Emma Stone wants an Ursula movie, but we just can't stop thinking about what happened to Cruella's mom
Film News Ursula
This post discusses the plot of the one scene of Cruella that we’ve seen on Twitter.
Look, this is going to be a tough one: The kind of Newswire story where our journalistic principles, and our desires as simple human beings seeking joy in the universe, may come into sharp and bitter conflict. Still, we shall do our best to keep our impulses in check, as rational beings with a dedication to the truth.
So: Emma Stone has suggested, per Variety, that Disney should turn its “villains re-sympathized” engines on Little Mermaid villain Ursula next, and also, have you seen that clip of Cruella’s mom getting absolutely bodied over a cliff by some dogs?
Fuck, this is going to be harder than we thought.
Stone was talking to Variety’s Mark Malkin, alongside the rest of the cast of the film (although not, as far as we know, Emily Beecham, who plays the dog-blasted mother in question). When asked what other iconic Disney villains should get the studio’s Maleficent-y treatment, Stone quickly tossed out the correct answer, i.e., Ursula, jumping to this conclusion with all the force and focus of a CGI Dalmatian with murder on its mind. Co-star Kirby Howell-Baptiste co-signed the pick, noting that Ursula—who was played by actor Pat Carroll in the 1989 original, and is set to be played by Melissa McCarthy in the upcoming live-action Little Mermaid movie—obviously has some tragic, misunderstood backstory in her past, like maybe she hates Dalmatians, because she watched her mom get flipped over a cliff by them like she got blasted by the Gravity Gun from Half-Life 2. (Keep it together, c’mon…)
Howell-Baptiste also suggested that The Lion King’s Scar, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor in Jon Favreau’s recent remake, would also be a good pick—possibly because then you’ve got the animal-based cliff murder already baked into the plot. And, honestly, these are both pretty great choices, at least if you grant the conceit that Disney should continue to mine its iconic villains’ relatable bursts of subtext for straight-up textual treatment like this. Of course, you’d still have to find an inciting emotional incident for Scar’s later villainy, although how long could that take? Five minutes? Two? We don’t even know how his and Mustafa’s mom died! Maybe someone threw a Lion King at her.
In conclusion: Someone has already edited the scene of Cruella’s mom’s death so that The Baja Men’s “Who Let The Dogs Out” is playing in the background, and life is good.
135 Comments
the death was purposely comical and campy. and so was the reveal. none of it was meant to be serious nor was it some deep exploration of her pathos. I thought the movie did great at never getting weighted down and was one of the funnest movies I’ve watched this year, and my god the costumes.Cruella and Ursula are of course based on queer icons so I’d be happy if they kept that energy for an Ursula movie. Maleficent was a snooze and too serious.
I had not seen the clip until this post and maybe I’m a sick puppy, but that short excerpt made me laugh out loud. It was hilariously delicious, if that’s a thing.
Exactly. So many people made up their mind the movie would be bad and would sneer online, thinking they were original “lol what, did Dalmatians kill her parents?!”And then the movie was like: “Yup. Sure did. What the fuck are you going to do about it?”And then the movie was camp and fun, and those people had their one joke spoiled.
“What the fuck are you going to do about it?”Continue laughing at how fucking stupid it is?
That lead Dalmatian leaping into the mom with its full weight to push her over the railing while simultaneously managing to her body weight to propel himself back onto solid ground—so impressive.It’s truly amazing what CGI dogs can be trained to do.
What queer icon is Cruella based on?
She takes classic Disney characters and forces them into being a Fleshlight.
tallulah bankhead, they even have an easter egg for her in the film which I was surprised about 🙂
I feel like the definition of “queer icon” has been significantly expanded recently. At this point if you’re a woman who doesn’t wear leggings you qualify as one.
tallulah bankhead was queer and a huge trailblazer about being open about it in Hollywood. just because you don’t know the history doesn’t mean you get to be an asshole about it.
