About

Cruella is a 2021 live-action film produced by Disney that tells the backstory of Cruella de Vil, the antagonist from the film 101 Dalmatians. The film stars Emma Stone in the title role and co-stars Emma Thompson, Joel Fry and Paul Walter Houser. The film received positive reviews, though online, elements of the film, particularly one which shows Cruella's mother being killed by angry dalmatians, were mocked.

History

Production for Cruella began in 2019. The film was directed by Craig Gillepsie.^[1] The first trailer for the film was released on February 17th, 2021 (shown below), drawing comparisons to Joker. ^[2] The film released on May 28th, 2021.

Reception

Cruella received mostly positive scores upon its release, gaining an aggregate 59/100 score on Metacritic^[3] and a 74/100 on Rotten Tomatoes,^[4] with an audience score of 97. Speaking positively about the film, Variety^[5] critic Peter Debruge wrote, "Craig Gillespie’s “Cruella” proves ingeniously creative in its reimagining of the underlying IP." In a negative review, Vulture's^[6] Angelica Jade Bastién wrote the film focused too much on making Cruella fit the modern Girlboss archetype, writing, "Cruella takes one of the richest narrative archetypes -- the madwoman -- and whittles her down into a glossy, hollow, capitalism-approved monster fueled by girl-boss politics."

Online Presence

Online, the film became the subject of mockery after fleshing out de Vil's backstory by including a scene where Cruella's mother dies as a result of a dalmatian attack. On the day of the film's release, user @devtesla tweeted the scene of Cruella's mother being killed by dalmatians.

Twitter users, joking that the scene was a flimsy reason for de Vil's villainy, took to making jokes and memes based on it. For example, user @sxyrobotfactory^[7] posted a Lev Punch Edit of the scene, gaining over 18,000 retweets and 132,000 likes (shown below, left). User @dreadfulpoint^[8] posted a Don Draper Pitch Parody about the scene, gaining over 3,900 retweets and 46,000 likes (shown below, right). The jokes were covered by Elite Daily.^[9]

Search Interest

External References