March 28, 2025/Midnight
Erie, PA.- While dominating the domestic box office chart, Disney’s live-action version of the iconic fairy tale also arrives with mixed reviews and a slew of controversies.
Transforming classical stories into live-action versions has become a financially secure approach for Disney. The strategy has proved its effectiveness through the success of Maleficent (and its sequel) as well as several more, including Beauty and the Beast, or more recently, The Little Mermaid.
The reworking of Snow White follows this pattern and seems to secure its success before being drowned in a series of controversies. The movie and its cast were put at the forefront of several political and social collisions.
Noticeable disputes include the decision to cast Rachel Zegler as Snow White. As a Colombian of descent, Zegler was criticized as an unfit choice to play a fair-skinned princess. The situation escalated when the actor criticized the 1937 animated version of the story, particularly its portrayal of romance as “weird.”
“The original cartoon came out in 1937 and very evidently so. There’s a big focus on her love story with the guy who literally stalks her. Weird, weird,” said Zegler at Disney’s D23 Expo in 2022.
The actor said that the new movie would focus on the depiction of Snow White as a leader, rather than a princess passively waiting to be rescued. The comment has triggered some longtime fans of the original Snow White, including David Hale Hand, son of one of the original movie’s supervising directors.
“There’s no respect for what Disney did and what my dad did… I think Walt and he would be turning in their graves,” Hand said in an interview with The Telegraph in 2023.
This has made Zegler the main subject of multiple racist trolling on social media platforms, a reaction that was quite similar to Halle Bailey when she was cast as Ariel in another Disney live-action, The Little Mermaid.
More recently, the film has sparked conflicts due to the contrasting political stances of its lead actresses. While Zegler expressed her pro-Palestine stance on an X post, Gal Gadot, the actress who plays the Evil Queen and an Israeli, has voiced her support for Israel. This conflict has drowned the movie in divisive political discourses.
Another ongoing debate was the depiction of the dwarfs. Peter Dinklage, a famous actor with dwarfism, criticized the movie as “backward.” The Game of Thrones star accused Disney of ignoring damaging stereotypes toward dwarfism.
“You’re progressive in one way, but you’re still making that f—ing backward story of seven dwarves living in the cave,” Dinklage said in a podcast with Marc Maron.
In response, Disney released a statement saying it would take a “different approach” regarding the seven dwarfs. As it turned out, the seven characters were reclassified as “magical creatures” and were created by CGI. This change has made both Disney and Dinklage the main targets of backlash from people with dwarfism for depriving them of acting roles.
Perhaps the swirl of controversies has dulled the movie’s appeal. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Snow White is now having a critics score of 43%. Wall Street Journal’s film critic Kyle Smith described the movie as a “pointless return” with a “dopey” storyline. On the other hand, Ty Burr from The Washington Post says the movie is “surprisingly entertaining.” Burr also described the movie as a rare instance “where the (Disney) princess gets to graduate to queen.”
Despite the unnecessary noises and underwhelming reviews, Snow White has topped the North American box office since its premiere on March 21. During its opening weekend, the movie earned more than $87 million worldwide, according to Box Office Mojo, with almost half of that figure coming from the domestic market.
However, it is still too soon to consider Snow White a financial win for Disney, especially for a project that reportedly cost more than $270 million. Perhaps the movie’s controversies and its underwhelming performance could be a turning point for Disney to reconsider its long-run formula, urging the studio to come up with more innovative and original ideas rather than rely solely on legacy titles to drive box office success.