I feel like the definition of “queer icon” has been significantly expanded recently. At this point if you’re a woman who doesn’t wear leggings you qualify as one.
Disney based her on Tallulah Bankhead.
What queer icon is Cruella based on?Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmations, I think?
Given how all the Disney villain origin movies seem to culmiante in “Nah, they’re not REALLY evil. See. All is well, everyone is happy, nobody is bad!” – I’ll pass.
Did everyone say this as much about the Joker’s origin story? Or was that cool for because … ?
They did not. The majority of the complaints for that film were “But what about continuity?” and “Ewww, Todd Phillips.”
Shit DC threw any and all continuity out the window, then set it fire, then drowned it, then shot it, then rolled it up into a carpet and threw it off a bridge.
Isn’t there a Rasputin movie coming out?
I feel like the majority of the complaints were “oh no this is gonna lead to incels rioting in the streets” before nothing happened.
That came later.
lol fair enough
Were you living under a rock when the Joker movie came out? There was an excessive amount of obnoxious pontificating (including on this site) about how that movie was supposedly going to incite real-life violence. Nothing like that is happening with this movie, people are just having a laugh over how bad it looks.
I’m not talking about a tragic origin story, as long as it doesn’t take away from the character – In the end, the Joker is clearly a villain.Full disclosure, I haven’t seen Cruella yet, but from all I heard it ends in a way that renders 101 Dalmatians pretty pointless because she apparently never really intended to kill those dogs, because she’s not REALLY evil. Just like Maleficent is and remains the good one in her own movies without much of an indication of her ever really becoming evil.
Great so a useless ill informed comment. Great.
And for the villain backstory that should absolutely never get made I say Judge Claude Frollo in Hunchback.
The heart-wrenching story of a young man (Timothy Chalamet) who was cursed by an evil, hunchbacked Romani witch into being alone and misunderstood forever.
Horny Hypocritical Priest? I love it! What? He is after an ADULT WOMAN? Something about that seems off.
Say what you will about this horny priest. He’s at least not hypocritical
“…MORE WATER…”
Meanwhile I’m really wanting the full backstory treatment of the snake-oil salesman from Pete’s Dragon.
No human could do a better job then the late Tony Jay so no.
Give me Peter Capaldi as Frollo and I’m in
It’d make as much sense as any of these other villain redemptions
Up next, Disney is making a prequel to The Black Cauldron, where we finally hear the real story about what turned it bad!
Gurgy. The answer is Gurgy. Everything else in the film is tolerable (ish).
Gurgi was my favorite character! Granted, I know him from the books and not the movie, and I was a child when I read them. He was even my first email password, when you could have a password 5 characters long with all lowercase letters.
I just watched that with my kids and it was my first time watching it in years. Has Andy Serkis ever mentioned if Gurgi’s voice was an inspiration for Smeagol/Gollum? Because, holy cow, they are identical.
I bet it was the kettle…
Isn’t the prequel to the Black Cauldron just The Book of Three?
I really like Emily Beecham, shame she doesn’t get a lot of big roles. Fuck me I’m still laughing so goddamn hard. In concept and execution this is funny.
i tried watching Cruella last night. it’s so bad. the mum death scene was so stupid and over the top. made me switch off.
That’s exactly how I feel about the Fast and Furious franchise so stupid and ridiculous.
I came out of A Quiet Place II matinee yesterday only to bump into some friends/co-workers who just saw Cruella, said it wasn’t great but didn’t think it was terrible, their kids laughed—maybe better on a big screen? Did you watch it at home for the Premium fee? I would have to watch it just to justify that pricepoint. I am a big movie fan but as a solo watcher too frugal for all those $20-30 film charges for streaming, but if I did pop for it would watch every single minute..
maybe better on a big screenI’m a hi-fi nerd so have a pretty beefy surround system. This 100% saved the movie for us. Cranked it, then googled up the soundtrack right after. There was dancing in the house.
