This essay analyzes Disney’s 2014 live-action film Maleficent, focusing on how the titular character is reimagined from a classic villain into a complex anti-heroine. It explores how the film subverts traditional fairy-tale tropes by centering on themes of female empowerment, solidarity, and defiance of male authority. Unlike Maleficent’s purely evil portrayal in Disney’s 1959 Sleeping Beauty, in which she conforms to the fairy-tale trope of a ‘wicked witch’ by cursing an innocent princess to die on her sixteenth birthday, the new Maleficent is given a tragic backstory. Notably, this involves the princess’s father, King Stefan, whose betrayal—cutting off her wings to gain power and to secure his own kingship—elicits the audience’s pity and sympathy for her. I argue that the narrative of victimization, her contextualization, as well as the cinematographic elements employed in the film are key to reshaping Maleficent’s character, transforming her curse on Princess Aurora into an act of vengeance rather than malice. By merging heroic and villainous traits, Maleficent constructs a multidimensional anti-heroine, both victim and avenger.