Ocean’s Eleven (2001)
Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven is one of the few movies that Cruella director Craig Gillespie looked at while making his new movie. “I actually gravitated toward the Ocean’s Eleven look with the heist stuff,” he told Slashfilm, “and how to tell that story in a film and how much the audience needs to understand what the plot is or be ahead of or behind it…I didn’t do much in the way of research outside of the plot design of Ocean’s Eleven on this.” He even goes so far as to mention the movie again as the only thing he can think of to watch alongside Cruella. But you could also very well add the female-centric spinoff Ocean’s Eight (2018) since one of its main characters is a fashion designer and its heist is at a major fashion event: the Met Gala.
Available to stream on HBO Max.
The Devil Wears Prada (2006) and Alice in Wonderland (2010)
The most obvious and common movie referenced in comparison to Cruella, since our very first look at the Disney feature through its reviews and audience reactions is The Devil Wears Prada. Emma Thompson’s Baroness is the Miranda Priestly (played by Meryl Streep and based on Vogue editor Anna Wintour) to Cruella’s Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway, portraying the character based on the source material’s author, Lauren Weisberger) in a similar story about an extremely difficult and oppressive boss in the fashion world. Gillespie has even admitted the influence, telling Radio Times that Cruella is “sort of like the Joker, Devil Meet Prada [sic] and Ocean’s Eleven, sort of all tied up together!”
Okay, but maybe you need to also watch Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland afterward. Not because it’s another Disney live-action reimagining of the studio’s own animated classics (that began the current trend even) but because it features Hathaway in perhaps a more Cruella-like role than Andy’s meeker Estella type. While it’s not something I’d necessarily think of, Hathaway claimed of her take on the non-villain White Queen, “She is a punk-rock, vegan pacifist. So I listened to a lot of Blondie, I watched a lot of Greta Garbo movies…then a little bit of Norma Desmond got thrown in there, too.” Punk, Debbie Harry, and Old Hollywood film actresses? Sounds like the recipe for Emma Stone’s Cruella.
Available to stream on Amazon Prime and Disney+, respectively.
Maleficent (2014)
I could highlight a number of the Disney live-action remakes in relation to Cruella. Emma Thompson was previously in Beauty and the Beast (2017), and Cate Blanchett’s Lady Tremaine in Cinderella (2015) is similarly inspired by Old Hollywood divas. But while Disney had already done the villain-is-the-star thing with the live-action 101 Dalmatians, the Sleeping Beauty-based Maleficent was the precursor to Cruella‘s idea to do a Disney Villain origin story in which the audience is made to empathize with this misunderstood and wronged woman who had been exaggerated and misrepresented as pure evil in cartoon form. Cruella is not quite let off the hook as Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent is, even if teases of future canicide can be taken as dark humor.
Available to stream on SyFy.
I, Tonya (2017) and The Favourite (2018)
Typically, I like to avoid the inclusion of previous works by cast and crew of the movie in focus because past experiences of any kind are always going to directly influence present experiences, consciously or not. But these two movies are just too significant to ignore. I, Tonya is Craig Gillespie’s prior feature as a director, and it’s also an empathetic portrait of a woman with a villainous reputation. The difference is that its main character, figure skater Tonya Harding, is a real person, infamously remembered for her rivalry with Nancy Kerrigan and her association with the men who attacked Kerrigan in 1994. I, Tonya is also notable for giving Cruella co-star Paul Walter Hauser his breakout role, as Harding cohort (almost her own Horace) Shawn Eckardt.
The Favourite is the prior feature co-scripted by Tony McNamara, who is one of five writers who contributed to (and one of two credited with authoring) the Cruella screenplay. The 18th-century-set historical comedy also stars Emma Stone in an Oscar-nominated role as a servant to a powerful yet irrational royal pain. She also develops a rivalry with another woman in her place of work. The parallels between the two films aren’t striking, but there are some relatable character dynamics for sure. I’ve seen it said that Stone’s work in The Favourite proved she was apt for the part in Cruella, which is a shame since the former is one-hundred-and-one-times the better film. Cruella hair and makeup designer Nadia Stacey also worked on The Favorite.
Available to stream on Hulu and to rent, respectively.
Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist (2018) and McQueen (2018)
Two of the biggest inspirations for the look of Cruella, specifically Jenny Beavan‘s scene-stealing costume design, were fashion designers Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen. Coincidentally, both of them had great documentary features released in the summer of the same year. Lorna Tucker’s Westwood: Punk, Icon, Activist offers something of a biographical primer on its subject, though Westwood herself is not a fan of the film as a representation of her life and work (especially the “activist” part of the title). Ian Bonhôte and Peter Ettedgui’s McQueen is a more fascinating and compelling and cinematic documentary about its late subject. And possibly even more relevant.
“From a character standpoint it was Alexander McQueen for me,” Gillespie told the Los Angeles Times. “His rebellion against the establishment and the shock value of his shows and the creative outrageousness of some of his work. I felt like that was very much in character with what Cruella was trying to do. It’s obviously not like anything that he was doing, but the aggressiveness of the pop-up [fashion shows] she does throughout the film is similar. And being able to create her own narrative with the press was something I took inspiration from with McQueen.”
Available to stream on Kanopy and Hulu, respectively.
Joker (2018) and Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) (2020)
Everyone had jokes about how Cruella looked like Disney’s take on Joker, but as seen in a quote from a Radio Times interview above, Craig Gillespie acknowledges the likeness if not the influence. Why wouldn’t someone want to be compared to the DC Comics villain origin story anyway, given that it was nominated for eleven Oscars, including Best Picture, and won two, including Best Actor for star Joaquin Phoenix? Disney rarely seems to care about awards recognition, but I don’t think they’d mind one of their live-action redos having that sort of respect from the industry. Alas, Cruella can only really expect nominations for costumes and makeup/hair. How funny/sad would it be, though, if Stone won an Oscar for playing Cruella de Vil instead of Glenn Close?
You could think of other DC movies as precursors to Cruella, too, since she has a bit of the Bruce Wayne/Batman complex of revolving her life’s work around the death of her parent and taking on a double life as a mysterious figure — one who makes cool clothes and causes a bit of competitive mischief rather than one who makes cool clothes and gadgets and goes after criminals vigilante-style. Burton’s Batman (1989) also has the coincidence of the main villain being the one who killed the parent. But last year’s Birds of Prey makes the most sense since Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn is an easy antihero model for Cruella, from her voiceover narration to her rebellious personality to her fashion sense. It’s like Cruella is the Joker and Harley’s love child.
Available to stream on HBO Max.
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