I don’t know... having read the plots of both Cruella and Maleficent in Wikipedia, I think that cruella is the “bad” movie in that Cruella does not reform. Maleficent is betrayed and this embittered and tries to get revenge, but regrets it. Cruella just stays bad and does not reform.
The whole issue of Maleficent being a strong and complex woman the world is not ready for is utter BS. It is disturbing when people make drastic changes to stories that are embedded in tradition, because people don’t like their views jostled like that, but the story of the movie Maleficent is also a common one: person is betrayed, vows revenge and becomes evil, sees the results, and reforms.
Cruella seems (from the description in Wikipedia) to be a story of someone who is embittered and just gets worse.
The problem is that Maleficent even feeling regret for what she did, much less trying to redeem herself for it, goes against the entire nature of her character, basically Disney’s devil figure. It would be like, to use an example, Frieza from Dragon Ball all of a sudden regretting his misdeeds. Heck, in the original movie, she wasn’t even motivated by revenge, that was just an excuse, she just loved being a heinous villain.