The studio’s latest live-action remake shows hints of courage—but only hints.
Disney
March 24, 2025, 2:32 PM ET
Judging by some of the online comments aimed at Rachel Zegler, the star of Disney’s live-action version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, you’d think that she had done something unforgivable—set Cinderella Castle on fire, perhaps, or told Mickey Mouse he couldn’t wish upon a star. But Zegler had merely stated her opinion of the original 1937 film: that she finds it “extremely dated” and that, to her, the prince “literally stalks” Snow White. Her take on the protagonist, she said in interviews, would have more agency, which she believed would befit the expectations of a 21st-century audience.
Her remarks about the film—and her outspokeness in general, including about other, unrelated topics—have provoked furor across a remarkably wide swath of the internet: ardent fans of the earlier Snow White, apologists for the prince, defenders of the dynamics behind fantasy love stories. (Perhaps less unexpectedly, extreme right-wingers have also taken issue with a character named Snow White being played by a Latina actress; Zegler is of Colombian descent.) The film’s trailer drew criticism from viewers too, in keeping with the ongoing disapproval of Disney’s live-action redos.
It turns out that the backlash is a lot of noise for a movie that makes the bare-minimum effort to adapt its oft-adapted story—and didn’t resonate with theatergoers over its first weekend. (Snow White failed to clear $100 million at the global box office, falling far short of expectations.) The new version of the princess, while maintaining the warmth that has endeared her to generations of viewers, does get a more satisfying and robust journey than the one she undertakes in the classic animated film; she learns to become a confident leader, taking an active role in saving her kingdom from her stepmother, the Evil Queen (played by Gal Gadot). But updating Snow White herself turns out to be one of the only things that makes the new movie, now in theaters, compelling.
Much like Disney’s prior almost-shot-for-shot live-action remakes—including 2017’s Beauty and the Beast and 2023’s The Little Mermaid—Snow White seems to have been uneasy about how much story to actually rewrite and how live the action can be, given its heavy reliance on digitally rendered imagery. Most of its tweaks, apart from the ones made to Snow White, are superfluous; the film nips and tucks set pieces while padding its nearly two-hour run time with extraneous songs and dialogue. These cursory changes clash with its more modernized lead, and the resulting dissonance is particularly egregious. By stranding Snow White in garish landscapes opposite thinly written scene partners, the movie betrays her, undercutting her message about valuing inner beauty over vanity.
Read: Beauty and the Beast: a tale as old as time, told worse
At the risk of sounding superficial myself, just look at Snow White’s hair. The style is faithful to her animated look, but the live-action rendition offers an unnecessary explanation for it: In the prologue, a narrator tells us that the Evil Queen made her stepdaughter cut her hair short as a little girl; there’s even a quick shot of said chop. Never mind that the stiff bob doesn’t exactly suit Zegler—it doesn’t match the character’s evolution either, with her coif staying immaculate even after she flees into the woods. More off-putting are the computer-generated dwarves, who are uncannily realistic instead of agreeably cartoonish. They pull off impressively choreographed musical numbers, but there’s no shaking the strangeness of Snow White trading dialogue with such dead-eyed creations. That discordance extends beyond the aesthetic choices: Some of the bouncy, overproduced new songs, from the composers Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (the Oscar-winning duo who worked on La La Land and also co-wrote original numbers for the Aladdin remake), sound a tad too contemporary, at odds with the repurposed melodies of unassuming classics such as “Whistle While You Work.”
No wonder the audience at my screening seemed confused throughout most of the film. The dwarves’ slapsticky introduction, with them bumbling and falling over one another in the mines, didn’t elicit laughter; their jarring, waxy appearances made a child behind me yelp in fright. The Evil Queen’s solo tune, which Gadot strains to sing, ends with a big finish that left my theater completely silent—not in awe, but in apathy. Later, an ostensibly inspiring moment featuring one of the dwarves failed to draw the round of applause it seemed intended to encourage. The women next to me descended into a fit of giggles instead, while some people in the crowd gasped, alarmed at the scene’s out-of-nowhere reveal. (I was one of them.)
I like when Disney’s live-action remakes surprise me—I’d just prefer that they do so on purpose. They already tend to be safe bets for the studio, built for younger audiences while attracting adults who grew up with the animated features. But save for a handful of true reimaginings—Tim Burton’s introspective take on Dumbo in 2019, or Niki Caro’s martial-arts-heavy Mulan from 2020, which went underseen largely because of COVID-19 restrictions—the bulk of these endeavors have been copy-and-paste jobs. They’re costly projects that may draw crowds based on name recognition alone, but what if they conjured magic rather than mere nostalgia? Let’s see the Evil Queen be materialistic and not just talk-sing about it. Let’s make the forest actually enchanted and not just the backdrop for cuddly woodland creatures. Let’s try giving Snow White some more of the horror shading the Brothers Grimm gave the fairy tale. The princess already “dies,” after all.
Read: Tim Burton’s Dumbo is a dark interpretation that really soars
Besides, as serviceable as these half-hearted adaptations may be to theatergoers, they tend to waste the talent involved. Gifted composers have to assemble pale imitations of popular musical numbers, accomplished visual-effects artists spend months making facsimiles of scenes that will always look more kinetic in cartoon form, and the actors, especially when they don’t look exactly like their two-dimensional counterparts, are sometimes targeted by outrage-prone corners of the internet. As Disney prepares to roll out more live-action versions of its animated classics—Moana hits theaters next year, and there are adaptations of Robin Hood, The Aristocats, and Bambi in the works—the company could stand to learn from Snow White herself. In the remake’s climax, Zegler’s protagonist urges her kingdom’s people to remember how they lived before the Evil Queen ruled; they once pursued their passions, and used to be courageous. Snow White chooses to be fearless. A studio can too—even if this one so rarely does.
Shirley Li is a staff writer at The Atlantic.
