Snow White may be the first Disney princess, but she isn’t the first disappointment in the ever growing list of subpar live-action remakes. Snow White, the 2025 movie, strove to be everything yet hesitated to be anything.
Empowering but also falling short of saying anything meaningful. Charming but fearful to give its characters any real personality. Visually stunning but soul-less and bland. As a viewer, you felt like you were being pulled in all directions at once.
To kids, this is a chance to have something new to watch, and could just be exciting enough to keep them engaged. But to adults, this could end up as a snoozefest. Even the nostalgia bait isn’t strong enough to keep our attention.
I hate to say that because I was really looking forward to what Rachel Zegler could bring to the role of Snow White. I’ve been an avid fan since her debut in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, on to her main role as Lucy Gray Baird in The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I gave this a fair shot as I do every Disney remake, especially the princess ones. Given the unnecessarily vitriolic hate sent the way of every Woman-of-Color actress who takes on a role like this one (see: Halle Bailey), I like to give an objective opinion as much as possible.
So, even if I found it disappointing, I was rooting for Rachel Zegler!
The movie was a visual mess. At times you couldn’t see the logic to CGI and the lighting; they were jarring so that I couldn’t help but force my eyes to stay glued on the screen lest I missed something important (I never did).
There was an over-reliance on CGI, and yet somehow it felt like there wasn’t enough time and money to polish it. It felt cheap despite Disney being a multi-billion-dollar company. Was the team pushed to do things fast, with little creative input?
The lighting had its moments though that kept me immersed, no matter extremely limited. The color grading, I felt, was no big help—was it supposed to evoke realism or fantasy? It was undersaturated, blown-out, garish. If they were aiming for something out of a storybook, I found it not up to snuff. It felt like a straight-to-DVD movie from the early 2000s when technology was still limited.
Nothing stood out in this department.
When it came to the story and characters, the writers must have really tried to give a whole new meaning to the phrase “fairest of them all.”
Rather than the story centering on an older woman being jealous of a younger woman’s beauty, the writers attempted to make Snow White more diplomatic and a stronger leader. I believe this was a step in the right direction, in remakes especially for younger audiences.
So what’s wrong with media being “too woke”? I never understood that criticism. To me, things have always been political. It’s just that now we’ve become more aware of rights and issues, so everything feels a lot more prevalent. Media has and always will be political and “woke.” It’s just a matter of how one presents it.
Just because something tries to be empowering doesn’t automatically make it good writing. The writers must have struggled to create a more meaningful storyline out of the original Disney animated movie, but they could have gone beyond the cliché that “being a fair leader is good!” (Uh, yeah? I sure hope a good leader is fair. What else?)
When it comes to Intellectual Property (IP), there is no escaping comparisons with the previous material, and the stakes are amped up when the IP has a beloved, rich history. It’s an almost impossible challenge to win over viewers and make them say in the end, “I’m glad they did this remake.”
Snow White is beloved both as a Disney Princess and as an animation marvel. It was Disney’s first feature-length animated film, a marvel for the animation industry back in 1937. Beyond being a beloved IP, its creation has changed the course of animation history. It’s a feat difficult to match, especially with media considering animation as a lesser art form compared to live-action films. So for Disney to create a live-action remake of the film, it might not see animation as viable or anything more than a “a medium for children.”
It’s a shame to see how Disney is attempting to capitalize on our collective nostalgia for its original films
It’s a shame to see how Disney is attempting to capitalize on our collective nostalgia for its original films. What was once a beloved animation studio-turned-media juggernaut continuously in pursuit of, well, everything more, seems to be losing its soul. More movies, more shows, more money—perhaps at the expense of the charm it had.
I’ve yet to see a remake that didn’t create controversy in some way, shape, or form— from the choice of actors to the change in the original story that made little or no sense other than to appeal to the “woke” crowd (which by the way, doesn’t appreciate it in the end). The final output often looks like a mash-up of departments trying to cater to everybody, ending up with nobody feeling like there was any take-away from the movie.
I’ve come to believe that higher-ups make these choices perhaps because, deep down, they’re at a loss as to what value to add to the original, without seeming to be pandering or less than authentic.
Which is a shame. Because remakes can add value to the history of the original IP and give a platform for actors and actresses who didn’t see themselves in the originals. It can cater to the younger crowd and even heal the inner child in those who grew up with the original IP. There is so much that can be done, and it’s not as if there is such a thing as a pure, original idea either (Snow White is a fairy tale that naturally lends itself to remakes; it’s not one for purists).
I’m not a hater though. Rachel Zegler is a stand-out performance. Her voice is angelic, a delight to listen to, and I hope to see her in more singing and acting roles. The dwarves are just as lovable as I remember them. I only wish I saw more of them in the film.
I can only hope that Disney does try to do better. Mine is only a small voice in a larger narrative, and talking about this movie could be polarizing. I even doubt if Disney would listen to the opinions of a random reviewer who isn’t even from America. I can only hope for better live-action remakes in the future.
Now I’m curious to know what other people think of it now that Snow White is running in the theaters.
