Snow White (2025)

As we all know, Disney has been flopping recently, and has been lacking in the live-action department for sure. Snow White is probably their worst yet, leading to its global unpopularity, with people all over the world boycotting the movie for different reasons. Here are my opinions + other people’s reviews of the movie, and the areas in which the movie is the most criticised. 

Also, here’s a quick summary of why nobody is watching the movie unless they want to review it or were invited to a premiere:

the Right — the woke casting and storyline and/or Rachel Zegler’s bad attitude

the Left — Gal Gadot being Israeli and a former member of the Israeli army, who also supports Israel in the Israel-Hamas war

Original Movie Lovers — the storyline was changed to fit the woke narrative and lost the plot

Others — the movie is just kinda bad and comments and reviews of it are more entertaining

Which is basically everyone so now you know why theatres are empty!

Casting:

Rachel Zegler – She is very arrogant and keeps getting caught lying. In her interview with Jimmy Kimmel, he asked if she ever goes on the Snow White ride at Disneyland and she said that she loves the ride and gets mobbed by fans. However, in her interview with Gal Gadot, she said that she went on the Snow White ride once as a kid and found it scary so she never went back. She also remarked that Andrew Burnap, who plays the Prince, could get edited out of the movie, which is extremely rude. She also doesn’t like the original Snow White, only watching it once as a kid and saying that she thinks that it is a love story and the Prince is a creepy stalker. Even though, in her interview with Jimmy Kimmel, she said she loved the original. By the way, the Prince was not a stalker. He sees her singing, then serenades her. Later, with the dwarves, she sings about how he stole her heart in that moment. And when she is in the glass coffin, seemingly dead, he searched for her, which isn't the same as stalking. When he finds her, he can't help but give her a kiss, which breaks the spell, because it was a kiss of true love. She has many other incidents which caused so much backlash that Disney had to cancel promotional events for Snow White and reshoot many scenes. Also, Snow White is called Snow White because her skin is as white as snow and Rachel Zegler is Columbian and definitely not a woman whose skin is as white as snow. She is a great actress and can belt very well, though.

Gal Gadot – She cannot act very well sometimes (kal-el no 🔥🗣️). Her line delivery is subpar and she does not sound like the Evil Queen at all, both in her dialogue and singing. On a side note, she is prettier than Rachel Zegler, so I don’t know how she is supposed to be jealous of her.

Andrew Burnap – The only thing I have heard about him is that he ate as Jonathan the Prince, so good for him. There haven’t been any complaints about him so far so there isn’t much for me to say.

The Seven Dwarves – At first, they were supposed to be the seven magical creatures (or seven diversity hires) but because of the backlash, they became bandits in the forest and barely had any screen time. These magical creatures transformed into CGI dwarves that frightened audiences. People with dwarfism have argued that having fake dwarves erases the representation of real dwarves, which also points out the hypocrisy of Disney’s inclusivity once again.

Visuals:

The overall visuals of the movie are nice, and though other people have complained about it, I personally like it. A lot of people have also complained about the excessive CGI and visuals in general, but I can’t really confirm anything because I haven’t watched the entire film for myself but what I saw was okay. Although, I do agree that this movie was a missed opportunity to really showcase the 1930s film styling and vibes in general, especially since there is an AI generated Snow White trailer with better casting than the actual movie and beautiful costumes and scenery and vintage cinematography.

The costumes, however, are a different story. Snow White’s dress uses CGI, I believe, but I don’t care much for that. However, the sleeves are not reminiscent of the original because who added those long sleeves? They are highly unnecessary. The Evil Queen’s costume also feels very costume-y according to some. Once again, I don’t find it particularly concerning because it does kind of look like the original.

In this day and age, with hundreds of thousands of hairstyles to choose from, Lord Farquaad hair should be illegal. They turned a somewhat good-looking woman into a questionably-looking one. Jail for the stylist immediately, please.

The CGI was excessive (I am not sure where but I know that there was a lot of CGI and people complained about it) and the dwarves were terrifying to many, especially at first. The contrast between the real forest scenes (which was shot in a real forest) and the CGI forest scenes were also apparently really jarring as well.

Apparently, the scenes that were reshot and added in after the backlash could be told apart easily, but I have no idea. The reshot scenes were added in an attempt to appease the audiences that hated on the original girlboss storyline, so I’m pretty sure a lot more Prince was added into the equation because of the backlashed faced when Rachel Zegler didn’t like that it was a love story and criticised the Prince.

Storyline:

This is the part that people are hating on the most, and they have valid reactions, because the entire movie is very debatable.

1. The original movie is about reciprocal kindness and compassion. Snow White and the forest animals clean up the house for the seven dwarves in the original movie, which is why they end up loving and protecting her. She continues to make sure that they are well fed and have a clean house out of love and gratitude. However, in the remake, Snow White orders the dwarves around to clean up their own house after using their things and living as if it is she owns the place, and one of the dwarves looks honoured to clean his own house. What the figma. The huntsman also doesn’t kill her in the original because he saw her showing compassion to a bird, but I don’t think she was showing compassion to a bird in the remake. 

2. Snow White's name doesn't come from the colour of her skin anymore, but from the fact that she survived a snowstorm. She is also the fairest of them all not because of her skin colour, but because she divides everything evenly among her people (sounds like communism fr). But then again she lives in a castle and eventually becomes queen so that doesn’t sound very fair either. And she also made the dwarves clean their own house while she pranced about singing so is she really the fairest of them all?

3. There were a lot of subplots, setups, and side characters that were introduced without explanation and led to nowhere.

4. In one part of the remake, the Prince decides to lure the Evil Queen’s soldiers away but gets captured almost immediately because he is a bumbling idiot.

5. The Prince brings Snow White back to life with the world’s least passionate kiss which was most likely added after the backlash.

6. Snow White was obviously toned down a lot to make her character less obnoxious, which I’ll give an A for good effort.

7. Snow White convinces the Evil Queen’s soldiers away from her because she knows their names. ok bro

8. The ending was very anticlimatic. In the original, the Evil Queen (as a hag) dies because she falls off a cliff while fighting the seven dwarves. In the remake, the Evil Queen (not as a hag) gets mad at Snow White for convincing her army to turn against her, so she smashes the magic mirror and turns into black glass or dust or something and shatters or fades away (or something, my resolution isn’t very high so i can’t really see). The magic mirror then rebuilds itself and Snow White becomes queen, so the entire kingdom lives happily ever after yippee.

Conclusion:

Frankly, it could have been worse. Even though Disney fumbled a lot of things, from the poor casting choices to the, for lack of a better word, fascinating script, I do appreciate that they put it back into production and reshot and cut scenes to make it (ever so slightly) better than it originally would have been. I also like that even though Rachel Zegler is narcissistic and unlikeable, she does try her best with the material she is given and sings and acts well. Overall, this movie is definitely a skip for me, but it would have been a lot worse if Disney had not consolidated the hate. Customer feedback matters!

Note: I have not watched the movie and do not plan to but I am basing this off of what other people have said and my observations from the clips of the movie I have watched.

Avril Lee

3 Diligence

2025