I walked into my local Alamo Drafthouse to see the new live-action Disney "Snow White" film with the full expectation of it being not as bad as I hyped it up in my mind to be.
I've been covering the events around this movie with great interest because I truly believe this film has become a cultural turning point, not just for Disney, but for the entire entertainment industry. It's a clear example of what not to do when creating, promoting, and releasing a film, and as I recently covered on my YouTube channel, the drama surrounding lead actress Rachel Zegler was so destructive that I believe Hollywood will look into how they hire and write contracts in the future. She was that destructive.
Moreover, I believe the failure of this film could be so great that it would be the rebuke heard around the world that the nation is done with this kind of message-first, girlboss-laden product that studios kept churning out with reckless abandon.
Regardless, I walked in trying to keep an open mind. Perhaps my bias was clouding my judgment. Maybe I was prone to being too hard on it because I've been covering it from an oppositional angle for so long.
Not even midway through the movie, I realized it wasn't my bias. This film that Disney created — be it the acting, the music, and the plot — was a display of incompetence on a level so grand that I think Michael Bay is owed an apology for his Transformers movies.
Disney's "Snow White" isn't as bad as I anticipated. It was worse.
Forewarning: I'm going to spoil the film. I don't care. You're probably not going to see it anyway, and even if you are, I feel like it's better to prepare you.
The film opens with an expositional tale to give you some background on Snow White, such as how she got her name. Unlike all the other stories, she's not Snow White because her skin is white as snow, it's because she was — and I'm not kidding — born during a snowstorm. It talks about how Snow White's (I'm just going to refer to her as "Snow" from here on) parents were the good and just King and Queen of... the land. They don't give it a name.
Wherever this land is, it must be at the center of the world despite it clearly being an isolated kingdom in the middle of a vast forest and mountain range, because it's super diverse, with every race represented. Well done, Disney. You really nailed the inclusivity angle by making no sense as to how all those people got there.
This immediately leads into the film's first song and dance number, and it's here I have my first massive gripe. Disney's original songs used to be incredible works of art. They were hardly even overt or flashy. They were catchy, and if they weren't comedically clever, they were whimsical and deep. "A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes" from "Cinderella" is a beautiful song that doesn't involve vocal acrobatics. "Hakuna Matata" from "The Lion King" was sung by a kid, one vocalist who didn't go nuts in the song, and two normal dudes. "A Spoonful of Sugar" from "Mary Poppins" had Julie Andrews, who could've belted out an amazing vocal performance but kept her talent understated for the feel of the movie. These songs stuck with me over the years.
The opening tune for Disney's "Snow White" is a huge production with choreographed dancing, with a massive group of singers bringing their voices together called "Good Things Grow"... and I had to look the song's name up because I hardly remember it at all. It just kind of fades into the movie despite the spectacle.
Disney's music has gotten far grander in showmanship and incredibly lessened in likeability. It's like there's this need for the company to give you what tries to feel like Broadway-level writing talent and performances, which works for Broadway but maybe not so much for movies. I kept searching for a way to describe this trend in Disney, and all I can think of is "failing to Broadway." It has all the elements of a Broadway musical but feels hollow and a waste of time.
Even the classical music got updates, and I wouldn't say it's for the better. They all got something of a Broadway makeover.
Other major changes to the story really stand out. I was struck by how classist the messaging was. Apparently, everyone in this kingdom uses money but doesn't care about it. Snow makes the point that a baker would give food away if no one had money. Everything under Snow's father's rule was so good that there was an unusual amount of abundance. One farmer had a grove of cherry trees that produced so much when blossoming that the farmer would invite the kingdom to come pick the cherries to share them.
The royalty was sharing in the labor of carrying things to show they were one of the people, but I think the most hilarious change in this regard was "The Prince" from the original. He's been radically changed into a thief named "Jonathan," who leads a team of bandits loyal to the King. Apparently, a prince being a good guy is too behind the times for Disney nowadays.
Jonathan becomes Snow's love interest, which actually surprised me. That they kept this subplot in was more than I expected from Disney, but if you think it becomes a central plot of the movie, don't get your hopes up. Jonathan's role is to be an "and-then" catalyst. As in, Jonathan suddenly appears in the castle livery at the beginning, and then after Snow White frees him from Gadot's punishment, he happens to show up at the same place Snow runs to in the woods after she leaves the dwarves, and then he takes a crossbow bolt for Snow, and then Doc heals him, and then he sets out to help Snow take the kingdom, and then he's captured, and then he gets freed by the Huntsman who is also in jail, and then he finds Snow after she bites the poison apple, and then he kisses her to break the curse, and then... that's it. He becomes irrelevant after that.
Even the moment he saves Snow from the curse, she hugs him and then immediately goes back to her mission of saving the kingdom without so much as another word.
And-then storytelling plagues this movie, and you can tell that the writers had rewritten so much and pieced together so many scenes that it's an "and-then" Frankenstein's monster of a movie.
Snow retakes her kingdom by walking into it alone and having an argument with Gadot, and it's this part that I find especially egregious. At one point, Gadot hands Snow a crystal dagger and tells Snow to kill her if she really wants her kingdom back. Snow takes the dagger and actually struggles with the choice.
Let me be very clear. As I've explained before, Snow White's power was in her purity and goodness. She didn't have a violent bone in her body. She was kind, caring, and gentle.
Snow White's character wouldn't have even accepted the dagger, but Snow takes it and visibly struggles with the idea of stabbing another person.
What. The. Hell.
This brings me to the primary struggle the movie suffers from, and that's who its main character is. She's presented to us as two different people. There's the doe-eyed, innocent, kind, and gentle Snow, the determined, action-oriented girlboss Snow, but in the final moments, we get a third iteration, the "has to struggle internally not to kill someone" Snow.
This isn't just departing from the original Snow White film; this is a character departure from the movie this character is in. It's such a bad writing decision that I'm surprised this got past multiple people.
Anyway, the Evil Queen dies because she shatters her magic mirror, and I guess it backfires and sucks her into a dark dimension or something, and then there's a big final dance number where everyone is wearing white, and it made me think of a commercial for an anti-depressant.
The Snow White live action ends with a P. Diddy’s white party pic.twitter.com/EXahd15sZs
— Kaguya’s Top Gal (@hayasaka_aryan) March 21, 2025
What else can I say? The acting is bad. The music is bad. The writing is bad. I hated this movie with every bone in my body. This movie is bombing horrifically and deserves to.
If this doesn't force Disney, and possibly the entire entertainment industry, to buckle down and truly change how they film movies, what their contracts with cast and crew look like, and how they market things, I'll be incredibly surprised. Think of all the money flying out the window because of this failure, and I don't just mean from the film itself. Park attractions and merchandising opportunities are obliterated at this point.
This is probably Disney's most embarrassing moment to date, and a financial and reputational disaster to boot.
Do NOT go see this movie.
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