That’s great! I’m a film nerd and feel compelled to see it in the theater as the filmmaker intended but I do love a full fledged sound system!
“over the top”honey that is camp. that is the point.
You don’t create camp, it happens or it doesn’t. Any attempt to “create” it is hollow camp
Disney thanks you for your $30.
The soundtrack kept us watching. Ike and Tina Turner’s Come Together and Whole Lotta Love? Yes thank you! And when Nancy Sinatra started up, the Missus absolutely cackled. Sometimes the needle drop IS the punchline.
Listen, *my* Cruella is the one at Disneyland. She, in the most amazingly perfect way, photobombed my spawn’s picture with Mary Poppins, then told him to be a ‘good doggie’ and fetch her a Dole Whip. She then proceeded to make nasty faces at Mary Poppins for good measure until she went away.
Disney is striking down the scene everywhere, but not to worry, I got a GIF!
I just watched the scene on Youtube. Thank you. Now I KNOW I don’t need to watch this schlock.I mean. I knew it already. But DAMN. That was incredibly stupid
ursula is a fave so i wouldn’t mind an ursula movie. i commented elsewhere that i like ursula as an evil character through and through so i’m not that keen on an movie starring her. i’d still watch it though. i’m curious how she turned half octopus. was she born that way? how are they going to do all the underwater stuff, it’s too much work, unless she once had legs and then at the end of the movie she has octopus body and then they never make a sequel.
I want to see the hunter who killed Bambi’s mom watching his own mother get gored repeatedly by a bunch of deer.
Okay, scratch that, I don’t actually want to watch that. But I’d be fine if it got made and everybody else felt compelled to watch it for some reason.(The rest of the plot of the movie would be about how the trauma inspires him to become a misunderstood genius queer interior decorator or some shit like that.)
Wow, a lot of hate for Cruella. I quite enjoyed it. That being said, of Disney’s Live Action remakes/reimagines, I have only liked this one and Maleficent.. and maybe a little of Beauty and the Beast.
Maybe I just like the idea of villains redeemed.
I feel like an Ursula movie would be especially interesting if she was more along the lines of the original character, who wasn’t actually an antagonist at all. She made the voice-for-legs trade with Ariel (unnamed in the story) and explained that becoming human is fatal to mermaids unless they find a human soulmate. Ariel chose to take that gamble and lost, without being tricked or sabotaged or kidnapped.
Mind you, she also sold Ariel’s sisters a magic knife that could save her life if she murdered the prince. So I’m not saying she’s a GOOD person – but it wouldn’t be a villain-resympathized story either. You wouldn’t have to come up with some tragic backstory that sympathetically explains why she likes imprisoning people and really wants that throne. Surely there are interesting stories to tell about an outcast witch businesswoman who lives in the ocean, making magical barters with mermaids and the rest of the sealife.
nah I wanna see Divine from the animated film.
Other film villains who’s backstories I feel should be made and made more sympathetic:Gaston- it’s only fun and games until you get cancelled!Sid- andoned by his father after he had to sell the family toy store to Al’s Toy Barn in order to pay off gambling debts
Sauron- a brilliant maker of magical jewelry only to see his prize possession stolen by hobbits Hitler- like the Joker only way more into genocide
To say nothing of1) Judge Smails2) Dean Wormer3) Mr Potter4) Belloq5) Colonel KurtzCome to think of it, I’m dead serious about #5.
I’m sure Todd Phillips is doing exactly what you suggest by fusing Apocalypse Now and The Godfather Part II as we speak. Did you wish for it on a mummified monkey’s paw?
Of course I did. The monkey’s paw came with a free frogurt. I’m not made of stone.
The frogurt was also cursed.
“Dammit, Kurtz. You KNOW the Green Berets have physical fitness requirements, and it’s your duty to attain and uphold them!”*Kurtz stress-eats another five hot dogs*
Actually, an Aristocats backstory that shows Balthazar the butler constantly cleaning up cat shit, being diagnosed with toxoplasmosis, and constantly being underpaid, yet led on by the queen bitch Madame Bonfamillie by promising him her fortune.
