Is Cruella Going To Be Disney’s Joker?
The first preview for Disney’s live-action 101 Dalmatians remake, starring Emma Stone, has caused Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker to start trending once again
In an age of prequels, sequels, and live-action remakes, it makes sense that the biggest upcoming films would end up feeling a bit familiar, but the latest is ringing a bell we didn’t see coming.
Cruella, Disney’s live-action prequel to 101 Dalmatians starring Emma Stone, just dropped its first trailer, and it has an uncanny resemblance to that first Joker trailer that set the world ablaze in early 2019.
People online have certainly noticed. In the hours since the trailer dropped, character’s titular first name is not the only word trending at the moment—Joker has been back on the board worldwide.
It’s hard not to see the parallels. Joker was the origin story showing how a mentally ill man teetering on the edge, alienated by society’s cruelty and evil, came out as something deranged on the other side. Cruella shows the character going down a similar path.
Cruella de Vil, one of the most on-the-nose named characters in Disney’s rogues gallery, debuted in the 1956 novel by Dodie Smith The Hundred and One Dalmations, and has appeared on screen since in numerous forms, first in the 1961 animated Disney film, and perhaps most recognizably in the 1996 live action remake, in which the legendary actress Glenn Close donned her trademark black and white hair, red gloves and fur coat.
Joker gave us the story of how one man left behind by the world around him went mad. Thompson’s Cruella, as we can see from the trailer, shows how high society, rather than Joker’s low, drove a woman to the edge, part Joker and part Maleficent.
DISNEY'S JOKER IS TRENDING BC OF THE CRUELLA TRAILER PLSSSSSSSSSSS pic.twitter.com/ijptkTIFai
— Krissy (@Krissy_Blues) February 17, 2021
Stylishly filmed and intensely acted by the Oscar-winning Stone, 32, the film feels more like Joker than just in its narrative, as it captures the prestige aesthetic that Joker did while upping the glam, with a hint of a story on how women are alienated in a patriarchal world. Beyond that, some shots even seem directly inspired by Joker and its spiritual predecessor, 2008’s The Dark Knight, with Heath Ledger then in the make up.
The film is directed by Craig Gillespie, who has often chosen projects about societal misfits, such as the Ryan Gosling-starring Lars and The Real Girl, as well as women who have been abused, misunderstood, and cast as villains by modern society, such as the Oscar-winning 2017 film I, Tonya, starring Margot Robbie.
the CRUELLA trailer LOOKS nice but also i think sometimes ladies who love fashion should be allowed to remain ladies who love fashion and not the joker
— karen han (@karenyhan) February 17, 2021
The film has been in development for 10 years, and Emma Stone was cast more in January 2016—more than five years ago—so the film was likely written long before Joker was a glimmer in anyone’s eye, but it’s hard to imagine the Disney marketing team who cut the trailer didn’t intentionally lean in to the global phenomenon that was the Joaquin Phoenix-starring Joker, which also became an Oscar-darling in addition to dominating the global box office.
While the internet seems set to argue for the rest of the year about how to properly compare the two films, one thing is certain, Cruella seems to have shot to the top of many people’s lists.
Lead image courtesy of Instagram/@cruella_2021