Awesome / Sleeping Beauty

The Disney film

"Thou Sword of Truth, fly swift and sure, that evil DIE and GOOD endure!"

• The fact that it was Merryweather's gift to the newborn princess that ultimately saves the day is awesome.
  Merryweather: Sweet princess, if through this wicked witch's trick a spindle should your finger prick, a ray of hope there still may be in this, the gift I give to thee. Not in death, but just in sleep, the fateful prophecy you'll keep. And from this slumber you shall wake, when true love's kiss the spell shall break.
  Chorus: For true love conquers all!
• Aurora's singing is awesome; it charms every creature of the forest as well as Prince Phillip.
• While she only mentions it in a rather brief and offhanded way. It seems Merryweather was the one who did most of the cooking and possibly the sewing for the sixteen years the group lived in their self imposed exile. The fact that the one fairy many consider the Hot-Blooded bumbler was the one who did most of the human chores competently is impressive.
  • Especially when she was the one who was most unwilling to live like a mortal.
• Merryweather turning the raven into stone. Hey, wait...
  Merryweather: I'd like to turn her (Maleficent) into a fat old hop toad.
  Fauna: Now, dear, that isn't a very nice thing to say.
  Flora: Besides, we can't. You know our magic doesn't work that way.
  Fauna: It can only do good, dear, to bring joy and happiness.
  Merryweather: Well, that would make me happy.
  • At this point, Merryweather's magic becomes a Holy Hand Grenade, proving that good isn't impotent.
  • On the subject of Merryweather, there's the fact that she repeatedly tries to take on Maleficent in direct combat. She's never allowed to, but still, it's pretty impressive that she has to be repeatedly restrained from attacking one of Disney's most dangerous villains.
  • Also what she tells Maleficent at the Christening.
    You weren't wanted!
• When she casts a spell that causes thorns to sprout all around King Stefan's castle, Maleficent has this one particularly awesome line which can make anyone shudder with Emotional Torque. It's so short, and yet it was one of the most memorable scenes of the movie.
  Maleficent: A forest of thorns shall be his tomb!
  Borne through the skies on a fog of doom!
  Now go with a curse, and serve me well!
  'Round Stefan's castle, cast! My! Spell!
  • Similarly, Maleficent's brilliant, sarcastic callback to the story's introduction, which she uses to taunt Prince Phillip in his cell. Accompanied by swelling music and images of an aged, broken Phillip, we have:
    "Oh come now Prince Phillip. Why so melancholy? A glorious future lies before you - you, the destined hero, of a charming fairy tale come true. Behold - King Stefan's castle. And in yonder topmost tower, dreaming of her true love, the Princess Aurora. But see the gracious whim of fate - why, 'tis the self-same peasant maid, who won the heart of our noble prince but yesterday. She is indeed, most wondrous fair. Gold of sunshine in her hair, lips that shame the red red rose. In ageless sleep, she finds repose. The years roll by... but a hundred years, to a steadfast heart, are but a day. And now, the gates of the dungeon part, and our prince is free to go his way. And off he rides, on his noble steed, a valiant figure straight and tall! To wake his love, with love's first kiss, and prove that true love conquers all! Ahahahaha!"
• Just before she casts the forest of thorns, Maleficent, who has just seen her pet Diablo turned to stone and has seen Prince Phillip escaping, wastes no time in climbing to the highest battlement of her Forbidden Castle, and then hurling a bolt of lightning at the fleeing prince. Maleficent did NOT disappoint.
  • The music changes at that point, indicating that the situation has become deadly serious.
• Phillip, not only being the first Disney prince who actually does anything, but telling his father that he's willing to forsake his birthright to Marry for Love marry for love rather than political reasons before riding off.
• Maleficent: Now shall you deal with ME, O Prince, and all the powers of Hell! Cue the most iconic One-Winged Angel in Disney Canon, as well as a great Oh, Crap! on Phillip's part - and the fairies' part too - in which Maleficent bursts into the sky into a pillar of flames as her shadow becomes a draconic figure.
  • Maleficent is the first of only two villains in the entire Disney Animated Canon to drop a swear word. It wouldn't happen again until Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame nearly forty years later.
  • Notice that even after she's stabbed by the Sword of Truth, she still attempts to snap her jaws at Phillip one last time.
  • And the Greek dub manages to outdo the original (which, considering the above, is a pretty impressive feat) by having Maleficent holler out "Τώρα θα σου δείξω ποιά είμαι, Πρίγκιπα! Εγώ είμαι Η ΙΔΙΑ Η ΚΟΛΑΣΗ!" ("Now I'll show you who I am, Prince! I am HELL ITSELF!").
