Snow White, the first Disney princess and one of the long-running contenders for the face of Disney princesses, has unfortunately – and unsurprisingly – fallen into the merciless hands of Disney movie live-action remakes. Going in, I wasn’t expecting to experience a peak cinematography experience, but it is genuinely baffling and even terrifying for a movie to be so poor after it’s been in production for approximately nine years.
Compared to other movies such as Beauty and the Beast (2017) and The Little Mermaid (2023), Snow White (2025) did significantly worse in terms of box office earnings for its opening weekend. Whilst Beauty and the Beast earned $174.7 million (domestic) and The Little Mermaid earned $95.5 million (domestic), Snow White had to crawl itself out of the trenches with a staggering $43 million (domestic) in opening weekend earnings.
It was severely disappointing to watch this movie, considering how talented Rachel Zegler (Snow White) is in all of her other works – West Side Story (2021) and The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes (2023).
To start with, the good parts of the film, it is safe to say that Zegler “carried” the entire movie. Her performance of “Waiting on a Wish” was amazing, and she is immensely talented. It’s sad to see her acting and her years of work go to waste and be dragged down by that of her own co-star, Gal Gadot (Evil Queen), the poor CGI, and the poor pacing.
In 2022, Zegler commented on the movie in an interview, stating how she thought it was weird that Snow White’s story must depend on falling in love with a guy who has stalked her. She emphasized and advocated for the fact that Disney princess stories shouldn’t be focused on the traditional love story and should more so focus on their personal development within the story.
This moment sparked years of controversy that surrounded the movie and the actress herself. We later see and find out that the movie doesn’t remove Snow White’s love story completely, they just replace Prince Charming’s character with Jonathan (Andrew Burnap) – he leads a group of bandits who steals from the kingdom to give back to the poor. He encourages Snow White to stand up to the Evil Queen, which is still a pivotal point and aspect of Snow White’s character development.
The new live-action remake may seem similar to the original 1937 animation film, but beyond the surface, there are various significant changes, not all necessarily bad. The remake adopted a more realistic visual style compared to the animation’s vibrant colors. This change makes the live-action notably darker and more mature.
The Evil Queen’s character is also changed a little. In the animated film, the queen is portrayed as a 2D character who only cares for being “the fairest of them all” and is jealous of her stepdaughter. The remake changes her character and adds more depth to her – a more explored backstory which depicts her rise to power. The change may have been good in this movie if it wasn’t for Gadot’s substandard acting.
Snow White is more than a failed remake and adaptation – it’s an example of what happens when studios get lazy in their work and lack the creativity to come up with new, original ideas.
