Cruella: All Bark and No Bite

TL;DR – Cruella refuses to make Cruella either an antihero or a villain, avoiding the movie’s own dramatic question and making her ‘journey’ feel unearned. It’s a delightful ride, but don’t expect there to be any story when there’s so much plot going on.

When Cruella came out in in May of 2021 (I know, so long ago), I have to admit that the vibe captured me almost immediately. What can I say? I’m a sucker for mildly unhinged female revenge plots. Also, sleek crime movies. And also, historical fiction. I like a lot of things and have a problem with commitment, so sue me.

Once I did go see the film, it did not disappoint in any of the above categories. The costumes were great, the music was fabulous, both the Emmas did a great job, I got a fashion movie, heist movie, revenge movie and a period piece all in one go, AND there were puppies. 10/10, no notes, I walked out of the theater happy. However, I also walked out of the theater with a mild frisson of confusion, a lack of clarity that stayed with me for months as I listened to the film’s soundtrack a couple hundred times, then re-watched the movie another three more. Finally, after taking a million years to think about it, I think I’ve boiled down my confusion into one nitpicky, semantic problem: Cruella does everything it can to avoid answering its own dramatic question.

At first glance, Cruella seems like a standard ‘coming-of-age’ story. Cruella (hang on, sorry, I mean Estella), played by Emma Stone, has a mysterious childhood where her aspirations as a fashion designer and rejection of societal and gender norms in the 70s often lands her in trouble with authority. After the death of her mother, she’s forced to raise herself and two other street urchins in London while dreaming of being a designer, until she’s taken under the wing of her fashion idol, the Baroness, played by Emma Thompson. But while Estella’s talents are appreciated and she grows in her new role, everything sours when she realizes that the Baroness caused the death of her mother when she was a child. Now, this is a revenge film. So, the two designers enter a tit-for-tat fashion war, with Estella concealing her identity with the persona Cruella, which her mother often called her whenever Estella was at her most blunt.

But, as literature often tells us, Cruella’s need for revenge begins to hurt her relationships with those few who are closest to her, culminating in Estella’s attempted murder by the Baroness. But she’s saved, and the stunning truth is revealed: Estella’s birth mother is actually the Baroness herself (and the Baroness is a sociopathic narcissist). Now enlightened, Estella resolves that the Baroness, should she discover her in camp ‘not dead,’ will never let her alone, and comes up with a plan with her found family to frame the Baroness for her own (second) murder. It goes off without a hitch, the Baroness is arrested, and Estella is dead – leaving Cruella to complete her rise to stardom and receive her rightful inheritance as the Baronesses daughter.

Phew. That was supposed to be a brief synopsis. But I don’t know what else I expected when they stuff four movies into one. Anyway. Coming of age movie. On first glance, Cruella is a coming-of-age movie whose central questions is: Who am I? And how do I best embody my identity in a world that rejects it? Throughout the story, Cruella struggles between the parts of herself that are acceptable and amicable to those around her (as Estella) and the parts of herself that are not (as Cruella). In the end, she uses both these aspects to get what she wants, learns a truth about her heritage and her own identity, and uses this knowledge going forward. She even goes so far as to ‘kill off’ her assimilationist persona, ending the movie by fully living her truth and creating her bliss. And she gets the Baroness’ house, which she delightfully renames ‘Hell Hall.’ What a power move. Icon.

But what is it about Cruella’s story that distinguishes it from your standard coming-of-age movie? The point that it’s not just supposed to be a movie about identity and growing up, it’s supposed to be about a villain. Or, at least, someone audiences know to be a villain.

The fun thing about all these remakes and spin-offs Disney’s been churning out recently is that they know they’re creating for an audience who, with little to no question, already knows the characters and world they’re portraying. This could give the filmmakers some freedom with reinterpretation and reinvention when it comes to these new movies, plus some chance for subversion or the creation of new stories while playing with pre-established themes from their source material. Regardless, it’s impossible for a movie such as Cruella to be made without the awareness of its predecessors, and especially the role of its protagonist as a central antagonist. So, what, then, does Disney do with Cruella?