• The climax is as epic as animation — indeed, film in general — gets (and much imitated since): the three good fairies successfully breach Maleficent's castle, rescue Prince Phillip, and provide him with weaponry and armor; from there they assist his escape and shield him from everything Maleficent throws at him (with bubbles, flowers and rainbows no less) on the way to the castle — boulders, a gigantic forest of thorns, and finally her One-Winged Angel form of a gigantic black dragon. When she knocks his shield away, the fairies respond by enchanting his sword to make sure throwing it does her in. Think about this a moment — how many Disney films include the heroines killing the villain?
  Flora: Thou Sword of Truth, fly swift and sure, that evil DIE and GOOD endure!
  • It maintains its awesomeness in the vast majority of the foreign language dubs; the majority preserve Eleanor Audley's distinctive cackle. But avoid, with all your strength, the 2001 Spanish redubs — Maleficent was toned down, in an example of Disneyfication of Disney.
• Maleficent's appearance in Aurora's fireplace is one of the most terrifying moments of the movie, but the commanding tone to her voice when Aurora's about to resist her spell is just straight-up awesome.
  "Touch the spindle. Touch it, I say."
  • The fact that Aurora is able to resist mind control, even for a few seconds, from a supremely powerful sorceress despite being a mere human girl is pretty awesome itself, though many miss it.
• Maleficent. Sure she was evil, but she was one seriously cool villain, elegant, commanding, and so powerful all in a very evil way. There's a reason she's one of the Oh, Crap! bosses in Kingdom Hearts. She comes in, and instantly owns every scene she's in.
• Maleficent crashes the christening in glorious fashion.
• Aurora has a subtle one that's hard to notice at first sight, due to the Values Dissonance. in less than a day the poor girl's life has taken massive spins: she has just found out that she's a princess when she has believed herself to be a mere peasant girl named Briar Rose, she has just met a guy she likes only to be told that she's to be married to someone else (who's actually the same guy, but she doesn't know it yet), and it turns out she'll have to leave the only place she knows as "home". Does Aurora throw a tantrum, whine, complain (and she's got quite the right to be angry), or bitch her "aunts" out? While she understandably cries for a while, she still goes back to the kingdom, to meet the parents that she has never seen and see the castle where she was born. Doing that right after finding out that her entire life is a lie requires quite the guts.
  • And notice how quickly she pulls the pieces of the puzzle together and adjusts to her new life once the ordeal is over. Her huge smile when she wakes up and sees Phillip suggests that she instantly understands the situation as far as the guy she has to marry actually being the guy she likes after all. Flora is the brains of the film and even she had to falter, stutter, and comically tap her temple with her wand to make that connection. Aurora also manages, despite all of this being brand new information to her, to make a royal procession entrance befitting a princess and ballroom dance with the perfection of a princess raised and trained in court all her life. Silk Hiding Steel?
• More or less everything Phillip does during the climax of the movie. Granted, he has the help of the fairies, but that doesn't change the fact that he jumps out of a window, rides through falling stones and other obstacles, takes on a giant wall of thorns, takes on a dragon, climbs a rock with one arm and finally emerges victorious, though a little bit worse to wear and (understandably) exhausted. Few princes have fought as hard for the woman they love like him.
  • Even before the fairies arrive to break Phillip out of prison, he has a brief moment during Maleficent's taunt about how she's going to keep him locked away for a hundred years before setting him free to awaken Aurora. He doesn't say a word but stands up and yanks at his chains, giving the self-proclaimed Mistress of All Evil a look that screams "I am going to kick your butt black and blue when I get out of here." For somebody who is being held prisoner, that is pretty gutsy.
  • Credit to Samson throughout this scene too. He gets to prove himself as a Cool Horse by carrying Phillip to Stefan's castle, all the while racing under falling boulders, over long gaps, through thorns, and even charging toward a dragon! Blink and you'll miss it, but once Phillip begins to slice through the thorns with his sword, Samson can be seen biting the thorns on the other side, clearing the path with his own teeth.
• Often overlooked, as it's just one line, but one has to admire King Stefan for being the only person to stand up to a powerful and very angry sorceress in defense of his infant daughter.
  " Seize that creature! "
• Anytime Eleanor Audley does that cackle. No, you're not cold, that's shivers going down your spine at that sound.

The ballet

• Princess Aurora's choreography is packed with complicated and difficult moves (depending on the specific production's choices, she may remain balanced en pointe on one leg for all four suitors in the Rose Adagio, without coming down between them, for just one example), so pulling it off well is automatically a CMOA. While Swan Lake and its infamous 32 fouettes are more well-known and eye-catching, Aurora is, by far, the most technically demanding role a ballerina can perform.