Courtesy of twentieth Century Studios
Gird your loins. Miranda Priestly is again.
Twenty years later, the formidable editor of New York vogue journal Runway nonetheless stalks rooms in stilettos, serving the identical icy precision and deadly side-eye in “The Satan Wears Prada 2.” However this sequel is doing one thing surprising for a film about couture and cutthroat ambition: it’s genuinely thinking about what journalism truly appears like in 2026. Which is to say, hanging by a thread.
Nobody was precisely begging “The Satan Wears Prada 2” to grapple with media consolidation, billionaire buyouts, or the gradual hollowing-out of institutional journalism within the age of social algorithms. And but, right here it’s, quietly waving a white flag on the actuality that magazines, like newspapers earlier than them, are combating for survival. Runway is not simply deciding hemlines; it’s chasing clicks, pleasing company overlords, and desperately trying to stay culturally related in a panorama that punishes endurance and nuance. The shock is just not that the movie addresses these points, however that it does so with sincerity.
Miranda, as soon as once more performed with thrilling dominance by Meryl Streep, is not permitted the excesses that when outlined her reign. Throwing coats at assistants, humiliating employees, or casually fat-shaming workers is not thought of acceptable, and the movie well lets her really feel that reckoning somewhat than sanding down her edges (who knew the journal had an HR division?!). That is what a very good sequel ought to be doing: interrogating the world that made the unique doable, and asking whether or not its energy buildings can survive unchanged.
That doesn’t imply nostalgia is absent. The gravitational pull of its solid is plain. Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Stanley Tucci return with heightened star energy, and it’s a testomony to the filmmakers that the reunion feels purposeful as a substitute of company. This isn’t a hole reenactment or a greatest-hits remix. “Prada 2” has tooth, and sometimes it bites.
Persona-wise, little or no has modified. Andy Sachs (Hathway) continues to be recognizable because the beady-eyed, formidable journalist we met in 2006, solely now she has the résumé to match her confidence. When the movie opens, she is working at a revered information group that promptly collapses after a mega-billionaire acquisition strips it of its journalistic backbone. Together with her ideas intact however her job gone, Andy finds herself unable to dismiss the chance to return to Runway as a options editor simply because the journal turns into embroiled in controversy over a questionable company partnership.
What she finds is a publication in decline. Budgets are slashed, status has eroded, and metrics rule every little thing. The irony is sharp: Miranda Priestly, as soon as the ultimate phrase on style, is now pressured to undertake a hole company model of “physique positivity” and brand-safe advantage, none of which she appears to imagine for a second. The movie will get actual mileage out of watching Miranda chafe in opposition to this neutered model of energy. She takes Ubers as a substitute of personal automobiles. She flies coach as a substitute of top notch. For her, these are real indignities, and the film performs them with understanding, merciless humor.
If there’s a flaw, it’s the movie’s incapacity to completely belief its strongest materials. The narrative is cluttered with romantic subplots that really feel compulsory somewhat than natural. Andy’s limp courtship with an Australian actual property developer, performed by Patrick Brammall, is especially inert, a chemistry-free digression that provides nothing to her arc. Kenneth Branagh fares little higher as Miranda’s beau, who additionally occurs to be a string quartet violinist. These diversions dilute the movie’s sharper observations and distract from its central battle.
The cameos are plentiful, although the absence of Anna Wintour looms giant, particularly given how unapologetically Miranda stays modeled on her. Emily Blunt, fortunately, arrives with function. Her Emily has flourished, now operating advertising at Dior, and her finest scene entails turning Miranda’s personal weapons in opposition to her in a bracing trade that crackles with long-simmering resentment. Blunt clearly delights in returning to the world that jumpstarted her profession, and the movie is smarter each time it lets her chew the surroundings.
Stanley Tucci, in the meantime, stays the key weapon. His presence alone reminds you why the unique endured for twenty years. Heat, biting, and impeccably calibrated, Tucci operates because the movie’s ethical middle with out ever slipping into sentimentality.
In the end, “The Satan Wears Prada 2” works as a result of it understands why individuals liked the unique and why merely repeating it might not be sufficient. With a lot of the unique artistic staff again, together with screenwriter Aline Brosh McKenna and director David Frankel, the movie respects the mechanics of that enchantment whereas acknowledging that the world has shifted underneath its ft.
It’s also hanging to contemplate the cultural context. The primary movie counterprogrammed in opposition to “Superman Returns.” Twenty years later, the steadiness of energy feels inverted. This film is the occasion image now, a shiny ensemble blockbuster about survival, relevance, and empire administration. On this panorama, Miranda Priestly is just not competing with superheroes. She is one.
Batman by no means stood an opportunity.
THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2 is now enjoying in theaters.