Judge Smalls is on my list of “villains that aren’t actually villains.” The guy was kind of a dick, but you’d be short on patience too if you kept trying to get in a quick 9 only to have Rodney Dangerfield ahead of you doing his full standup act.Also, Dick Dastardly origin story.
Well, much like ditch diggers, the world needs snobs to be taken down a peg by slobs too.
Garth Ennis wrote a Dick Dastardly and Muttley origin comic a few years back for DC , and it was surprisingly good.
Kurtz’s story is in Heart of Darkness by J Conrad. “All Europe went into the making of Kurtz” is basically the whole deal.
I find Judge Smails incredibly sympathetic.He said he didn’t want to sentence those kids to the gas chamber!
Hans Gruber- you know what? Don’t do Hans Gruber. He’s totally awesome just the way he is.
A reformed Hans Gruber is Hans Gruber. Before Die Hard, he used to skin lemurs and make children sew their skins into handbags.
Hence the European clothing. He was a style maven, and wouldn’t dare have his crew wear American clothes.
Well, you know the saying. You can take the German away from the lemur skin sweatshops, but you can’t take the lemur skin away from the German.
It’s a key material for their traditional lemurhosen.
And lemurwurst. They use all parts of the lemur. They’re green that way.
“Everything but the shriek” as the old Mecklenburg-Vorpommern saying goes!
Actually his book counterpart is sympathic to an extent. He’s an anti billionare revolutionary who wanted to rob an oil company and burn the money as a message.
Die Hard was a book?!
Yes it is. Its a sequel to the Detective, which was adapted with Frank Sinatra. The opening credits of Die Hard does mention its an adaptation. Its weird. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_Lasts_Forever_(Thorp_novel)
https://www.avclub.com/the-novel-that-inspired-die-hard-has-its-structure-but-1820927407
There’s a book?!
Believe it or not but yes. Also John McClaine is 70, is called something else and the villains kinda win?
Oh my God TO THE LIBRARY!!
There was a write-up on it here a few years ago. The book version had the McClain and wife characters as a detective and his estranged daughter trying to reunite at her company’s x-mas party. Things played out more or less the same except ‘Gruber’ successfully managed to take the daughter with him in the end IIRC.
I literally ordered a copy off Amazon within a minute or so of learning it existed.
His non-profit environmental organization went bankrupt after Nakutomi swindled them in a real estate scam
Somewhere a script about Brer Fox and Brer Bear from Song of the South sits with a giant rubber stamp that says JESUS NO
Also consider- Norman Bates- Vito Corleone- Darth Vader- Hannibal Lecter…The possibilities are endless.
Madam Mim: surely it’s not difficult to cast Merlin as an asshole.
Didn’t Sid show up as a happy GARBAGE man in Toy Story 3?
(patiently waits for someone to bring up Dawn Bellwether)
I want a Mad Madam Mim origin story. I want to know how she came to HATE SUNSHINE!!
When I get to be a Disney executive my mission will be to follow this villain rehabilitation trend with a bunch of movies where all the Disney princesses and princes grow up to be middle-aged assholes. I mean there’s no way Elsa doesn’t eventually slaughter everyone in Scandinavia after Anna has kids and doesn’t return Elsa’s calls any more.
Not a bad idea!I remember reading a compendium of fairytales on a plane once and being struck that every story involved either a) an idealistic young prince or b) an evil old king, and how at no point did a tale address how the prince turned into the king, but that clearly they did.
