issue Prince Phillip had. The difference is that where Phillip got to be everything his predecessors weren't, Aurora got the inverse to an extent. We talked about how Snow White and Cinderella were more about people who know of this really great person in a bad situation and you want to help them as best you can because people as kind and loving as them should be helped. Sleeping Beauty feels like it wants to be about the Faeries (Flora, Fauna, Merryweather, and Maleficent), and kings Stephen and Hubert with Aurora and Phillip in the middle. The difference between the two is that Aurora and Phillip's happiness doesn't really matter, Maleficent doesn't do what she does to hurt Aurora or Phillip, it is all directed at Stephen and Hubert's families. If we were to do a chart we could probably put Aurora in the same line as Florian, more of an idea than a character but I do think there is more to her and her relationship with Phillip.

Born, But Also Sculpted

When Aurora was born, she was blessed by Flora and Fauna with the gifts of beauty and song and that is pretty much what she does throughout the entire film. This really isn't anything special as both Snow White and Cinderella both sing and dance in their own respective films. She's arguably the best of the three of them going by the fact that she was blessed and it would stand to argue that Cinderella and Snow had both seen or heard other people dancing. I bring this up because it does seem that Aurora, Phillip, the Good Faeries, Maleficent, and even the animals are basically characters from Cinderlla and Snow White but taken to the highest degree possible. The problem is that Aurora suffers the most from this along with Phillip as again this isn't so much their story as it is the Faeries. Aurora gets to do what her predecessors did but we don't really get anything about her as a character. We saw Snow White as this optimistic and hopeful fourteen year old girl, we saw Cinderella as a girl who despite the strong front she put up was hanging by a threat. With Aurora, she and Phillip are so removed from the situation the two of them are really in. Phillip at least gets to do something when he no longer has dialogue.

The Love of a Lifetime

"They say if you dream a thing more than once, it's sure to come true, and I've seen him so many times."

Aurora does have a much better romance than Snow and Cinderella. Where I argued that Cinderella's real dream wasn't romance but a moment for her, Aurora's is about that pure love. That moment where two people meet and it's just instant kismet. Aurora dreams of her mysterious Don Juan, who she met when she was a baby. She dreams of seeing him and how they will just know and love each other at once. Like Cinderella there is a period of time where we have no idea what the two of them say to each other in terms of who they are as people but this of course is the magic of the cut away and the magical romance number, which Disney would later perfect in it's Renaissance era. When Aurora finds out she can't marry Phillip because she is betrothed (unknowingly to Prince Phillip) she is distraught but silent throughout the rest of the film and it should be noted that the same could be said of Phillip. When she finds out that Phillip is the man she's going to marry she is again ecstatic for the first time in ages.

Extremely Important, yet Completely Unaware

The worst thing about Aurora as a character is that she herself has nothing to do in regards to the story itself. Maleficent, King Stephen, the Good Faeries, and Phillip all have active roles in the film and are aware of Maleficent to some extent, while Aurora doesn't even meet her. It's this huge thing that ultimately hurts her character more. While Snow White and the Evil Queen never interacted (save for the end) we knew that Snow White did know her and Cinderella was very involved in the story itself. Aurora is blissfully unaware at all of someone wanting her dead throughout the entire film and that is ultimately what holds her character back as she doesn't in any way play off anyone other than Phillip.

However, is this a surprise or an inevitability? As we stated before, Phillip is everything Florian and Henry never got to do in their own films but with Aurora, what was there to do? Aurora is the culmination of the first wave of Disney Princesses, again she is an ideal more than she is a person. The best of humanity and in this we see it in how perfect she comes off yet still so humble with all of these wonderful dreams. 

Next time, were going to go back to Prydain and journey down a rabbit hole.