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There have been a lot of comments online about this film and for what they are worth, here are mine.

To start I have to say that I’ve never been a great fan of Disney’s apparent mission to remake nearly all of their animated films in live action. As a rule they are pale imitations of what has become before and I don’t like the implicit suggestion that these movies need replacing, especially when they are the studio’s real legacy. There are some old fashioned ideas behind some of them but that is not the motivation. One way or another though, it feels like this trend is coming to an end. Discounting the ones that are already in production I reckon there are only eleven left that they can do, these being The Sword in the Stone, The Rescuers, The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron, Oliver & Company, Tarzan, The Princess and the Frog, Frozen, Big Hero 6, Raya and the Last Dragon and Encanto.

This isn’t the whole of their remaining back catalogue but there are a few that I don’t think they are going to want to go near, either due to cultural sensibilities as with Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, or because apart from anything else the originals do not represent great moments in the company’s history. See here Atlantis, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, Home on the Range, Chicken Little, Meet the Robinsons, Bolt, Strange World and Wish.

Then there are the few that absolutely will not work in this medium like The Great Mouse Detective, The Emperor’s New Groove, Wreck it Ralph and Zootopia. This said they are apparently planning a new version of 1973’s Robin Hood where the characters will still be anthropomorphic animals and I cannot picture what that will look like. Actually yes I can, it will look like Tom Hooper’s Cats.

(Part of me is curious to see a photo real Home on the Range. It would be Babe meets City Slickers.)

For the record, even though it’s box office failure kind of marked the enforced end of traditional 2 cell animation at the studio I love Treasure Planet and think it could look amazing in a ‘real world’ setting. From that initial list though, I predict we’ll get new versions of Frozen and The Princess and the Frog and that could be it. 

Another factor of course is that this Snow White has not made them the money that has presumably been the motivation for this whole initiative. Tangled was one of those slated to be updated but in the light of this film’s reception it has been canned and others like Bambi and The Aristocats may follow. 

If I’m honest I wonder if there hasn’t been a little bit of studio hubris here. Like those other four films mentioned, I’m not sure this was ever going to work the way they have made it. Almost as soon as it announced people have been decrying the whole thing. I’m not talking about those who objected to the casting of Rachel Zegler because she is Latina, they are idiots. Let’s not forget that the same sections of the poisonous internet community moaned about Halle Bailey playing the Little Mermaid because ‘in reality you don’t get black mermaids’. No these moron’s, probably mostly middle aged men, can keep their thoughts on a movie aimed at young children to themselves. (It breaks my heart that this seems to have lead to horrid levels of social media hate for Rachel Zegler but this is sadly in reality what you do get.) 

I give more credence to the words of Peter Dinklage who has every right to question the decision to bring the famous seven dwarves back to the big screen when this whole idea perpetuates awful stereotypes about those with achondroplasia and skeletal dysplasia. Appearing on Marc Maron’s podcast he stated:

“They were very proud to cast a Latina actress as Snow White. You’re still telling the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Take a step back and look at what you’re doing there. It makes no sense to me. You’re progressive in one way and you’re still making that f*cking backwards story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together.”

Disney responded to say they wouldn’t be doing this, to which a number of small actors including Glee’s Matt McCarthy and stuntman Choon Tan then objected in kind saying this was robbing their community of employment opportunities. They couldn’t win.

As it is the movie does the worst thing possible by doing the dwarves with CGI, meaning no short performers got the gig and essentially recreating the same regressive imagery they did back in 1937. One of them is voiced by Martin Klebba who was the little guy aboard the Black Pearl in Pirates of the Caribbean and there is an actor with dwarfism elsewhere in the cast so Disney have tried but these seven characters are undoubtedly the worst thing in the movie. They totally jar with everything else. 

One of the things that Rachel Zegler has been bizarrely criticised for is saying that the original film was dated and had some significantly sexist elements. It seems some Disney purists didn’t like this but she is of course totally correct. Ultimately though the final film fails to properly correct this as well. They have made Snow White stronger for sure, and she has an established romantic relationship with the man who later kisses her while she is asleep (to be fair to the bloke, her life did depend on it) but like the inclusion of the dwarves there are some story beats the established narrative means you regrettably have to leave in. So we still get the non-consensual lip locking (for reasons just stated it was never as problematic here as in Sleeping Beauty) but worse, this otherwise smart and sensible woman still immediately takes a bite of an apple given to her by a stranger when she doesn’t appear to actually be at all hungry and despite the fact she knows the queen is sending lots of people to try and kill her. These key moments don’t fit in with how they have otherwise tried to improve her characterisation. 

I know why they wanted to give Snow White the live action treatment, as the first movie they made it is one of the big ones. It would have been better if they had taken it in a totally different direction though, as with Maleficent and Cruella. Gal Gadot is good as the Evil Queen and could totally have carried the film if they’d wanted to reinvent her. It has to be said that Rachel Zegler is also great in the movie. Neither of them are at any fault here. Note, the queen’s fate is another thing they fumble in the attempt to make it more palatable. 

Having said all of this I don’t want to be a hypocrite. I know that I am also not the target audience and unlike others I accept that, while I have it and I’ve shared it, this kind of devalues my opinion. Taken as a kid’s film this is fine. It doesn’t have any great narrative sophistication and the comedy characters are annoying but that is true of lots of family movies. It has a strong anti-bullying message that should be celebrated, there are (some) distinct feminist themes and the whole story has a nice sense of justice and morality. It won’t work for a lot of people but it’s Snow White (note the absence of the dwarves in the title, in fact note the total exclusion of that word from the entire thing), so if you are under seven and you like fairy tales then it is a magical movie with a pretty good message. 

The message for Disney perhaps is to be more selective on where they go from here and in the end this might something good to have come out of it too.