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The Devil Wears Prada 2 and the Modern Corporate Oligarchy

If a studio is going to make a lega-sequel, it should make the case for not only its own existence on its own terms but why it must exist at this point in time. Often these sequels are separated from the original by decades -they don’t exist in the same world, it would be meaningless to pretend otherwise. What does the movie have to say that is relevant now beyond its nods to the nostalgia of the past? Ideally it should go beyond simply lip service to new references or technologies.
There are really just a few of these types of sequels that are genuinely in conversation with the world that they are made in. Top Gun: Maverick was one. The Matrix Resurrections was another. And of all things, The Devil Wears Prada 2 is a third.
Perhaps that is an unreasonable tone. The Devil Wears Prada was very in-tune with the zeitgeist in 2006 as far as the world of high-end fashion magazines was concerned. It is a particular backdrop and one that has changed in monumental ways since that cannot be ignored. After all, just look at the model for the film’s fictional Runway publication: Vogue is still associated with fashion, but in the age of the digital economy, brand hegemonies and corporate conglomerations, it has mutated into something far broader and less distinct -even under the auspices of its long-time editor-in-chief Anna Wintour (retired last year), upon whom of course the main character here is based.
Meryl Streep slips right back into those gaudy shoes of Miranda Priestly, still the powerhouse boss at Runway, even as Runway has gone astray of the brand's original aims -bought out by a conglomerate and in the midst of a P.R. crisis that Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway), once Miranda's assistant and now an award-winning journalist, is called upon to navigate after losing her own job to soulless corporate interests.
The movements of big corporations, and specifically the kind of short-sighted narcissistic oligarchs who run them is the major theme of the film, casting Miranda from early on out of the icy though tragic villain role she occupied in the first movie and into the more humane, if mean and impatient, girl-boss heroine type she was already somewhat assigned by the fans of the first film. It is a change in framing that comes as a surprise, especially from returning director David Frankel and writer Aline Brosh McKenna. Yet it makes sense -Miranda may have seemed like the biggest fish in the pond twenty years ago, but now she is upstaged by a whole coterie of brash upstarts with far more power than she could ever wield; and her rigor, sternness, and ruthlessness can easily be reframed as virtues in service of honest principles. It does take away some bite from the film that its predecessor wasn't lacking and has a touch of appeasement to Wintour about it. But it is also easy to accept in the modern elite business landscape.
There are multiple avatars to this introduced in the film, from Justin Theroux's dopey Jeff Bezos-coded billionaire Benji pathetically buying anything for love and respect, to the David Ellison-like obnoxious scion to Runway's parent company, played by B.J. Novak, and his collective of business-bro associates. In the focus the script has on the dangers posed by these figures and the fate of Runway and its integrity, parried about on whims between them, the movie comes to almost resemble an episode of Succession, down to the very timely commentary on billionaire capitalist excess devaluing brands and crippling whole industries. That several of the starkest developments related to this go down in Milan during the film's latter half only adds to the comparison. But it is an apt one on more than just subject and aesthetics, the film is similarly earnest and effective (if not quite so vicious) in shining its spotlight, calling out these actors and companies and the consequences of their mergers and monopolies. The film has an axe to grind entirely independent of where this movie came from, but those characters and that world adapts well to it.
Streep was the obvious stand-out factor of the original film to the point that it honestly wouldn’t be a particularly good or memorable movie without her. The other actors were alright, but were very strikingly eclipsed by a performance that has gone down as one of Streep’s most iconic. Here though the ensemble feels more egalitarian. Streep is still great, but Hathaway has now matured as an actress enough to match her with a performance of stirring conviction and confidence, even if her character lapses at times into the familiar dynamic that is a little more awkward this time around. Most notably, Emily Blunt, who was largely unknown when she made her Hollywood debut on the first film, is naturally a far more prominent presence in this movie with a curious, complicated relationship to both Miranda and Andy. Largely unchanged though is Stanley Tucci as the biting, endearing Nigel -Miranda’s right hand and Andy’s trusted confidante- occupying a space of a little more earned gravitas, again reflecting Tucci’s greater rise to prominence in these intervening twenty years.
His betrayal at the hands of Miranda at the end of the first movie lingers over his presence here -as do Miranda's actions towards each of the other characters she had wronged. A rehabilitated image gets in the way of satisfyingly accounting for these in the script, especially where her relationship with Andy is concerned; and it feels messily applied to one character arc in particular that gets the story away from the stronger fixation on apathetic billionaire greed as a driving evil and into something more personal and thus detached. It makes an amount of storytelling sense but also feels a touch cheap next to the satire.
What's also cheap are the various nostalgia cues the movie engages in from time to time, including some jokes and a couple replicated needle-drops. They do tend to stutter the momentum of the movie's more serious corners. The story for example doesn't need another romantic subplot for Andy -this time with a realtor played by Patrick Brammall- to be a foil for her values. Though some of these beats admittedly are just side-effects of Frankel's direction, which is not conspicuous but still more deliberate than a lot of its legacy-sequel peers. Clearly this is a movie made by someone from an older brand of directorial mediocrity made more exceptional by the current landscape.
A keen reflection of these times, and in terms of the movie's content being concerned with the same and the ambiguous future for businesses like Runway, there is a bittersweet note to how it arrives at its conclusion. One might look at it on its face and deduce an assertion of faith in "good" billionaires, but there is a more intelligent subtext suggesting the impermanence of any happy ending for this brand. It is factors and systems beyond the control of Miranda, Andy and their ilk that continue to pose a threat, and this movie is very right to expose and castigate them. And certainly that is more than I expected out of The Devil Wears Prada 2. It falls victim to other lega-sequel tropes and is less tight a script than it imagines itself. But while some of the re-framing is cynical it is also warranted by what the movie aims to say, what it aims to be for the world that it finds itself up against. Miranda Priestly was unequivocally the titular devil of the first movie. But this time around, it's not so simple -the Devil Wears a Rolex.

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