Needless to say, this movie is not lining up to be successful in any capacity. The like-to-dislike ratio and the comments in the trailer continue to trend negative in ways that I can only assume have Disney bean counters fighting off panic attacks. The film cost $296.4 million to make and has gone through constant reshoots and rewrites. I'm struggling to see how it will make enough money to break even, though weirder things have happened. 

But I digress. 

There are many reasons this film is going to fail, chief among them is the starlet playing Snow White, Rachel Zegler, a woman so high on her own self-aggrandized supply that she can't stop herself from making this movie something people want to avoid purely out of spite. One of the things she often talked about was how the 1937 Snow White, the movie that kicked off an entire empire, was a product of a time when our culture didn't hold the same opinions about women. According to Zegler, they were weak, naive, and lacking in agency. In other words, they had no power. 

So, modern Disney set about "fixing" Snow White, and in the process, broke her. Remember that painting of Jesus that was touched up so badly it looked like a horrifying monster afterward? 

Modern Snow White summed up pic.twitter.com/5a65Bulbfn

— Brandon Morse (@TheBrandonMorse) December 4, 2024

Yeah, it's kinda like that. 

But they're missing something very important about the original Snow White. In fact, they're missing what I would consider to be such an important part of femininity overall. 

The 1937 Snow White didn't lift a finger to fight. She didn’t have to. Her purity and goodness were worth fighting for and protecting, which is why a group of normally peaceful dwarves picked up their weapons and went to chase after the evil queen at the end. 

I don’t know if you recall this moment from the original movie, but it’s still a heart-wrenching, intense, and oddly beautiful moment. When this movie was first released in theaters, people were really overcome here. There were people crying in the theaters when the apple fell from Snow White’s hand, because they truly thought she’d died. 

At that moment, the audience was the dwarves. They wanted to bring the evil queen to justice. We wanted to pick up weapons and ride out in the name of punishing evil and preserving that beauty and kindness that had touched our lives. Ultimately, that evil was struck down by God Himself. To this day, the entirety of the pursuit sequence holds up as an incredibly dynamic moment. 

But the dwarves served a much deeper purpose here. We were the dwarves. All of us. We were messy, grumpy, dopey, and unrefined, but when true goodness and beauty come into our lives, it changes us for the better. 

We relate to the dwarves on a personal level, and defending the beauty in our lives, even if violently, is worth doing. 

Even after this sequence, a very interesting phrase pops up on the screen before it cuts to her in her golden coffin, with all creation, including the dwarves, paying homage to this beautiful, kind woman. 

"So beautiful, even in death, that the dwarfs could not find it in their hearts to bury her." 

She was inspiring them even after she died. That was the effect she had on them. You're going to tell me that this isn't a power of its own? To be so life-changing that the people who knew you didn't want to let you go? Taken spiritually, you really begin to see the importance of what Snow White actually represented.

Snow White enchanted everyone she came across. She caused people to change into better people, not because she forced it or demonstrated some sort of artificial toughness, but because she inspired them to be better.

This is what the writers of this modern rip-off and the actors and actresses that play in it don’t get. To them, Snow White is a character that needs to change because she has no power. They see her as weak and, as such, needs to be injected with strength, not understanding that Snow White’s tenderness and boundless kindness carry with them a strength and power that refines civilizations, crafts and grows humanity, and inspires goodness through kindness, generosity, and tender warmth. 

This is the very essence of femininity, and it's a strength that modern feminism — with its hyper-focus on selfish inner power relating to outer power — can't wrap its head around.

This is why the 1937 film was such a masterpiece and appealed to so many people, and why the modern "live-action" film is likely going to bomb and eventually be forgotten. The modern version is a shallow shell of what the original told. It misses the point entirely. 

It doesn't understand the power of kindness and warmth.