Composer James Newton Howard confides that the Maleficent production team spent a considerable amount of time discussing the tone his score should take. “It’s a fantasy. A classic story. It’s quite a dark movie, yet a fairy tale,” he notes. “At first there was an emphasis on being darker. But my perspective all along was that it was a beautiful fairy tale.” Newton-Howard says that director Robert Stromberg requested a “classic” film score, and so he employed a massive studio orchestra and several choirs to produce a symphonic epic that often recalls Hollywood’s golden era and its European classical roots. “The ‘angry’ Maleficent was the most fun to write,” James says, “done in the Wagnerian tradition. A lot of the movie has that scope visually, and I tried to achieve the same with the music.” Yet he’s also quick to point out "the movie has terrific heart. You can write all the action music you want, but unless there’s a human connection to the story and characters it’s going to leave you feeling empty.”