Snow White (Live-Action)

[Mooky]

The kind of earnest fairytale adaptation you wish for would never get made today, not by Disney and not by any other major studio. The most recent one I can actually think of is Don Bluth’s Thumbelina who is very much a Snow White-type of character who is, yes, sweet, kind and nurturing (all great qualities of their own!) but also virtually just a prop in her own story who gets pushed around by other characters and has no agency or uses common sense even in life or death situations. I might have just described Snow White herself. That might have been fine in the 1930s but it certainly wasn’t in 1994 given how much flack Thumbelina got, and from an even more modern perspective of 2024, why would audiences root for or be invested in a protagonist who appears to have no drive or doesn’t take an active part in her own plot? It would make for a very dull movie. I’m not saying the solution is to stick a sword in Snow White’s hands and have her fight the Queen (far too many screenwriters see the only way to empower female characters is to make them more male-like), but you need to give her a meatier role compared to the one she had in the original. It’s why the 2015 Cinderella worked so well and didn’t require further fleshing out — the character development and personality of the 1950 one were already in place so they worked on fleshing out the prince and the romance instead. You can pad up the plot with additional scenes between the Prince and Snow White all you want, but the character would still remain somewhat of a simpleton.

(I understand the character is supposed to be around 14 and most 14-year-olds are not known for maturity and intelligence; maybe keeping her that young in the remake would have alleviated some of these complaints.)

Also, I’m fairly certain most if not all of us on this topic specifically and forum in general identify as (gay) men. Things you find magical, romantic and “unproblematic” may have different connotations to women, particularly those that concern traditional gender roles and consent. I wouldn’t really make fun of that, but you do you. So while our opinions may be valid, some of them also skew far too close to shutting down legitimate female concerns and viewpoints. IIRC, this is only the second or third big live-action fairytale movie that was written by a woman and should have more of a female perspective. And if Greta Gerwig (or Rachel Zegler) felt the Prince’s actions in the original were stalker-y enough to require a different approach, then so is her right. Just a few days ago, my husband’s female colleague went to a restaurant, paid for her meal with a card, only to have the waiter add her on instagram while she was still waiting for her card back. And she doesn’t even use her legal name on her instagram so he had to dig super deep to find her. Maybe some people would find that akin to a beginning of fairytale-like romance, but what do I know; to me it's just terrifying.

[Disney Duster]

Snow White was not a simpleton with no common sense who didn't take action to help herself. She ran away from a stepmother who wanted to kill her, found a place to live, and offered services to keep living there. Yeah, Snow White ate something from a stranger, but who among us hasn't taken food from a.vendor, and if you still think it was dumb, she was innocent, not dumb.

[PatchofBlue]

The kind of earnest fairytale adaptation you wish for would never get made today, not by Disney and not by any other major studio. The most recent one I can actually think of is Don Bluth’s Thumbelina who is very much a Snow White-type of character who is, yes, sweet, kind and nurturing (all great qualities of their own!) but also virtually just a prop in her own story who gets pushed around by other characters and has no agency or uses common sense even in life or death situations. I might have just described Snow White herself. That might have been fine in the 1930s but it certainly wasn’t in 1994 given how much flack Thumbelina got, and from an even more modern perspective of 2024, why would audiences root for or be invested in a protagonist who appears to have no drive or doesn’t take an active part in her own plot? It would make for a very dull movie. I’m not saying the solution is to stick a sword in Snow White’s hands and have her fight the Queen (far too many screenwriters see the only way to empower female characters is to make them more male-like), but you need to give her a meatier role compared to the one she had in the original. It’s why the 2015 Cinderella worked so well and didn’t require further fleshing out — the character development and personality of the 1950 one were already in place so they worked on fleshing out the prince and the romance instead. You can pad up the plot with additional scenes between the Prince and Snow White all you want, but the character would still remain somewhat of a simpleton.

(I understand the character is supposed to be around 14 and most 14-year-olds are not known for maturity and intelligence; maybe keeping her that young in the remake would have alleviated some of these complaints.)

Also, I’m fairly certain most if not all of us on this topic specifically and forum in general identify as (gay) men. Things you find magical, romantic and “unproblematic” may have different connotations to women, particularly those that concern traditional gender roles and consent. I wouldn’t really make fun of that, but you do you. So while our opinions may be valid, some of them also skew far too close to shutting down legitimate female concerns and viewpoints. IIRC, this is only the second or third big live-action fairytale movie that was written by a woman and should have more of a female perspective. And if Greta Gerwig (or Rachel Zegler) felt the Prince’s actions in the original were stalker-y enough to require a different approach, then so is her right. Just a few days ago, my husband’s female colleague went to a restaurant, paid for her meal with a card, only to have the waiter add her on instagram while she was still waiting for her card back. And she doesn’t even use her legal name on her instagram so he had to dig super deep to find her. Maybe some people would find that akin to a beginning of fairytale-like romance, but what do I know; to me it's just terrifying.

