Femme Fatale Retellings: Anti-heroes in Cruella deVil, Maleficent & Harley Quinn

Cruella de Vil, Maleficent, Harley Quinn got retellings in Cruella (2021), Maleficent (2014), Birds of Prey (2020).

A femme fatale is an almost omnipresent trope in fairytales or practically any story involving a female villain. Over the years, the femme fatale became synonymous with your everyday enchantress, siren, witch, seductress, etc. A femme fatale is the archetype of a ‘bad woman’—she’s seductive, she “tricks” men, she’s ambitious. However, recent retellings of some of the most iconic female villains have opened up a new side to their stories—the villain’s retelling as the anti-hero.

First, there is Maleficent, the merciless ‘mistress of evil’ who curses a child to 100 years of sleep (or death depending on which version you refer to). In Disney’s adaptation of the age-old tale, titled Sleeping Beauty (1959), one of the “good fairies” Fauna says, “Maleficent doesn’t know anything about love or kindness or the joy of helping others.”

Second, there is the fashion goddess (and alleged puppy killer, or at least she tries) Cruella de Vil, who is so vindictive and glamorous that she became an icon. The lean, slightly crazed woman with a black-and-white mullet, who runs an empire, has a memorable introduction song which says: This vampire bat, this inhuman beast. She ought to be locked up and never released.

Third, Harley Quinn. Harley Quinn’s story is a little different from the fairytale villains. Unlike Maleficent and Cruella, there is scope for empathy when it comes to Harley Quinn, previously Dr. Harleen Quinzel (more on that soon). The evil Quinn faces is sexualization, and frankly, disrespect to a character who is one of DC Comics’ most successful villains.

Why Do Origin Stories (Or Re-imaginations) Help?

In ‘Bad Guy: Psychological Perspectives’ by Keen, McCoy, and Powell, the authors cite that a viewer’s reaction to a character is based on “how much information we have about the actor.” That’s what origin stories do. They give us a perspective about the “villain’s” motivations and mostly, empathetic storylines. Edward Said said, “History is written by those who win and those who dominate.” The stories above are told by the ‘victors’, the “good guys”.

Consider their motivations: In Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent, the ‘Mistress of Evil’, is driven by rage because she didn’t get an invitation to a christening. In 101 Dalmatians (1996), Cruella wants to murder and skin puppies, for a coat.

Harley, who first appears in Suicide Squad, (not considering Batman: The Animated Series where she plays a pretty badass antagonist) is driven by the need to impress her ‘puddin’—the Joker. There is no question that Quinn is in an abusive relationship—the Joker manipulates and gaslights her into helping him break out of prison, often abandons her in life- threatening situations, and actually doesn’t seem to care about her a lot.

(Not-so-fun Fact: In the comic ‘Injustice: War Among Gods: Year Two’ Harley Quinn tells Black Canary that she has a daughter ‘Lucy’ who ‘Mistah J’ (Joker) doesn’t know about. She adds that she vanished for a year and he didn’t care.)

Their motivations are downplayed to an extent where you couldn’t possibly empathise with these villains—a ‘baby curser’, a ‘puppy hunter’, and a woman so sexualised that she barely has a human identity outside of ‘Joker’s girl’.

Oh, These Evil Women and Their Evil Deeds

Weirdly enough, for Maleficent and Cruella, their treatment ends with their basic motivations and ‘evil deeds’. Maleficent, modelled into a witchy archetype, is surrounded by green flames, cackles maniacally, and attacks everything in her path. She curses a baby to death—a baby born to a supposedly perfect King and Queen who wouldn’t hurt a fly. Cruella hires henchmen to kidnap Dalmatian puppies and orders them to be killed and turned into a coat to complement her vanity.

Harley Quinn (Margot Robbie) features in Suicide Squad, as the ditzy killing machine who is clearly a very skilled fighter but constantly waits for the Joker to come and save her, which he does. She is dressed in an uncomfortably tight crop top and (barely there) shorts. The issue isn’t her outfit, it’s the way she is presented. She is clearly filmed very differently from the men in her team, dressed to the tee in tactical gear. The men, and the camera, constantly ogle at her, while the world is literally ending. In the film, she’s often seen dancing seductively in bars while seducing anybody the Joker asks her to (he does ‘trade’ her at some point).

A Deeper Dive: Who Are These Women?

The character of Maleficent can be traced as far as the 19th century, to a story called ‘Lang Live’ in ‘Percefrost’. However, in the story, Maleficent’s ‘predecessor’ could be the goddess Themis, who is angered when her offering falls short of the other goddesses. The princess Zellandine, cursed, falls asleep. The prince, Troylus, is berated till he impregnates a sleeping Zellandine (yes, that is sexual assault—a theme that is consistent across almost all variations of the story).

That is, however, a loose relation. Giambattista Basile’s ‘Sole, Luna, e Talia’ has no witch, no ‘curse’. But the princess does fall into a slumber because of a splinter of flax. Again, a king impregnates her (sigh) and returns to his wife. His wife is now the villain, driven by jealousy, and tries to kill the princess and the kids.

