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Disney Fans Are Loving Emma Stone’s Performance In Cruella

For the most part, Disney's procession of live-action remakes based on the studio's extensive animated back catalogue have been functional and serviceable, if far from spectacular. The vast majority of them don't add anything to the pre-existing stories with the exception of tacking on some subplots to pad out the running time, and when it was first announced, Cruella reeked of creative bankruptcy.

Cruella

For the most part, Disney’s procession of live-action remakes based on the studio’s extensive animated back catalogue have been functional and serviceable, if far from spectacular. The vast majority of them don’t add anything to the pre-existing stories with the exception of tacking on some subplots to pad out the running time, and when it was first announced, Cruella reeked of creative bankruptcy.

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101 Dalmatians had already been remade with Glenn Close and got a sequel, and there’s hardly been a huge volume of fans desperate to find out her origin story in the meantime. The period piece had been in development for almost a decade before director Craig Gillespie and Emma Stone finally cracked the formula, too, and it wouldn’t be an understatement to say that Cruella couldn’t find a better star.

Without having to copy and paste the animated original directly onto the screen, the movie is free to tell whatever kind of tale it wants, and while that tale is probably 20 minutes too long and some of the intended emotional beats are unintentionally hilarious, fans can’t get enough of Stone’s towering performance, as you can see from the reactions below.

https://twitter.com/citayfrase/status/1398312686643974152

https://twitter.com/Darlingdekill/status/1398308112445198339

https://twitter.com/l1ving_deadgirl/status/1398302855610646532

https://twitter.com/__madisonleigh/status/1398302176024346629

https://twitter.com/taylorsjacey/status/1398300152754970625

This weekend marks the first time in a while that two major titles are releasing at the same time, with Cruella up against A Quiet Place Part II in the race to top the box office, but the horror sequel might win out in the end given that the former is scoring a hybrid debut on Disney Plus Premier Access.

Cruella is easily one of Disney’s better live-action retreads, though, and should hopefully set a precedent that telling a much more original story with a familiar property is a whole lot better than an uninspired beat-for-beat reimagining.