So They’re Making a Live Action Movie About Cruella De Vil...

(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.

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?

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.

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?