Cruella de Vil was created by British playwright Dodie Smith in her 1956 novel ‘The 101 Dalmatians’. She was a spoilt socialite and actually had a husband and a cat (both missing from the movies), but she did love fashion. She is written as a domineering woman with a ‘meek husband’ who does what she asks. She does express an interest in Dalmatian puppies, and puts too much pepper in her food.

Harley Quinn’s origins can be traced to actor Arleen Sorkin, who played a character based on a jester in an episode of the soap Days of Our Lives. Variety reports that Paul Dini wrote the character for the animated series Batman: The Animated Series. In the series, she is unapologetically unhinged and a homicidal maniac in her own right, and in the comics too, she has a very moral side (she refuses to fight Black Canary when she realises the latter is pregnant, she also reunites a family at some point).

In the animated series, she kicks a cop in the shin for leering at her, and also is gleefully aware that people will underestimate her, often using her kooky, doe-eyed persona to distract her enemies before killing them. And her costume is based a lot on that of a jester (which is what makes the Suicide Squad male gaze even more infuriating).

Femme Fatale to (Anti) Heroes

Maleficent got her redemption in Maleficent (2014) where she is introduced as a faerie (one of the mystical creatures called fae). She (played by Angelina Jolie) protects the moors she lives in and is surrounded by creatures that light up when she’s around. A young Maleficent trusts a man she meets (enough to reveal her weakness) and is awfully betrayed. Stefan snips her wings off (a homage to Maleficent's supposed connection to Lilith and an acknowledgment to the act of sexual assault evident in the source material), and abandons her to be king. So yes, she is pretty miffed.

She curses princess Aurora (in a curse picked almost verbatim from the Disney classic) but in a turn of events, grows close to the child. Because, Maleficent isn’t the mistress of evil, she is just a wronged woman with woefully misplaced anger. She becomes Aurora’s ‘godmother’ while King Arthur becomes obsessed with revenge. Perhaps the most telling part about the film is the complete omission of the ‘male saviour’. The ‘true love’ isn’t a man she’s met briefly in the woods, it’s the woman who has practically raised her.

As Aurora narrates, “So you see, the story is not quite as you were told… In the end, my kingdom was united not by a hero, or a villain, as legend had predicted but by one who was both hero and villain.”

Cruella de Vil has the most recent adaptation with the 2021 release Cruella which tells the story of a ‘trouble child’ who is orphaned at a really young age. She is a menace but she loves her mother so when she is taken from her, she resorts to survival with what she knows best: fashion.

Unlike the previous adaptations, her motive isn’t puppy murder, or even revenge, it is ambition. She wants to become a fashion designer and she sets forth to do so, and in a serendipitous turn of events, comes face-to-face with her mother’s killer. Cruelly, it’s her idol.

In Cruella, she does kidnap Dalmatians, but there are no puppies, and it is proved soon enough that she doesn’t kill them. Instead, she ends up raising them as her own and Anita is actually her closest friend and ally. “The thing is, I was born brilliant. Born bad. And a little bit mad,” Cruella (played by Emma Stone) declares before she goes off to get revenge. In the film, an orphan child is so wronged that you cannot view her as a villain anymore, mostly because most of her villainous deeds involve upstaging an unlikeable rival. The only flaw in this film is that it's so derivative of iconic pop culture stories (think Devil Meets Prada meets Birds of Prey).

A segue into the Harley Quinn origin story, and the film’s aim is in the title: Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). The movie, directed by Cathy Yan, introduces Quinn (Robbie) to her story completely devoid of the Joker. She and her ‘puddin’ are done for good and she must create a path for herself without his protection, which puts a huge target on her back.

What the movie does well is that it shows Quinn in the throes of heartbreak and it’s messy—she binge-watches TV, eats loads of ice cream and chips, mascara running down her face.

The movie encapsulates Quinn for who she was intended to be, a maniac killer who is ditzy and hilarious, and insanely good at fighting. Unlike Suicide Squad (2016), Quinn isn’t filmed from one body part to another, she is filmed from action to action.

Like Cruella, Birds of Prey tells a story of female allyship. It also acknowledges Harley Quinn’s identity as a Jewish queer villain. She is flirtatious and intense, but she is fighting in her own right.

All the choices she makes whether evil, morally ubiquitous, or downright stupid are hers to make. Not Joker’s, not Batman’s, hers.

With an unlikely bunch of equally impressive women, each with their own motivations—revenge, frustration, survival, the greater good—Harley Quinn is ‘emancipated’ as a villain. Quinn, unlike the fairytale women, is a villain; that can’t be questioned. The filmmakers understand that white-washing Quinn into a flawless hero would only ruin her, and in the end, she goes back to the life she wants to lead—lawless chaos.

In recent years, there has been a rise in women-led stories and feminist retellings of usual formula tropes. However, these reimaginings of female villains bring in a new aspect—those female characters don’t have to be perfect; they can stumble, they can be angry, and they can emerge victorious without putting down other women.