101 Dal­ma­tians An­i­mated vs Life Ac­tion: Born Bad, Born Sad, and a Lit­tle Bit Mad

WARN­ING: This ar­ti­cle will con­tain spoil­ers for both the an­i­mated and live ac­tion films. 

In­tro­duc­tion

I had not seen Cruella un­til I had to for this as­sign­ment and truth be told, I felt like the film it­self was over­hyped.

I thought the act­ing was good and I did love the cos­tum­ing but the writ­ing felt weak and though I had­n’t watch 101 Dal­ma­tians in a while, I felt like Cruella was­n’t true to Cruella De Vil’s char­ac­ter. Af­ter watch­ing 101 Dal­ma­tians, I re­al­ized that my ini­tial in­stinct was ab­solutely right.

Un­like all of the other films in this se­ries, I watched the live ac­tion film first. Why? Well, Cruella is sup­posed to be a pre­quel to 101 Dal­ma­tians and it only seemed right to watch it first. Ob­vi­ously, the live ac­tion film kept some of Cruella De Vil’s iconic el­e­ments, such as the bi-col­ored hair and the darker cloth­ing choices but the new film also took a spin on things: they made Cruella an as­pir­ing fash­ion de­signer, as well as gave her a tragic back­story (but all vil­lains have tragic back­sto­ries, so this as­pect was to be ex­pected).  

Cruella and Dogs

Here’s my biggest quip with the live ac­tion film: Cruella ac­tu­ally re­ally likes dogs. She has a lit­tle mutt and she even ends up adopt­ing three dal­ma­tians. Yes, she leads every­one to be­lieve that she makes a coat of dal­ma­t­ian fur but she does­n’t ac­tu­ally do so. And yes, she does blame dal­ma­tians for her moth­ers death (un­til she re­al­izes that it was­n’t their fault at all).

Is Cruella Ac­tu­ally a Pre­quel?

It is broadly as­sumed that Cruella is a pre­quel for 101 Dal­ma­tians, but here’s the is­sue: Cruella takes place in the late 1970s, the orig­i­nal 101 Dal­ma­tians takes place in 1958, and the live-ac­tion 101 Dal­ma­tians take place in 1996. Re­gard­less of which film we want to as­sume Cruella is pre­quelling, none of the time­lines make sense, which is just fur­ther ev­i­dence that the Cruella film was not thought through. 

For the sake of this ar­ti­cle, we are go­ing to ig­nore the time­line is­sues and as­sume that Cruella is pre­quelling for the orig­i­nal an­i­mated 101 Dal­ma­tians.  

Side Char­ac­ters

There are some char­ac­ters in the an­i­mated film who get a bit more of a back­story in Cruella, in­clud­ing Jasper, Ho­race, and Anita. While there were some phys­i­cal changes to the char­ac­ters – Jasper and Anita are POC – they also make some back­story changes that re­ally make you pity them. 

First off, Jasper and Ho­race take Cruella in and help her to get her dream job and to have things to eat. Af­ter Cruella “finds” her­self, she be­comes in­cred­i­bly abu­sive and ma­nip­u­la­tive to Jasper and Ho­race, go­ing so far as to ma­nip­u­late them into stay­ing with her when they want out of Cruel­la’s life. 

Now, I do see that Cruella is in an in­cred­i­bly dark mind­set due to grief and she does promise to do bet­ter, and I think that if Cruella ends up be­ing true to her word then she can be re­deemed as a friend. How­ever, the is­sue lies with how Cruella treats Ho­race and Jasper in the an­i­mated film: she’s 100 times worse! Cruella seems to have learned noth­ing from the boys want­ing to leave her life and treats them like a poop emoji. 

Anita has some changes, as well. She is made much more am­bi­tious in Cruella: She is a jour­nal­ist who works with Cruella to en­sure her ca­reer goes well. This is the only char­ac­ter change that ac­tu­ally makes sense, from my view. Anita likely knows that Cruella al­lowed her to build her ca­reer so she thinks bet­ter of her, which ex­plains her blind trust of Cruella in the 101 Dal­ma­tians an­i­mated film. 

Other Con­ti­nu­ity Er­rors

There’s just a lot of re­ally strange con­ti­nu­ity er­rors be­tween the two films: at the end of Cruella, Cruella and her crew are wealthy. In 101 Dal­ma­tians, they seem to be dirt poor. I don’t see Cruella as some­one who is that ir­re­spon­si­ble with money and even if she was, Cruella, Jasper, and Ho­race are street thieves: they would fig­ure some­thing out! 

Not only do I not see Cruella ever be­ing will­ing to skin 99 pup­pies, I know for a fact that Jasper and Ho­race would flat-out refuse to help her even dog­nap the pup­pies in the first place, much less kill them for their skin.  

Con­clu­sion

Se­ri­ously, it feels like the writ­ers for Cruella never ac­tu­ally watched 101 Dal­ma­tians. They could have eas­ily shifted Cruel­la’s char­ac­ter just a lit­tle to al­low for her role in 101 Dal­ma­tians but it seems they sac­ri­ficed any logic in or­der to cre­ate an em­pa­thetic vil­lain story.