Villains don't have to be sympathetic.

Fair warning, this is going to be more of a rant than anything else, but this has been bugging me all day. Also, there may be a few spoilers for anyone who hasn't seen 101 Dalmations.

Disney is doing an "origin" story for the villain Cruella DeVil, the antagonist of the 101 Dalmations movies.

Now, why? Are they really scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas?

Now, here's the thing for me. A lot of villains and even monsters can be sympathetic. Take the shark from JAWS. He's not swimming around the island eating people because it wants to. It's an animal. It's hungry. While not a usual source of food, there's a lot of soft, pink things that don't fight back flopping around in the water that satisfy that hole in the stomach for a while. Some of them do have a hard shell to smash (boats), but still, an easy meal compared to chasing down a tuna or a seal. It's just an animal trying to live from one day to the next.

Some people are driven to villainy because they don't "fit in" with the heroes, or they look different and get ostracized and start acting out because that's how people expect them to act. Sometimes a character only looks like a villain because we're only shown things from the heroes point of view, even though the hero might do things that are exactly the same or worse through a different lens. How often do we see a hero avenge the death of a loved one on the villain and cheer, but boo when a villain's acts are driven by the same ideas of vengeance?

But this bitch. THIS bitch...

This bitch offers to buy all 99 puppies her "friend" has, and when she gets turned down, dog-naps them all to skin them alive and use their fur to make herself a Dalmation-skin coat. When the dogs escape, she gets in her car and nearly runs an innocent man off the road in her rage because the puppies were hiding in the back of his truck. Over the opportunity to wear dog-skins as fashion.

Now, to be fair, the movie's only been announced and other than Emma Stone playing the title role, we know nothing about it. It could be that Cruella is, like her namesake, a monster from the start. I can't really see much of a movie in that though. So it's likely a movie about how Cruella used to absolutely LOVE dalmations, the picture does show her with a few of her own. Maybe something horrible happens to them and she just can't get over their loss and literally wearing their skins is the only way she can feel close to them again?

Cruella is a pure villain. She's a fine character without being sympathetic.

I'm sorry, but No. There is nothing redeemable in the villain from 101 Dalmations. We don't need to feel pity for someone whose end goal is animal abuse and murder. We don't need to see how she went from a normal human being to a complete psychopath. We don't need a movie to make excuses for animal cruelty.

WE DON'T NEED A MOVIE TO MAKE EXCUSES FOR ANIMAL CRUELTY.

To me, this movie is a horrible fucking idea and shouldn't get made.

Period.

~ Shaun