There’s a moment in the first trailer for Disney’s live-action Cruella movie when Emma Stone utters in a terrible faux British accent, “I am woman, hear me roar.” It feels less like something Disney fans will remember from the iconic 101 Dalmatians villain, Cruella de Vil, and more like Jared Leto’s Joker telling Batman, “We live in a society.”
All of which is to say that Disney may have found its own Joker-type character in Stone’s Cruella de Vil… but not necessarily in a good way.
Cruella is set in 1970s London. Stone plays the soon-to-be-villain in an origin story of sorts. She’s an aspiring punk designer — and a grifter — who is trying to get society’s wealthiest people to take notice of her and her designs. Throughout the…