[This story contains spoilers for the live-action Snow White remake.]
When Rachel Zegler spoke out after being forged as Snow White within the 2025 remake of the identical identify from Walt Disney Footage, she courted controversy by stating how the 1937 unique shouldn’t be precisely a flattering depiction of a powerful younger lady.
However whereas a few of the loudest members of the social-media universe had been mad at her for daring to level out a few of the flaws of an almost 90-year previous movie, she was removed from mistaken in noting that any remake could be in want of distinctive overhauls to make sure that it will resonate with a Twenty first-century viewers. And when actor Peter Dinklage criticized Disney for redoing the story during which a good maiden groups up with seven little folks, identified familiarly as dwarves, he additionally wasn’t mistaken.
The brand new Snow White, like quite a lot of the opposite Disney live-action/CG remakes of its animated classics, tries arduous to string a inventive needle. The movie desires to pay sufficient fealty to the previous whereas additionally carving out one thing new for the long run. Or, to place it extra straight (and to nod to this movie’s love of a selected fruit), it tries to have its apple pie and eat it too. It’s virtually shocking that at the least one particular change in Snow White works; it’s much less surprising that one other particular change is especially painful to expertise.
Whereas it’s true that this Snow White follows the identical primary story construction because the 1937 unique – the eponymous heroine is terrorized by a useless and evil Queen (Gal Gadot) for being extra stunning, main Snow White to befriend the dwarves, get introduced again to life by her real love, and thwart the Queen’s villainy – the love story is significantly expanded upon. Most notably, this time Snow White doesn’t look ahead to a prince to come back (nor does she even sing “Sometime My Prince Will Come”). As an alternative, her love curiosity is an enthralling bandit named Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), reduce from the identical material because the animated Flynn from Disney’s Tangled.
Zegler and Burnap have a reasonable quantity of allure collectively, doing their finest to construct upon the extraordinarily, virtually laughably primary romance between Snow White and her anonymous Prince within the animated movie. The truth that Jonathan nonetheless has to deliver a cursed Snow White again to life courtesy of real love’s kiss (after she eats the poisoned apple handed to her by the evil Queen in disguise) is actually surprising. Contemplating that the romance is so drastically totally different, and for good motive, having Snow White come to life through a chaste kiss feels virtually too old school.
(L-R) Jonathan (Andrew Burnap) and Snow White (Rachel Zegler) in Snow White
Giles Keyte/Disney
The flip facet of this sort of cheap and mildly profitable change is Dopey. Not the idea of being dopey, thoughts you, however the precise character. It’s true that whereas all seven of the dwarves are within the movie, the phrase “dwarf” is rarely uttered. (Not like within the unique movie, Snow White doesn’t check with them as “little males.”) The best way the dwarves are visually depicted, in garish “photo-realistic” CG, is probably the most troubling and ugly facet of Snow White, nevertheless it’s additionally one thing that audiences have had the possibility to arrange for since Disney launched a manufacturing nonetheless final yr.
No, the massive change comes with Dopey, whose major trait in his animated type – that he doesn’t communicate – isn’t the case anymore. When the movie opens with the traditional Disney-storybook picture, we hear a younger man narrating, so the viewers can study Snow White’s backstory. It’s solely late within the movie when the plain turns into dreadfully clear: that narrator is Dopey himself (Andrew Barth Feldman), because it’s by Snow White’s kindness that Dopey is courageous sufficient to talk, surprising each her and the opposite dwarves.
There are different, smaller modifications to the story on this Snow White, equivalent to the truth that Jonathan isn’t simply not a prince, however can also be joined by a gaggle of would-be bandits/theatrical performers who struggle within the identify of Snow White’s father and try and encourage her to be as courageous as her late dad was.
There are additionally loads of new songs (even the trio of musical numbers carried over from the unique have intensive new lyrics from Benj Pasek and Justin Paul), although none of them have the identical particular, ineffable high quality of the originals. However it’s these two key modifications – turning Snow White’s happily-ever-after into one thing with element and dimension, and giving Dopey a literal voice – that function a captivating, if irritating, depiction of the inventive whiplash of the Disney remakes as an entire.
When Disney determined to remake Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, it was trafficking in nostalgia, nevertheless it was additionally moving into the identical minefield as when it remade Woman and the Tramp and Dumbo. Every of these originals have offensive depictions of non-white characters (just like the Siamese cats in Woman and the crows in Dumbo), and every of their 2019 remakes rightfully take away these depictions.
However the problem with doing proper by an older movie that will nonetheless boast followers because of constructive childhood reminiscences, whereas additionally grappling with these movies’ extra awkward and probably embarrassing features, is that you find yourself with one thing that’s meant to please everybody by difficult nobody.
Snow White undoubtedly desires to upend our expectations based mostly on our reminiscences of the 1937 unique. However it nonetheless desires to conclude with Snow White falling for a prince, and having been helped to her pleased ending by seven little males whose singular traits are of their respective names. This film, like the opposite remakes, desires to have it each methods and finally ends up going nowhere.