Context significantly shapes how we discuss whether a certain action is "creepy" or "problematic." There are ways to preserve the ritual itself while situating it in a context that checks off all the boxes. "Once Upon a Time" was very much conceived in that post-fairy-tale mindset we are stuck in now, and that show literally opened with True Love's Kiss, and I don't remember that getting any pushback. They found a way to phrase that situation in a way that agreed with the expectations of the time, essentially by displaying a larger portion of their courtship to reinforce that this was in the context of a loving, consensual relationship. They could find a way to do that again if that was a priority.

I also don't think an audience that is convinced it is the first to discover cynicism is totally beyond what I'd call an "earnest fairy-tale." Ever since Enchanted, Disney's way of negotiating with the more skeptical viewer has been to just have a character (Robert, Flynn, etc.) who gives their viewpoints enough airtime so that the protagonist (Giselle, Rapunzel, etc.) can deconstruct their argument and show them the upside to believing in Happily Ever After, and that seems to carry them pretty far.

The real trick with doing this in a modern Snow White story would be finding a character she could play off of, someone who maybe didn't see the upside of things and probably held her overwhelming optimism in suspicion at first. Someone who maybe had to warm up to her as he got to know her more. It would help if he were already a fan-favorite, someone who got to spend a lot of time with Snow White throughout the film and learned to appreciate her and what she brought to the world and maybe stopped being so ... What would you even name a character like that ...

I'm just saying, the tools have always been there.

Again, there are some boxes you'd have to check, but an earnest fairy-tale in the 2020s doesn't have to look exactly the same as an earnest fairy-tales in the 1930s, and there are a lot of different ways one could pull this off. Much what I think would make Snow White land for a modern audience have as much to do with the natural trajectory of developing a character in adaptation or taking advantage of filmmaking tools that might not have been available for literally the first full-length animated film. The Prince, for example, got so little exposure in the animated film simply because animators found him hard to draw, and so they had little choice but to fall back on archetype. They could have built on that if they had wanted and carved out a more developed relationship. I also don't personally find Snow's relative non-agency a huge sticking point as I think it discounts a dozen different lenses through which to view the relationship between character, theme and action, but neither is it something I think NEEDS to carry over in adaptation. I'm pretty sure a Snow White written in the 2020s would inevitably look a lot like Tangled's Rapunzel, and that is something I could live with. The issue with this movie has been a lack of imagination, not opportunity.

[The Disneynerd]

“Snow White is named after snow.” Have people seen snow before? I’d like someone to point me to a living human being whose skin is the exact color of snow. Short of casting a person with albinism, there was never going to be anyone of even remotely similar skin complexion in the movie.


If you lay screencaps form Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Beauty and the Beast next to each other, Snow White’s skin color is very much comparable to that of Cinderella, Belle and Aurora, aka any other Caucasian character.

Additionally, and I can’t believe I’m actually writing this, Snow White got her name when she was a newborn. Babies’ skin, particularly that of babies whose parents have darker skin, tends to be several shades lighter in their first few months before the actual pigment sets in. So even if in this version Snow White is meant to be an (God forbid!) olive-skinned Spaniard, there’s no reason she couldn’t have been named that way.

Ok i just stated a fact from the actual fairytale.. and her features got described by her mother before she was even born, she wished for a daughter with snow skin, bloody red lips (do babies have red ass lips ) and Black hair. She then got her dream child.

Mehhh Of course the skin hasnt have to be nivea ass cream White, its just an orientation or hyperbole, that her skin would be whiter than usual people. No live Action adaptation had an actress with snow white skin, but I guess they had...white skin. The 1937 Snow White also doesnt have pure White skin, but she clearly has the whitest skin out of all the princesses in the actual movie (not princess merch)
Also something i want to further explain is her being latina is literally 0% the problem, just the brown skin color for Snow White. (Sorry for repeating myself the 1000th time lol ). If Disney was really going for a latina i think a perfect fit would be Anja Taylor Joy, shes Argentinian and had those type of "Damsel" roles like Split, they could also add more diversity with it as the stereotypical latinos are depicted brownish, but we white latinos exist too lol.
And her being played by an Albino women would also fit the role, as the fairytale also never specifies what her ethnicity is or that its set in Europe whatsovever, just the White skin, Black hair and Red lips.

At this point im just going to pretent Mirror Mirror was Disneys Snow White remake, it has even Menken doing the score! Win win

[Disney Duster]

If any Albinos have black hair, ok. But obviously the setting does have to be a long ago country that has Kings, Queens, princesses, and forests, so it definitely indicates Europe.

Cinderella (2015) was an earnest fairy tale made in this day and age so why couldn't Snow White be like that?

[The Disneynerd]

obviously the setting does have to be a long ago country that has Kings, Queens, princesses, and forests, so it definitely indicates Europe.

and yet, The Lion King exists

[Thumper_93]

obviously the setting does have to be a long ago country that has Kings, Queens, princesses, and forests, so it definitely indicates Europe.

and yet, The Lion King exists

Of course there are royalties in other continents but big part of the fairy tales adapted by Disney on animation are from the european versions. This one is set in Germany, it is the most popular version of the tale, the one written by the Grimm's brothers.

[Disney Duster]

and yet, The Lion King exists

Of course there are royalties in other continents but big part of the fairy tales adapted by Disney on animation are from the european versions. This one is set in Germany, it is the most popular version of the tale, the one written by the Grimm's brothers.

Disneynerd, there are no forests in The Lion King. It has a Jungle, not a forest.

Yes, Thumper_93, I think the forest, ebony window frame, sewing, and lace bodices of the German Snow White indicate it has to be between 1400s-1800s Europe and Germany is the best guess.

[Disney's Divinity]

This movie is never going to do BatB or TLK numbers, or even TLM numbers. Never. Come next year, people will try to blame it on the casting and “controversies” and how it would have made bank if only they had cast an undead vampiress with pearly white skin who kept her opinions to herself, but the simple fact is that Snow White is just not as popular property as we may think it is. It’s a historically and aesthetically significant piece of cinema and I love it to death, but not everyone is an animation enthusiast. Even on here among Disney fans, Snow White, her voice and her mannerisms were butts of many, many, MANY jokes (and there’s nothing wrong with that, she’s a fictional character. Even Jodi Benson imitates her voice in Enchanted!), so to insinuate Rachel is committing some sort of blasphemy against the movie by basically just existing is both inane and insane. If there’s anyone people should be angry with it’s Disney Corp. for even entertaining the idea of a Snow White remake, let alone actually greenlighting it.

I don't think this is true. A Snow White remake using the Disney look / soundtrack absolutely had the potential to be a hit, even if not to the same scale as TLK or Aladdin or B&tB. After all, TLM would've easily ended up in the vicinity of a billion if they hadn't changed the main character's look so much and portrayed the film as another craptastic change-everything remake like Mulan out the gate. The downgrade in the TLM remake from an easy billion-dollar film in the making to barely breaking is the same thing for the SW film here, I imagine, just on a different scale; they took a film they could've at least made Cinderella numbers with, perhaps a little more, and reduced it to flop territory almost immediately instead with everything involving the racebend and the Dwarfs being the first discussion around the film. Now, even if they try to reverse course and make everything as faithful as possible in response to the backlash, the damage is mostly done. Just like with TLM, that film ended up being pretty faithful in the end, if only they'd portrayed the film as being that way initially instead of giving the impression they would be remaking the original in title only.

[UmbrellaFish]

Some images featuring Rachel Zegler as Snow White and Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen have leaked from D23:





https://x.com/mmdisney200/status/1822097595574968505

[Disney Duster]

I'm sorry but those images look fake. The one of Zegler looks like Rachel's head pasted on a CG body or something.

[Farerb]

I expected a teaser.

[Clindor]

Trailer Teaser:
https://youtu.be/TbiPcMCz0Ek

[UmbrellaFish]

Trailer Teaser:
https://youtu.be/TbiPcMCz0Ek

Lots of shot-to-shot references to the original film. Looks like it will scratch that fairytale itch.

I also have to give them credit for doing something that every other remake has failed to do: the animals are stylized instead of being hyper realistic.

[Thumper_93]

I have to say that I loved the trailer! The gown looks really good and them animals looks cute. Can't wait to see more!

[Farerb]

Snow White's hairstyle is wrong. It doesn't look like a 1930s hairstyle and it doesn't flatter Rachel at all. They probably should have gone with medium length, I don't think people would have minded, they changed all of the Princesses' hairstyles.

[D82]

Snow White's hairstyle is wrong. It doesn't look like a 1930s hairstyle and it doesn't flatter Rachel at all. They probably should have gone with medium length, I don't think people would have minded, they changed all of the Princesses' hairstyles.

That was one of my first thoughts too while watching the trailer; that the hairstyle doesn't flatter her, at least in some shots.

Here's the teaser poster:


Source: https://x.com/DisneyStudios/status/1822130722053783912

[Farerb]

A clip from the film:
https://x.com/sweetestdolls/status/1822 ... UIMQw&s=19

[Marce82]

Damn, that all looks... so...

so...

...FAKE. It feels like everything other than the (average sized) humans is full CGI. The sets, the animals, the props...

And her dress looks like a halloween costume. They'd better explain why she wears that for most of the film...
The queen's costume looks ok, but I feel she is sorely lacking the high white collar...

And I agree with what has been said here: that haircut isn't flattering.

[robster16]

This actually looking promising?! Who would have thought?! I just hope the rumored story changed aren’t as grave as initially stated. Stick to the source material, it’s a solid story to begin with…