Maleficent & Sleeping Beauty

A very popular trend these days is making villains (especially Disney) seem less evil. This can be seen as good, as we are used to the Good vs Evil binary, and now we can see Disney characters as both. I recently watched Maleficent for the first time, and the change in the characters is pretty astounding.

Character	Sleeping Beauty	Maleficent
Maleficent	Evil fairy/witch, angry for not being invited to a public party, curses Aurora	Fairy who wants to protect her home The Moors, falls in love with Stephan, is betrayed by Stephan who cuts off her wings, retaliates by cursing his daughter, watches Aurora grow up and begins to care for her and love her, tries to take back the curse but can’t
Aurora	Cursed as a baby by Maleficent, sent to live in the forest with three fairies to raise her, carefree and kind, likes to sing and dance with her forest friends, falls in love with Phillip	Cursed as a baby by Maleficent, sent to live in the forest with three fairies who don’t pay attention to her, carefree and kind, thinks Maleficent is her fairy godmother, likes to be with maleficent more than anything, has a crush on Phillip but he’s not really important
Flora, Fauna, Merriweather	The fairies assigned to raise Aurora, give her mediocre gifts for fairies, are relatively nice to each other only making sassy remarks sometimes, competent caregivers, raise Aurora as their own	The fairies assigned to raise aroura, give her mediocre gifts for fairies, are cruel and mean to each other, easily distracted, incompetent caregivers, forget about Aurora, if Maleficent hadn’t have helped, Aurora would have died (from multiple things, like starvation or falling off a cliff)
King Stephan	Aurora’s father, seems good, protects Aurora by sending her away	Betrays Maleficent by befriending her and loving her then lying to her and cutting off her wings, he was going to kill her, he goes mad trying to find Maleficent after that, he devotes his life to it, he does not care when his wife is sick and dying, he is the villain in these  events
Queen Leah	Aurora’s mother, loves her daughter, is distraught when she is cursed and is very happy when she returns home	Aurora’s mother, loves her daughter, is distraught when she is cursed, is sick, Stephan does not care, she dies
Diaval	Maleficent’s  crow	A crow Maleficent saves, turns him into a human when she wants to, her servant
Prince Phillip	Has mutual love at first sight with Aurora, strong love, saves her from her curse and from Maleficent	More of a crush, his kiss does not break the spell, it is not love, does not do much

While these changes are definitely interesting, not all of them are good, like showing the fairies as incompetent and the Queen dying. But besides some things, both show very different , strong, and interesting female characters.