I can just see Cinderella and The Prince in this scenario down the road:
Does anybody else hate the new labelling/formatting here over the last few days? The way that an article just says “Film” on the front page and you have to click thru to see whether its a newswire, a four our consideration or whatever? And how if it is a newswire, and you click on the Newswire link that would usually bring up ALL the recents news articles, instead it limits it to news related to that specific category (i.e. only TV newswires or only Film newswires). If you click “News” on the front page it just puts you in “Latest” where every single thing that is posted here shows up in a terrible format that is hard to scan through and even more riddled with ads and “Promoted” links than usual. If you click on the old “News” link in the banner it only shows you older Newswires from before the format change. It makes it harder to tell what’s worth reading, and it makes it more tedious if you are trying to keep up with all the different newswires. I know the constant cutting of costs and staff and the related steady decline of content quality on this site has been driving readers away for years, but this new formatting feels like someone actively decided to make the site more unpleasant/inconvenient for those of us still reading.Oh yeah, and on topic I laughed my ass off when I read about this ridiculous scene. Even funnier, I learned about it from a Polygon article talking to the director about how he was proud of the scene and fought for it cuz it was so important. Cruella doesn’t even hate Dalmatians in 101 Dalmatians, she just wants their fur and is callous enough that she doesn’t care about killing a bunch of puppies, this shit is so stupid.
And IDK since when, but they’ve changed the TV reviews section so you can no longer filter by seasons.
That’s stupid. I had not noticed because the TV coverage is so sparse or pointless (I quit reading the WandaVision “reviews” because they were pretty much just recaps) here now that basically the only thing of value for me is the Better Call Saul reviews whenever there is actually a season airing. Man, I remember when they started pivoting to focus more on TV content and the film writing here started to shrink, so most of the movie people left to form The Dissolve. Then all that expanded TV coverage got cut and now they barely review any shows. And now the formatting makes it even harder to find the small amount of quality Film/TV articles they do actually produce!
Yeah, I was trying to find old Star Trek reviews and it was a nightmare to find it. Their old, quality content is very buried.
*sigh* Eventually this whole place will go tits up and all the posts from Rappin’ Jake Sisko will be lost in the mists of time. They were too good for this world anyway, honestly.
Yes, even now that One Law & Order comment thread is unreadable. The relentless passage of time, tears in the rain, and so on.
Yep, so hard to sort through now. I’ll look up old shows I’m watching for the first time for the reviews and often read comments to see what people were saying as it aired. Now it’s much harder.
Most of the more recent reviews here aren’t reviews. They’re all complaints that the filmmakers didn’t do it whichever way the writer imagined it should be in his or her head. The only one who tries to avoid this seems to be Danette Chavez.
They also took the Reviews tab away from the top. You have to type in the url. And like others have noted, the sorting featuring is completely broken. The site is becoming unnavigable
I assume it’s the devs, fighting to keep the “First Chang Dynasty” Community thread from becoming sentient and destroying the world.
Nothing says children’s entertainment like a film that makes kids sympathize with an animal abuser!
oh come on. let us have our queer campy story.
I mean, camp’s fine, but if you’re gonna make a queer icon out of a character who explicitly wants to steal people’s pets and murder them to make a coat, people are gonna bring up the pet-murder thing. You gets what you pays for and on this one you paid for a would-be puppy murderer, so caveat emptor.
I feel it’s kind of a square and an expected hetero attitude though to say “think of the children”, the joke is that all fur is bizarre. this movie rewrites the story that she isn’t a puppy killer while also letting us explore the queer campiness of Cruella.
Perhaps, but this also still a movie intended, at least nominally, for children. You’re gonna try and make a character most well-known for trying to murder and skin puppies the hero in a children’s film, don’t be surprised that people are gonna comment on it is all I’m saying.Also, having seen it yet, but: this movie rewrites the story that she isn’t a puppy killerHonestly, that just sounds lame. Talk about trying to keep your cake and eat it.
the puppy’s become the killers, it’s a fun and comical twist, really hammed up. Idk you didn’t even watch the movie lol. There’s no deep pathos here, it’s just a fun film.
“Perhaps, but this also still a movie intended, at least nominally, for children.”
Except that, as a PG-13 movie, it’s not.
