Do villains need a back story? Because it’s very hard to make a woman (who will kill animals for clothes including treasured family pets) gain sympathy from an audience.

Cruella follows the origin story of the character Cruella who is the evil side of a girl called Estella. Estella’s ‘mum’ using quotation marks here for a reason, is tragically killed when Estella is a child and she ends up living with two boys who also don’t have families. They create a unit of thieves and make their money through that.

Things change however when Estella gets a chance to work for a fashion designer, someone she has looked up to and something that she has always wanted to do, yet finds out that everything isn’t as it seems and this fashion designer is connected to her mother’s death in more ways than one. It’s a fantastic story I found really interesting to watch, but Cruella still kills animals.

I absolutely love this in terms of cinematography. I thought it was a gorgeous film and the fashion choices were brilliant. It really reminds me of the Devil Wears Prada but darker and I really appreciated that as a young woman who enjoys looking at fashion magazines and keeping up on social media with the newest looks, to see the styles coming out of this movie was gorgeous and I absolutely loved them. I thought they were so inventive and new and exciting that you could tell so much time was put into them to make them right.

But the movie fell off for me with the fact that Cruella is a villain, she is an evil character, she is not someone that we should idolise or think is great in any way because she tries to kill animals. At the end of it she is a villain and that is all that she is and will ever be, so why do we need to give villains backstories? As we’ve seen in horror movies too many times villains being given a back story ruins their awesomeness and so why are we doing it now with Disney?

As I said in my Free Guy review I feel Disney is somewhat running out of ideas or trying to capitalise on nostalgia and rose tinted glasses of the before time, and they are going back to things that people loved from their childhood that are now adults and they can capitalise on those loves again. This is why we had the Maleficent movie, everything is being retold or twisted to be a quick cash grab and while it can be beautifully done and presented much like Cruella, I still say it’s wrong to try and make us connect with these bad characters that in some ways are very hard to connect with.

If you enjoy these sort of movies then this is right up your street. I think it’s absolutely fantastic, it’s a gorgeous film, absolutely stunning and set in a time that is really interesting for the fashion industry. I loved the characters, the actors were great and it was a really fascinating film visually, I just did not enjoy the storyline and I do not see Cruella as a good character or if I’m even meant to look at her as a good character. It really skews who the bad guy really is and how no matter how bad you are there’s always someone worse, but that doesn’t diminish what you have done that is bad.

What do you think of Cruella?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding