by Nicholas Valenzuela

Snow White bombs the box office with a pitiful 87.3 million dollar global launch. Where did it go wrong?

Over the past couple of years, Disney has heavily led into live action remakes, with many movies being recreated including The Little Mermaid, Dumbo and Aladdin, with the newest live action movie being Snow White.

Snow White has been plagued with controversy for as long as it was announced, and most of the controversy stems from the princess herself, or the actor who plays her, Rachel Zegler.

Zegler made several comments talking poorly of the original story, saying that the story is a love story of a man who “stalks” her and calling it dated. She said that they changed the story, and Snow White won’t care about true love. She will be dreaming of becoming the leader she knows she can be.

On top of that, the seven dwarfs did not have any dwarves casted, and instead had people from many different races casted as them. After comments from actor Peter Dinklage, Disney changed the dwarves to be CGI in the “live action” Snow White. It left many people angry, feeling like many dwarves had been robbed of the most recognizable role. 

Rachel Zegler also commented on the Israel-Palestine conflict in support of Palestine, despite her co-star, Gal Gadot being from Israel and previously serving in the Israeli army. This caused so much controversy that Disney had to hire extra protection for Gal Gadot.

Something that definitely had an effect on the box office bomb of Snow White was the 2024 presidential race. When the results came out that President Donald Trump had won the election, Rachel Zegler took to social media to post on Instagram Stories, saying 

“i echo ethel cain’s statement more than anything. may trump supporters and trump voters and trump himself never know peace,” said Zegler on an Instagram post.

This decision proved tone deaf, alienating a portion of the film’s potential audience. Now, despite the major controversy, I went to see the movie on March 20th, a screening at my local theater that happened a day before the movie was released. How was the actual movie, and is it worth the time and money to see it?

When I went with my sister and mother, we decided to go and try to get the tickets at the door, something that my older sister thought would be difficult, because Disney movies typically have a large amount of people going to see the movie, and on top of that, we arrived around five minutes late, so we missed some of the previews, which was sad because honestly that would’ve been the best part of this movie experience.

When we got there, we realized how lucky we were to have any pick of seats in the whole theater because it was completely empty! We went in and another family sat next to us despite having the whole theater free.

One part I have to say, Rachel Zegler does not fit Snow White’s character. Snow White’s character in the original Disney story was very soft and demure, and Rachel Zegler’s voice is very powerful and loud. She objectively has a good voice, but it didn’t seem to fit the character.

The story starts off with Snow White as a child, given the name Snow White for surviving a blizzard. This is not a huge change that really matters, but one change that does matter is the exclusion of the prince. The prince does not exist in the remake. He is replaced by a revolutionary that goes by the name Jonathan, and Snow White meets him when he is stealing from the Evil Queen. 

Speaking of the Evil Queen, Gal Gadot’s acting as the evil queen was absolutely pitiful. Her acting came off as very blank, like she did not want to be there. Her singing felt off in this movie as well, as it just did not feel like there was any force or passion behind her singing. It felt very artificial.

The dwarves were actually one of the better parts of the movie, despite the fact that the CGI was not that good.

Speaking about CGI, the animals in the movie also appear to have the same problems that the dwarves have. They don’t show up as often. The original movie had the animals as a big part of the movie, giving them a ton of personality, but in the remake, they felt very shooed in, like they were just there because they were in the original and not like they were given any love or importance to the story.

One of the biggest differences between the original and the remake was the death scene of the Evil Queen. In the remake, Snow White decides to take on the queen herself after being revived from a true love’s kiss. She eventually runs the tide by convincing the soldiers to turn on the queen by simply remembering their names to change their loyalty.

The Evil Queen runs to the castle and smashes the Magic Mirror, which in return kills the Evil Queen. Although it is never explained how, she just vanishes into dust sucked in by the mirror.

In the original, the Evil Queen falls off a cliff after the rock is struck by lightning, but before that, the dwarves chased her with their pickaxes. If it wasn’t for the lightning being struck on the rock, the dwarves would have for sure killed her. In the remake, the death feels very artificial and not integral to the story. While in the original, it’s one of the most iconic scenes.

In the end, the movie was changed a lot and not for the better, which is clear by the box office performance. It felt like the movie was changed for the sake of changing it, and frankly, Disney might’ve had more success releasing a remastered version of the original 1930s cartoon. Save your money, and if you really want to see how bad it is for yourself, wait a month for it to be out on Disney+.