Her popularity can be attributed to her instantly-iconic design - which, at the time, was unlike any other character in popular media - and her outsized personality with a complete commitment to pure evil. Related: Why So Many Disney Animated Sequels Are Straight To Video Her animation is dramatic and flamboyant, and her wild personality combined with her dark and elegant design turns Maleficent into a perfect villain. Maleficent has a cruel and conniving personality - and she's also prone to drama, swanning around her crumbling castle, snapping at her servants, and summoning lightning and green flame. In Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent was transformed into the femme fatale archetype, with a stunning re-envisioning into an elegant, sinister dark fairy. However, in past versions of the fairytale, she's described as an old hag, much closer to what the Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs becomes instead of the sinister yet elegant villain. The same villainess appears in the Brothers Grimm version as well, and in all versions of Sleeping Beauty she curses the princess to an eternal sleep. Maleficent is based on the evil fairy godmother from Charles Perrault's fairy tale Sleeping Beauty. In Perrault's version, she's an evil, old fairy who was left out of the princess' christening because she hadn't left her tower in years, and most of the kingdom thought she was dead.

Maleficent is an evil, malevolent fairy that both King Stefan and King Hubert try to pacify, only descending from the mountains to continue living up to her reputation as Mistress of Evil. Prince Phillip ultimately defeats Maleficent when he throws his enchanted sword into her chest and mortally wounds her, before she falls off the crumbling cliff to her death. She tries to keep him from the princess, first with a wall of thorns and then when she transforms into a massive dragon. Related: Where Each Disney Princess Movie Takes Place

Maleficent captures Prince Phillip, so he can't wake Aurora with true love's kiss, and imprisons him in her castle in the Forbidden Mountains. In Sleeping Beauty, she and her evil soldiers try to track down Princess Aurora so they can enact her curse and send Aurora into an eternal sleep. Although Maleficent is sometimes referred to as an evil queen, that's not technically true: she might have taken over an abandoned castle, but she isn't actually the queen of anything at all. She curses the infant Princess Aurora without a second thought after King Stefan fails to invite her to the christening. Maleficent is a dark fairy (although she's also described as a witch) that styles herself as the Mistress of Evil.

Sleeping beauty evil queen