Over the last few months, Disney has been airing ads about their newest live action princess movie, Snow White, starring Rachel Zegler, Gal Gadot, Andrew Burnap and more. The movie was anticipated to do very well, as it had a budget of around 250 million but so far, the movie hasn’t done good at all with a rating of 1.7/10 on IMDb, a 42% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a 47% on Metacritic.
An article written at NBC News by The Associated Press says that the controversial movie only made around $43 million when it opened in theaters. One of the reasons that the movie was viewed as controversial was that in efforts to modernize “Snow White”, the movie doesn’t contain any actors with dwarfism, instead, all of the dwarfs we see are animated. Another reason is that Rachel Zegler, the actress who plays Snow White, was seen as a “woke” hire, which led to delays in production. Although the movie hasn’t had the best start, the article says that it might have a redemption. Other movies, such as “Mufasa: The Lion King”, had rocky starts and eventually grew to be bigger successes. “Mufasa: The Lion King” opened with $35.4 million and ultimately surpassed $717 million. The article also says that the movie could end up being a total bust. Movies such as “Alto Knights” or “Mickey 17” didn’t end up making nearly as much as their budgets. As a whole, the article is saying that the movie could go either way right now.
Another article written at The New York Times by Manohla Dargis is a review of the movie. Dargis says, “Although the new Snow White is perfectly adequate though the scenes of our heroine standing alongside Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, a United States representative chanting ‘No justice, No peace’ did admittedly give me pause.” She says that yes, the original was made in 1937, but this doesn’t mean that Snow White can’t do anything we do now. She still smiles, sings, and whistles while she works and stops the evil queen; she just no longer needs a man to protect her from any harm and get her happy ending. Although this has been a big concern for the general audience, one of the most concerning controversies that has been floating around is that actress Rachel Zegler isn’t “white” enough to play the role of Snow White. On social media platforms, people have been saying that the young latina actress, who is best known for playing Maria in “West Side Story” and Lucy Gray Baird in “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” can’t play Snow White due to her skin tone being “too dark.” In the article, Dargis explains that, of course, Zegler isn’t going to look “white as snow” just like the 1937 film did, simply because the actress isn’t going to be animated. In the movie, just like it’s many predecessors with the same movie theme, Snow White loses her mother, has an evil stepmother, and a guy waiting for her. What this new Snow White has to offer is that instead of her prince finding her singing while she’s cleaning, she has to deal with him more forcefully. Another thing is that in the title of the movie, the words “and the seven dwarfs” have been removed, leaving people wondering about Snow’s relationship with the seven miners. In the 1937 film, Snow White happily cleans and cooks for them but in this version, not so much.
One last article written at BBC by Nicholas Barber is another review of the movie and Barber starts talking about how Disney’s live actions, unlike their cartoons, usually haven’t performed as well, just like how the movie Pinocchio was sent straight to streaming services. But unlike Pinocchio, Snow White is supposed to be undoubtedly the most fascinating of the Disney live actions. This is because the movie producers wanted the film to make an old-fashioned tribute to the feudal fairy tale and others wanted to make a revisionist. Barber says in the first few scenes we get the subversive version. In the opening sequence, we hear that Snow White (Zegler) is not named after her skin, but for a blizzard blowing when she was born. The exposition continues with speeches and songs and the days when Snow White’s benign parent’s ruled a “kingdom for the free and fair” where “the bounty of the land belonged to all who tended it.” Just like in the 1937 film, Snow’s mother dies, her father remarries, and her stepmother isn’t very desirable. The Evil Queen warns her subjects of a threat beyond the southern kingdom and exploits their fears to take the peoples riches for herself. This is all enforced when Snow White meets her love interest, Jonathan, who is a robin-hood type character. After they meet, he tells her to stop waiting for things to get better and to do something about it. This sends people the message to stop waiting around and to do something about things they believe in.
