There's a well-established hierarchy when it comes to Disney Princesses.

Decades on, Snow White, Cinderella, Belle and Aurora still comprise the first rank. By throwing the ethnic marketing nets wider, Pocahontas, Mulan, Jasmine and Tiana now fit a second-rank niche, while Brave's Merida has stolen the red-head crown from The Little Mermaid's Ariel, at least on our own home turf. And who's to say that Anna and Elsa won't soon lead the theme-park parade now that Frozen has become the fifth-biggest film in box-office history?

But the villains? No, they've been kept pretty much in the shadows of the Disney universe.

Last month, however, the Disney Villains Blu-ray Collection was launched with new limited-edition artwork promoting the bad guys and gals to the cover. It sort of works when Captain Hook pushes his way to the front of Peter Pan, or Cruella De Vil dominates 101 Dalmatians. But it seems an odd marketing angle to be promoting in 2014, until you realise what Disney have done with their summer fairytale cinema release.

Maleficent isn't a prequel to Sleeping Beauty in the way that Wicked is to The Wizard Of Oz. It's more like Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead is to Hamlet, presenting the scenes that run parallel but off-page to the well-known story.

Actually, Linda Woolverton's twist on Charles Perrault's original La Bella Au Bois Dormant goes further than that, taking the story into darker fantasy territory that might well appeal to young audiences beyond Disney's usual cartoon catchment area.

The first thing to note, then, is that this isn't animation. It's live action placed within a hyper-designed world that makes sense when you know that first-time director Robert Stromberg was the key special effects guru on James Cameron's Avatar and Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland.

Angelina Jolie plays Maleficent, the fairy queen whose vengeance on King Stefan (Sharlto Copley) comes in the form of a sleeping curse that will affect his daughter Aurora (Elle Fanning) when she turns 16. But there's much more to it than that: Stefan was the young Maleficent's sweetheart, who betrayed her in his adult lust for power. It's the warring humans, ever-eager to dominate the fairy lands, who are the story's true villains.

And that's where this film becomes very interesting indeed. For a grown-up 21st-century audience, it can't help but play against a backdrop of illegal wars and white-male treachery against nations who look different to our own. When Stefan cuts off Maleficent's wings, her anguished cry is surely that of a victim of war rape. And so audience loyalties and understanding of revenge attacks shift into a story realm that's far from simple.

Visually the film takes 3D swoops through Maleficent's Avatar-style domain, some of whose inhabitants carry the menace of the monster heroes of Lord Of The Rings and the Narnia tales, only to likewise reveal the heroism beneath their gnarly surfaces. Lana Del Rey's closing-credits rendition of Once Upon A Dream could have crept in from a David Lynch movie, and even the Disney cliché of the True Love Kiss is given a complex remodelling here.

Jolie, her already sharp bone structure further chiselled in Rick Baker's make-up studio, hits all the right emotional notes with a performance (generally restrained, given her digital surroundings) that helps make sense of the story's alternative concerns. No one else in the cast is quite her equal, and that's even when ignoring the Scottish and Irish accents floating around, possibly in search of some unnecessary Celtic fable authenticity.