The movies we watch reflect in many ways the interests of an audience during a specific period of time. A film studio invests millions of dollars to produce these films, so the decisions behind them are not meant to be arbitrary.
Over the last couple of decades, we have seen an effort from Disney to produce live action movies and ‘bring to life’ classic stories using a whole new level of animation, a casting, and a few tweaks here and there on the script and the plotline of the story.
The most recent addition to this live-action series is Snow White, starring Rachel Zegler, Andrew Burnap, and Gal Gadot. The film had a budget of $209 million USD and was filmed primarily in London over the summer of 2022.
But in a time of public callouts, cancel cultures, and political correctness, making a movie goes beyond the cameras, the budget, and the casting. What is it about the story of Snow White that Disney felt so inclined to bring back to life and was it worth the controversies and backlash the film received since the day the film was announced?
Feminism woven into Disney movies
Throughout the nick of time, we have seen Disney movies evolve in the portrayal of women characters in Disney movies. Cinderella was a princess rescued by a prince who saved her from her family as long as her foot fit into a glass slipper. She portrayed the gendered heteronormative norms of a patriarchal society where women are expected to focus on cleaning the house and looking pretty, waiting to be chosen by a man and be rescued. The characters in the upcoming decades were richer in terms of character, independence, and women empowerment. Mulan enlisted herself in the army to save her dad, the Little Mermaid was eager to discover a way of living aside from what her family and friends wanted for her. The curiosity, eagerness, and entrepreneurial spirits of women in Disney movies became prevalent to this day where we see Elsa from Frozen being a Queen without a King (who never expressed concerns, disappointment or loneliness for not having a king next to her).
There has been a small yet continuously moving progress when it comes to the portrayal of women stories in Disney movies. Moana is a teenager who saved her community and restored the heart of a goddess by going into a dangerous mission. Brave is about a princess who defies a custom that brings chaos to her kingdom. And as we continued the path forward, the live-action of Snow White comes back again to haunt us with her poisoned apple and the reflection of the interests of an audience from 1937, not the reflection of the interests of an audience from 2025.
The story is reimagined for Snow White to have a more active role where the main character does more than just eat an apple and pass out. But the movie in itself is a representation of how misaligned and divided the audience of 2025 is. On one hand, the audience who acknowledges Disney’s efforts for Diversity and Inclusion felt it was erroneous to have the seven dwarfs computer-animated rather than giving the opportunity to cast talent (real humans) with short stature to play these roles. On the other hand, the audience who is attached to the original animated movie, points out and calls out the differences between both versions, particularly those made in the plot and the casting, questioning if Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot were the best choices for this movie.
Find love or be a leader or find love and be a leader?
In an interview with Variety in September 2022, Rachel Zegler stated that ‘it is no longer 1937 and that ‘We absolutely wrote a ‘Snow White where she’s not going to be saved by the prince, and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love; she’s going to be dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be.”
There was an immediate backlash to these comments from Disney fans, stating Zegler was throwing shade at the original version of the movie, while another fan wrote. “Why is wanting love considered a bad thing now? Not all women want to be fighters.”
It was perhaps the fear of being too politically correct and trying to adjust to the audiences of these times that created so many controversies, backlashes and mixed opinions on a live-action remake, even several months before it was premiered.
If you stretch and try to force a small shirt to fit it will ultimately rip. The buttons will pop or the seams will break. In the case of movies, a story from 1937 that was beloved in those times and is remembered by fans as a classic, cannot be forced to fit into the very word-policed, politically appropriate yet highly conservative environment of the 2025 era. There are no songs that can elevate the story to a new potential. There is no A-list celebrity that could have made this remake a delight for all the fans. The costume design could have been more theatrical and camp, but it was hyper-focused on being as similar-looking as the 1937 film version as possible.
Conclusions
If the plot line and the essence of the story are changed, where is the line between a remake of a classic story and the creation of an entirely different new story? If there was an eagerness to tell more princess stories with progressive values where women played an active role in the relationships and were not a subject to be rescued but also a rational being with interests and a personal story, why can’t we have new princesses with new stories to tell? Why can’t we focus on the different backgrounds, cultures, body shapes and stories that were not represented in Disney stories over the course of the 20th century and construct stories around these people rather than forcing live-action stories and attempts to make the classic stories timely to the current times and new generations?
A dress can be fixed, adjusted and reshaped for different occasions, but a movie cannot change the backbone of its story because it loses the essence of what it is about and the message that the film is trying to tell the audience.
A poisoned apple, a princess and an evil queen. As much as we try to tell other versions of the story and reimagine it with technology, music and plot twits, we will always have the 1937 movie. The beginning of the dream that Mr. Walt Disney began to construct and develop in the several decades to come.
