(Yes, my second post on a blog
about animation is about a live action movie. But it’s based on an animated
movie, so I think that qualifies as a loophole)
Okay, so before we talk about
a certain live action movie Disney has in the works, I think we should talk
about Maleficent.
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| This might be considered a nitpick, but why isn't she green? |
For those unaware, Maleficent was a 2014 Disney movie based
on their adaptation of Sleeping Beauty.
Specifically, it told the story from the point of view of its main villain,
Maleficent (played by Angelina Jolie). And what better way to do that than by
turning the self-proclaimed “mistress of all evil” into a merely misunderstood
heroic character? And while we’re at it, let’s turn one of the good guys, King
Stefan, into the main villain and the main characters, the three Good Fairies,
into incompetent morons?
So anyways, the film did
pretty well at the box office (about $758.5 million, to be precise). The
critics didn’t like it, but Disney didn’t care about that. It made money, and
that means a sequel MUST be made. And hey, while we’re at it, let’s make MORE
movies about how your favorite Disney villains weren’t actually as bad as you
thought they were?
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| I'm aware that this image of Cruella is not from the first movie, but rather its direct-to-video sequel. |
First up is Cruella De Vil,
the villain of 1961’s One Hundred and One
Dalmatians. Andrew Gunn (whose resume includes 2002’s The Country Bears and 2008’s CollegeRoad Trip) will produce the film. And rumor has it that Emma Stone (the
voice of Eep from 2013’s The Croods)
will play Cruella.
I suppose I should probably
point out that they already made a live action version of One Hundred and One Dalmatians back in 1996. Disney hasn’t
forgotten: Glenn Close, who played Cruella in that movie, is apparently an
executive producer on this one.
Now, let’s talk about Cruella
for a second. She has an obsession with furs. She loves the idea of skinning a
bunch of Dalmatian puppies for their furs.
Now, since Maleficent was a success, we can assume
that they’ll try to turn PETA’s arch-nemesis here into a sympathetic character.
How they plan on making someone who wants to skin Dalmatian puppies
sympathetic, I have no idea.
But what about the OTHER
characters? Clearly we need to make one of the good guys evil so that Cruella
will look more sympathetic by comparison, right? But WHO? The most obvious
choice seems to be Roger. How they could turn a mild-mannered songwriter with
enough guts to stand up to a crazy woman like Cruella into a villainous
character, I also have no idea.
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| Why are Pongo and Roger angry? Perhaps they just finished watching 102 Dalmatians... |
Then there’s the Dalmatians
themselves. Now, I’m guessing they won’t talk (because that worked SOOOOOOO
well in the 1996 movie, right?), so maybe Disney’s idea is that making them
just mindless animals will automatically make them slightly less sympathetic.
It doesn’t work that way. It’s still cute little puppies getting skinned for
their fur.
And just think: if this movie
is a success, there’s a very good chance that we’ll get a movie about how
Ursula wasn’t as bad as The Little
Mermaid made her out to be and that King Triton was the villain this whole
time. Or that all along, Scar from The
Lion King wasn’t villainous, RAFIKI was. Or that the true bad guy in Beauty and the Beast was Lumiere, not
the actually quite sympathetic Gaston.
Am I looking too far into
this?