The central conflict, or question, for the audience as they watch Estella on her growing-up journey is ‘how far will she go?’ in her quest for revenge. With our pre-established knowledge, we enter this story unsure if this is a prequel or an alternate universe, and thus don’t know if this Cruella is destined to be a villain or if she is meant to become something of an antihero. This is the true question that holds the dramatic tension of the film as story progresses. Will she end up more like Walter White of Breaking Bad, or will end up at the side of Regina, the Evil Queen of Once Upon a Time?

To determine how the movie answers this question, we can start by looking at Estella’s behavior throughout the film. Estella begins her story with schoolyard fights and dodgeballing a boy in the nuts, eventually progressing to thievery in London. After that, her vengeance encompasses crashing a ball, more thievery, causing general mayhem (but no attempts to physically injure anyone), stealing the Baroness’ dogs and organizing fashion stunts. But while Cruella’s certainly cornered the market on variety, the movie doesn’t go out of its way to make her seem criminal. All of these signs that Estella’s ‘going bad’ might amount to charges of vandalism, and certainly destruction of property, but we never see the ‘victims’ of her crimes besides the Baroness. Cruella never hurts a living creature; nor does she manipulate or harm those with less power than herself. The Baroness does all of the above, in addition to passing off her worker’s designs as her own (don’t plagiarize, kids), and the movie purposely shows us the pain those she hurts experience. We see her fire and injure multiple people, from maids to her own lawyer to Cruella herself. The only time when it seems like Estella might cross this kind of line is when she says that the Baroness’ dogs would make fabulous coats. At her worst, Cruella’s ‘evil’ never extends beyond threats and insinuation. She might kill the Baroness’ dogs and turn them into a coat. She might kill the Baroness herself, even if she hasn’t physically hurt anyone, even in her youth, through cold premeditation. But the movie really wants audiences to think that she might, despite all the evidence to the contrary. In fact, the only people who are really hurt by Cruella besides the Baroness are the two people closest to her.

Horace and Jasper, Cruella’s bumbling henchmen in the original movies, are transformed into street urchins with hearts of gold in the newer rendition. They become Estella’s found family after the death of her mother; they are the ones who help her get her first job in a department store, and they are the ones by her side as she carries out her schemes of revenge against the Baroness. But as Cruella spends more and more time on-screen (as opposed to sweet Estella), the film makes a point of showing Horace and Jasper’s pain under the abrasive, abusive behavior she exhibits. They even go so far as to say that the girl they once knew is ‘gone’ and that Cruella is all that remains.

Typically, when vengeance plots follow this arc, it’s meant to show that revenge hurts the avenger and those around them more than the target, and that true closure comes from forgiveness and healing (see Raya and the Last Dragon and Hamlet). But although Cruella attempts to do the same, it doesn’t take the time to unfold such an emotionally-charged, character-driven plot. Sure, Jasper and Horace take most of Cruella’s beratement and try to leave her after she gets them thrown in prison and causes the Baroness to burn down their only home. But Cruella quickly resolves their schism by breaking the boys out of prison, revealing the Baroness is her mother, giving a quick apology and an excuse that she ‘went a bit mad’ and saying that the two men are her family. Just like that, they agree to help her with one more plot.

Normally, I might shrug and think to myself ‘Ok, so it’s a Disney movie, the bare bones of the theme are still there – Cruella learned vengeance is a double-edged sword, and that what distinguishes her in this world isn’t her hereditary genius from the Baroness, it’s that she’s made a new family that treats each other with love and respect. Meanwhile, the Baroness is cruel, dismissive and, ultimately, alone. Cruella’s both Cruella and Estella as a full, actualized person.’ But then, right before the climactic ball, Jasper and Estella/Cruella have what I find to be a very telling exchange. Jasper approaches Cruella on a roof and tells her even though she’s in pain, killing the Baroness won’t alleviate it, and asks her to promise she won’t murder the other woman. Cruella/Estella does agree to this, but throughout the conversation, she speaks to Jasper in a somewhat flippant tone, as though she might kill The Baroness – “but only if she really has to.”

