Disney tried to do away with Cruella de Vil as we knew her. She was a deranged and unhinged character who (at least for me) sometimes made 101 Dalmatians too scary to watch as a kid.
We’re talking about the lady who wanted to kidnap, skin and possibly kill dogs to use their coats for high fashion. (Fashun?) That is some seriously dark stuff. Way too dark for kids. PETA was clearly worried. It literally released a statement. At first, Disney seemed interested in dredging up that dreary and unhinged narrative. That’s what they teased in the trailer, which showed a character that felt like Harley Quinn and The Joker, two particularly anarchist anti-heroes.
WARNING: we’re about to dive into spoilers. If you haven’t seen the movie and/or don’t want to know what happens, then exit now.
What we got in Cruella was a far less cruel person. Hurtfulla. (Sorry.) She doesn’t really qualify as a good person, considering how much effort she puts into tortuously ruining the Baroness (Emma Thompson). But that lady — who *plot twist* was her birth mother — killed Cruella’s adopted mother and — *another plot twist* — tried to “take care of” Cruella as a baby. That was one of the Baroness’ two attempts to kill her daughter, Cruella. So, yeah, The Baroness deserved everything Cruella did to her. She was a worse villain than what Cruella was in the 1961 film. And so it’s honestly not that morally problematic that Cruella sought revenge before putting The Baroness in jail.
No, Cruella somehow came out looking kind of … normal. The most obvious case of the movie smoothing out Cruella’s craziness? The characters, particularly Jasper (Ziggy Gardner) and Horace (Joseph MacDonald), brushed aside her split personality — Cruella vs. Estella.
“I’m getting a little tired of Cruella,” one of the henchman said.
ONLY A LITTLE?! A bossy Cruella made the two henchmen spend most of the movie doing her bidding — which included an overly-long wait for one of the dogs to poop out a necklace — without any compensation in the form of thanks or money (as far as we saw on screen). It’s a vast personality shift from the person they knew, Estella. But they’re pretty much cool with it.
Yes, I know it’s a children’s movie. But it’s also clearly for the adults who were children when the 1996 version of 101 Dalmatians came out. And so this version of Cruella was born. And by her own estimation, she “was born brilliant, born bad, and a little bit mad.” But there should be an emphasis on a little. When she delivered that quote in the movie, she was in semi-crazed monologue, in which she was speaking to her diseased adopted mother by talking to a water fountain. It seemed like we were about to get the Cruella we knew and feared.
Wrong!
Evil Cruella — the one out for fatal revenge who pledged to kill her mother in that burning building — was honestly the one I showed up to see. But neither Cruella or Disney delivered on that murderous promise. This Cruella didn’t kill any dogs, after all. This Cruella was actually a friend to dogs. (Disney promises!) This Cruella plotted carefully to supplant her mother — without hurting anyone. Disney conjured a Diluted Cruella that never really existed in the previous films — and probably didn’t deserve a movie that stood like mannequin for the movie’s beautiful costume design. It’s a strange redemption story, which should feel nice. It doesn’t.
Don’t get me wrong. The movie was fun, perhaps in part because it was my first movie in theaters since the pandemic started. The plot twists were good. The dresses were stunning on screen. And Disney did a nice job reading the room by choosing not to pair off its powerful female characters, Cruella and the Baroness, with men. The movie also featured a queer character, Artie (John McCrea). Cruella had its redemptive moments.
But because this movie (and 101 Dalmatians) built up Cruella as “a psycho,” a word she used a few times, the ending felt undeserved and revisionist. She wasn’t a psycho at all. In fact, that almost seemed like the point of the movie: to make her seem sane. When the movie finished, the prequel put all the characters in the right place at the right time — while rewriting everything we thought we knew about one of Disney’s most evil characters.
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