Disney's Cruella

Saw the trailer.

Disney is dangerously raising my hopes for a decent Villain Protagonist movie. Most all ages studios fail to deliver on those (I'm still mildly disappointed about the Despicable Me franchise).

If it really is going to be about the life and times of a bad guy, then I'm down. It looks better than it sounded conceptually.

The only thing I ask is that this movie is not another "Maleficent", in which the supposed Villain Protagonist turns out to be a poor misunderstood soul. (The saddest thing in that Angelina Jolie seemed like a perfect cast for Maleficent.)

Edited by JoLuRo075 on Feb 17th 2021 at 2:32:42 AM

How about a poor unfortunate soul?

Don't give the mouse more ideas...although if any villain gets the Young and Hot Origin treatment, I say it should have been Facilier.

Edited by Synchronicity on Feb 17th 2021 at 5:06:13 AM

Facilier is black. He's far less likely to get such a story than tge white villains.

I'm going to be honest, even if the movie is bad, I'm going to enjoy it if they make cruella a straight Villain Protagonist, without any attempt to make her sympathetic.

"I just wanted to have a coat made out of puppies!"

"OH MY GOD, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!"

It's a weird ass comparison, but I'm vaguely reminded of the miniseries version of Picnic at Hanging Rock, which took the nasty antagonist of the book who may or may not have had a sordid past and expanded her, turning her into a person who definitely had a sad, sordid past but who responded to that situation by becoming the horrible person of the main story.

So I could see them giving Cruella a sympathetic backstory, but using it to reinforce the idea that she's just a straight up awful person by choice.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Feb 17th 2021 at 9:52:56 AM

just as the Joker.

Nah, the Joker movie went a little hard on "he's crazy and violent because society is unkind to the mentally ill 🥺". When I read I imagine a Cruella with slightly less sympathetic motivations and slightly more personal agency in choosing to become a capital-V Villain.

Personally I'd even prefer it if she was just a straight up bitch from day 1 and just drives around London causing chaos.

Edited by Synchronicity on Feb 17th 2021 at 12:07:49 PM

I guess, but I don't want them to do the same thing Joker did in depicting the terrible things the character does as empowering. The worse Cruella gets and the more power she feels by doing those things, the more pitiable she should get, not the more relatable.

I feel cruella does have a ego tripping and same "not, really, im better here" and the sense of "this is my story, not yours" from the trailer. Which is evil but diferent kind

"Do you think Cruella de Vil effectively utilised girl power when she tried to skin 99 puppies for fur coats?"

"Yes and I'm tired of pretending she didn't."

I have no idea what this prequel could be or should be about.

Anyway,

"You what I am? I'm like a dog chasing coats. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I got it!"

I know that's supposed to be a joke but that just sounds like a such weird thing for Cruella to say.

It seen more of how this woman become the crazy ass woman as we know, granted it seen they are learing less as cruelty for their sake and more of "Im having delusion of grandeour".

"Did you know how I got my puppy coat?, my father was a fiend, and one day he was craaaaazy than usual....."

All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest woman alive to puppy skinning.

Question: is killing dogs for their fur actually illegal? Is there any reason besides greed/shortsightedness why Cruela getting her coat needed to be a criminal operation?

It comes under animal cruelty really and is especially heinous

Maybe she gets attacked by a dog at a young age fueling her desire to skin puppies for coats.

But, like, pounds kill dogs if they can't find someone who wants them. What's the difference?

It's apparently rather Devil Wears Prada ("Joker Wears Prada" ) so maybe Emma Thompson's Miranda Priestly derides her fashion designs and then Cruella tries to one-up her by using pet fur.

Even before fur farming was illegal (which it wasn't when the original book was written or even in the timeframe of this movie), nobody in the UK was raising dogs just to skin them, and if they were, they would have waited until they were adults to get more.

Cruella's obsession with fur is just how her evil manifests itself, in the sequel when she's moved on from fur, she's still implied to be the same cruel, greedy, selfish person as before.

She isn't a bad person because she breaks the law, she breaks the law because she's a bad person.

So...this is what the bottom of a barrel looks like.