Some people have no sense of camp. This was an iconic moment.
on some level I think Disney was like “well Rupaul can sell queer and so can we”, and I loved the whole movie, but I think unless people actually have it pointed out to them that something is camp then they don’t know it’s camp lol. the straight squares are angry.
Well, the staff and audience here at AVC has been predominantly straight white men for a while now, and those folks wouldn’t know camp if no one’s pitching a tent.
I can’t wait until Disney’s live-action-villain-backstory/redemption kick crosses over with their superhero kick and eventually we get a movie about how the Red Skull was just pushed into a bad place by society.
At least with Maleficent you have the whole “The version you saw before was the lies the Kingdoms of Men told about her” thing. Like it’s Disney’s attempt at Wicked. But Cruella is literally the same irredeemably evil character we saw in 101 Dalmations. It reads like someone saying “Ted Bundy had an unhappy childhood” – who cares motherfucker, that’s an evil shithead!If they’re gonna make an Ursula film, I’d rather it be more Maleficent than Cruella. There’s some plumb material in the idea of being the misunderstood outcast sister of the selfish and arrogant golden child. She is literally the only one like her in the kingdom, and everyone seems very intent on fitting their roles while she lives on the outskirts. A properly reimagined Ursula might see something of herself in the niece who wants to be part of another world because she just doesn’t feel quite like she belongs in her own…And maybe bring back someone from the Broadway show to play the role they should have 😛
I think the real reason Cruella is so irritating is that we already have not just one but two live-action 101 Dalmatians remakes. I’m assuming their success was a big part of what kicked off the entire, stupid, “live action remake” Disney trend.It just dials all of the “completely unnecessary cash grab” elements of the enterprise up to an 11.
It appears that this Cruella is a direct prequel to the two live action films.Glenn Close is a producer on it and everything, plus the timeline adds up.
Whether it’s a prequel to a remake with a sequel or a reboot of a remake that had its own sequel, it’s all just Disney masturbating and dollar signs coming out.
I’d watch an Ursula movie if it was based on Leigh Bardugo’s version in Language of Thorns.
Ursula’s mom will get killed by Cruella’s falling mom.
They’re not even just Dalmatians. They’re literally supposed to be the grandparents of the titular 101 puppies.
Ursula’s tragic backstory is her parents were eaten by a school of Flounders.
Hey so are we just glossing over how this movie suggests the original litter were incest puppies.
I hear they’ve already designed plushies for the sequel.
I am so sad that I didn’t get to see it for the first time in a theatre full of amped-up (ie loaded) fashion-loving people, because I can only imagine the hysterical peals of laughter, and GOD how good it would have felt to do that with strangers in the dark again!
I just watched that clip and it fucking hilarious.
Wouldn’t worry too much, no one associates these posts with journalistic principles in the first place.
If only Divine was still alive, she could potentially play the role of the character who was modeled after herself.
the amount of people arguing that it being shitty and stupid was on purpose is very funny to me
I imagine you could do a fleshed-out backstory/reimagining for most children’s movie villains who aren’t gleeful dog-murderers. I’m not a huge fan of villain protagonists in general, but surely an Ursula origin story wouldn’t be any more of a stretch than, say, Maleficent.
Is it only villains from animated classics? Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, every Pope in charge of the Holy Inquisition, Columbus… Casting directors, busy times ahead!
Just stop this, and def stop making bad guy’s sympathetic. Real life does that well enough already.
Okay, basics, let’s get something clear: sometimes a bad guy needs to be a bad guy because you don’t need to know their “backstory” or mythology or whatever. It is one of the oldest aspects of storytelling that a villain can be a villain without explanation. Simple as that. Once, just once, I’d like to see a remake of one of these films where the good guy loses. Let’s go after Snow White. She was a simpering shut-in who shacked up with seven potential sex-pests in a forest. The Evil Queen did us all a favour in poisoning that tweenage wench!