We are all so used to the story of the hero’s journey that in 2017 everyone was shocked when Ryan Johnson decided to turn it over Star Wars: The Last Jedi. star Wars is one of the great American stories, and much of its popularity is based on the revelation that Luke Skywalker is the son of Darth Vader. He is not a country boy from nowhere; he is the son of one of the most powerful men in the galaxy, and hence his power is hereditary. Of course, such stories go back to antiquity, where the heroes are associated with the gods. The Last Jedi turned that relationship on its head, arguing that its protagonist really came from nowhere, had no special background, and that greatness could come from anywhere.
Some people didn’t like it and spoke very loudly about it. Rise of Skywalker tried to seriously correct course (Rey Palpatine!), and now it seems that the notion that the protagonist is not tied to the world in which he inhabits seems to be forbidden. We saw it in Mortal Kombat when will the new character Cole Young appear (Lewis Tan) is a descendant of Scorpion, allowing him to compete in the Mortal Kombat tournament. We saw it again with Disney Cruella.
Mama Twist doesn’t change Cruella’s motivation
In the second act, the turn, the audience and Cruella (Emma Stone) find out that her mother was not the kind woman who was thrown off a cliff by dogs. She is the daughter of the film’s villain, the Baroness (Emma Thompson). The movie tries to reconcile this by claiming that what makes Cruella “brilliant, bad and a bit crazy” is that she is descended from someone just as ruthless, so I’m assuming she carries the evil gene (I imagine imagine some chromosomes with a grumpy face towards them). Cruella then finds herself in a position where she has to get revenge on her biological mother, which I guess ups the stakes, except that Cruella’s goal isn’t actually to find the mother figure, but to get revenge on the baroness. Claiming that the Baroness is Cruella’s biological mother (and also tried to kill Cruella as an infant) doesn’t really change the protagonist’s motives or goals.
This disclosure seems to be part of an attempt to prove that importance is ultimately inherited. On the one hand, this is obviously a simple script designation of stakes and dramatic conflict. It’s a bit of a soap opera (and works with Cruella campy atmosphere) that the woman she has wanted to conquer all this time is her biological mother. Now you have an extra layer of conflict. Technically, you also have an “explanation” for Cruella’s behavior. But you also made the world smaller and more dependent on coincidences. A protagonist who has a family relationship with an antagonist does not make the text richer if the protagonist and antagonist have nothing to lose by breaking up their relationship.
Is evil really hereditary? Nope.
Obviously the relationship is more egregious in Rise of Skywalker where it not only deviates from what was established in the previous movie, but also that Rey and Palpatine never even met, but it should be important that he is her grandfather. At least in Cruella there is an employer-employee relationship between the Baroness and Cruella, but it is ultimately foolish to ask viewers to believe that the character’s personality is heavily influenced by a genetic relationship they have never met. I suppose we could try to get into a nature vs. nurture argument, but from a dramatic standpoint, you’re working against yourself if you claim that all of your character’s personal experiences are minimized by the discovery on Ancestry.com.
I hope this trend dries up like the storytelling trends before it (remember the early 2010s when the character’s blood was the most important MacGuffin?), because the “legacy is the most important revelation” subtext is blown away to any character’s path. This makes it so that a discovery tangentially related to the protagonist is out of their control, rather than something systemic or difficult to understand, but remains individualized, albeit in a nonsensical way. It doesn’t matter that Cruella is the daughter of a baroness, because it doesn’t significantly change the character or the story. Cruella doesn’t try to win over the Baroness or start a new relationship. She always knew that the baroness would try to push her off the cliff, so she gathered everyone to watch and made sure she had a parachute. It is a revelation that creates the illusion of character and conflict, but provides neither.
Source: Collider
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