Throughout this conversation, Cruella’s still as condescending to Jasper as she was before her near-death experience and heritage reveal, telling him he’s cute when he’s serious and that one of the things she loves about him is that he “finds it quite hard to say no to [her].” The entire conversation is supposed to have happened after both Jasper and Cruella have paid a heavy price for succeeding in Cruella’s machinations – she nearly died, he was nearly imprisoned for life, and the entire thief family nearly split up. Usually, a story would emphasize that as the point where the protagonist finally learns what they need (self-actualization beyond revenge), not just what they want, and experience personal growth. But going off of this scene, Cruella doesn’t seem to have changed much at all. She’s still condescending towards one of the few people who truly knows her, and even when she thanks him for sticking by her, she tags it by saying one of the things she loves about him is how susceptible he is to her manipulation. From this exchange, I thought we’d gotten a clue to the movie’s question: We were looking at the birth of a villain. We were looking at someone who was ready to go ‘over the edge’ and commit murder, a manipulative person who is abusive to her friends when they don’t agree with her and appreciates those closest to her largely for their usefulness.

With this conversation in mind, I thought that the Baroness was going to die. But then we got what I consider to be one of the best, and also most confusing, scenes in the movie. In a ball that Cruella/Estella has engineered to be full of Cruella look-alikes, Cruella approaches the Baroness unnoticed. Several of her allies track her movement, and as the music builds, Cruella removes a long, sharp pin from her outfit, one that certainly looks piercing enough to ruin an artery, if stabbed in the right place. The tension is palpable (thanks, musical scoring) as Cruella gets closer, closer—then harmlessly pokes the Baroness before moving away.

This scene was meant to be the climax of the dramatic question the movie had been dancing around for most of its runtime. Will Cruella do one of the worst things an individual human can do to another and kill the Baroness in cold blood, crossing a line and becoming the puppy-wearing villain we know her to be? Given her flippancy to homicide and seeming disregard for those closest to her, I thought the answer was obvious. But the filmmakers didn’t go that way, instead giving Cruella a more heist-like ending involving a skirt parachute and framing the Baroness for murder (no shade to the skirt parachute, I love me some wacky gadget escapes).

Where does that leave us for Cruella’s story, and the movie’s question as a whole? We have a film that both wants the audience to think she might be a fabulous murderess (despite all evidence to the contrary), but also refuses to have her learn from the consequences of her actions, protecting her from making the choice to be an out-and-proud villain. This leaves us with a villain that the film tells us would never actually hurt someone, and an avenger who doesn’t learn anything during their journey for revenge. All that changes is we now know that the Baroness is Cruella’s true mother and tried to have her killed as a baby, making Cruella’s framing of her all the more justified and all the less villainous.

But Cruella’s parentage was a never a question that the movie asked in the first place – the audience is never led to doubt that Cruella’s mother is her true mother, and the question of ‘where does Cruella’s genius and problem with authority come from?’ never comes up. It’s not a question, it’s her characterization. Meanwhile, the question of ‘are we watching an antihero or a villain’ is answered in a lukewarm manner where she’s not a villain, but she doesn’t grow and change as an antihero, either. Cruella starts out as a creative, defiant, blunt, and sometimes cruel girl and ends as a creative, defiant, blunt and sometimes cruel woman, only now she has more money. She’s loyal to her family at the beginning and the end of the film, but doesn’t have a problem being unkind to them (and apparently, neither do they). And, of course, she’d never, ever, ever, hurt a dog.

I don’t mean to say that I have a problem with the film making Cruella not be an evil psychopath who makes clothes out of puppies, nor with watching a bold female antihero bucking traditional expectations. When it comes down to it, I’m going to watch Cruella again for a million years, because it’s a fun movie with characters I like that have strong goals. But I just wish that the movie had really decided to commit to its story choices and follow them to the end, even if that meant audiences had to consider if Cruella was truly the hero of this story.

That’s why I was confused by Cruella. It’s high on aesthetic, but the film answers questions that aren’t asked and gives us a character arc with no journey. According to the Cruella, we’re looking at a misunderstood woman who finally comes to terms with her heritage and her personality (though she never had trouble with either). She’s bad, but not too bad, and just cruel enough to be fun without needing to self-reflect. Among stories that are only as powerful as the answer to their central questions, I believe that leaves Cruella somewhere unanswered.