Anthony Bergamini
Disney’s latest live action remake, Snow White, has hit theaters amid some confusing controversies regarding its two lead cast members. Somehow fans of the property are completely against the two opposing political views of Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot at the same time, creating one of the most bipartisan hatreds of the modern day. But nonetheless, the movie is finally here after years of delays. It seems odd that Disney somehow continues to miss the mark when it comes to these live action remakes, often shooting themselves in the foot with strange production choices that absolutely baffle unassuming audiences who are otherwise expecting a good time. Such is the case with Snow White, which has so much potential, but somehow finds weakness in the way that it decides to change elements from its source material.
Unlike comic book films, these live action Disney remakes have a lot less riding on them when it comes to adhering to the source material. For the most part, there is already a film made that gives an exact blueprint. Ideally, these remakes would build upon and enhance that blueprint without making any dramatic changes that effect the purpose of the story, possibly by adding in new songs or updating outdated references or controversial elements. For example, Disney would never be able to make a 1:1 remake of Peter Pan, considering that a large section of the film has a very racist depiction of Native Americans that makes it almost impossible to watch nowadays. Consequently, all of these remakes that may be problematic, offer the studio some sort of reprieve by allowing them to make these necessary changes, which in turn can be used to enhance that story. Unfortunately, Snow White does not fall under that camp.
Snow White has a lot of issues, but none more apparent than, 1. The way it chooses to tell its story, 2. The sense of scale it completely misses, and 3. Its refusal to modernize its problematic elements in a notable way.
Starting with the way Snow White tells its story… it’s a mess. The best way to describe it is to provide an example from the original and how this is changed in this remake. In the original film, Snow White stumbles upon the Seven Dwarves’ home after escaping the Huntsman and approaches it with caution. She immediately notes that this is not her home and contemplates if she should go in. When she decides to go inside, she recognizes that it is incredibly dirty and rationalizes that maybe the people who live there will allow her to stay there for some time if she cleans it for them. This logic is not without its own issues; however, the rationale is there and it works for a children’s film: “I scratch your back, you scratch mine.”
The remake takes a weird approach to this by shifting around the events to a point where the already flimsy logic just makes no sense. Instead of contemplating entering the house and cleaning it in exchange for staying the night, Snow White simply walks in and then passes out on their beds from exhaustion. The films then follow a similar approach wherein the Dwarves arrive home, think she is a ghoul or ghost and then have a fun scene where they figure out who she is and why she is there. The bizarre take here is that Snow White then convinces the Dwarves that they are too dysfunctional and then forces them to clean their own home. So, instead of cleaning it in exchange for their help, she convinces them to help her and then makes them feel bad for having a messy house and makes them clean it. This is just one example of a strange story choice for this movie, but one that exemplifies the strange decisions made in how the story is told by these newer filmmakers.
The second big issue with the film is the sense of scale that it completely botches. See, the original animated film starts somewhat in media res: the queen is already in power, and Snow White is already a maid in the house. Within minutes of the original film, Snow White is thrust on her journey with little attention paid to the backstory. The new film spends a lot more time explaining Snow White’s relationship with her parents prior to the evil Queen marrying her father. This further exploration seeks to help drive the scope of this film, with much of the plot changing to showcase Snow White as a leader to her people. This is all well and fine on paper, but the film completely fails at this approach when you look at the scale of this Kingdom that the Queen supposedly rules over. There has to be less than one hundred people living in the town, with somehow a military that is powerful enough to keep everyone safe. The conceit of the film relies on the audience understanding that the people of the village want to rise up against the Queen but cannot, and it really will make you wonder what the Queen is actually ruling over. The town is almost impossibly small with little to no resources to satiate them. They also don’t seem to have any farmers or workers to acquire these resources, which lead to people stealing them from the Queen. So, are we to believe that a Queen is somehow gathering resources from undisclosed locations to benefit herself only, and is somehow relying on no beneficial output from her people? That is one of the worst Kingdoms in the world and is in no way believable as a village that would not just walk into the castle and throw her out the window. This gets presupposed by the idea that she used magic to stay in command, but this is only said and never shown, so there is no telling how true that actually is.
The final issue with the film is that it has nothing to say about the elements that have made the original problematic in the current day. The first issue has to do with the Seven Dwarves, and the implication that little people are treated as children in the eyes of the original film. A lot of bad press hit this film when it was announced that Disney would not be casing little people in the roles of the Seven Dwarves. The film instead makes all of them CGI and almost identical to their animated counterparts. This would be all well and fine if the film actually did something with this… like I don’t know… make them not Dwarves? Instead of separating themselves from the idea that the film is capitalizing on making little people into a spectacle, the film just does nothing to address this. There were so many options for how this could have gone, but instead, the film just pretends like it has no idea there was ever even an issue and moves along.
The second issue with the problematic elements is how the film tries to give Snow White agency by removing the plot with the Prince, only to replace it with another love story that basically gives the story a net gain of zero. The original animated film starts with a song that Snow White sings, about how her main wish in life is for a man to arrive and wisp her away. The new film changes that by making her main goal to restore her Kingdom and regain the bravery that her parents had seen in her. Once again, on paper that sounds great, but the film horribly executes this. Somehow, the film manages to still insert a plot revolving around a love interest that has almost no believability in his character, still giving Snow White some sort of love related motive. There are many ways this could have been omitted, but instead, Disney acted as if this was some big statement and then did absolutely nothing with it. It is a huge shame because the film would have had so much more potential if it had just continued down its path.
Snow White is an example of how not to remake or modernize a film. There was so much potential for what could have been done here that was skirted or dodged for unknown reasons, creating a film that should serve as an example of what not to do.
