by Evelyn San Miguel ‘26

Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, released in theatres in 1937, was just the first of the many animated feature films that cemented the legacy of the world’s largest and most successful animation company. Now, almost a century later, the film studio has become obsessed with recreating their classics into live-action movies. Their most recent endeavor, Snow White — featuring stars like Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot — hit theaters on March 21.

Since Disney’s first live-action remake of Cinderella in 2015, the studio has banked on audience’s nostalgia to see beloved animation films in a different format or as sequels. With upcoming releases like a live-action Lilo & Stitch, and sequels to popular series like Frozen, Toy Story, Moana, and Inside Out, Disney has never failed to go for the cash grab. That much is evident when watching the newest edition of Snow White.

Opening with a storybook and some classic fairytale exposition, the movie jumps right into a musical number. Showing Snow White (Zegler) and her childhood before the Evil Queen (Gadot) came into her life, the movie shoves its message into its audience’s faces right away: kindness is key. Snow White’s parents empower her to be compassionate to all those who live within her kingdom. It’s one of the few things that the movie gets right, sending a positive message and showing a female protagonist who leads with both goodness and strength.

As the plot thickens it strays from the plot of the original story quite significantly, mostly with the addition of Jonathan, Snow White’s love interest. Where Snow’s original love interest was the unnamed Prince, Jonathan is a Robin Hood-esque bandit that evokes the style of love interests like Tangled’s Flynn Rider. Jonathan, played by Andrew Burnap, is an odd and unwelcome addition to the movie’s plot. Snow White and Jonathan have minimal chemistry, and even after several song and dance numbers to establish their relationship, their compatibility falls flat.

Among the rest of its cast, Zegler performs well in song and dialogue. The songs, while not particularly reminiscent of the original Snow White, are a good fit for her Broadway-trained vocal range. Gadot, on the other hand, struggles in her role as the so-called Evil Queen, Gadot appears lackadaisical at best. In the Queen’s solo, “All is Fair,” Gadot’s performance is utterly lacking in the character, style, or energy required of a Disney-level villain. While many old Disney villains make up for their irredeemability with personality and charm, Gadot’s Evil Queen falls short in both.

In terms of acting and visual effects, Snow White fails to impress or live up to Disney standards. The CGI utilized is clearly intended to evoke the painterly storybook style of the original film, but appears cheap and substandard. The seven dwarves placed from their cartoonish style look absurd and almost disturbing, though fit well enough within the mostly-CGI world that the film cultivates.

With the announcement of live-action remakes like these and many, many more to come, audiences are left dissatisfied at remakes that were unnecessary and did nothing but denigrate beloved classics. Disney, with its latest calendar of anticipated releases, is expected to continue pumping out sequel after sequel and remake after remake after what the company has decided is a clear lack of interest in original stories — where the opposite is in fact true.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the entire film industry has been struggling to recover from the loss of funds coming from box offices. Movies like Lightyear (2022), Elemental (2023), and Strange World (2022) performed incredibly poorly in box offices upon release. Disney, however, often put out little marketing for those movies, and allowed them to go to theatres or their streaming service, Disney+, like ships in the night.

The cycle perpetuates, then, with failures of original stories from a lack of proper marketing, leading higher-ups and executives to believe that viewers just don’t want new content, and hurting animators, directors, and storytellers in the process. The mind-numbing crawl of making sequel after sequel is not only felt at Disney — it can be seen at other animation studios as well. At Dreamworks, How to Train Your Dragon is getting a live-action remake, only less than 15 years after the animated movie’s initial release and only six years after the last film in the trilogy. At Illumination, the Despicable Me series turned into a seven-film long succession of tiny yellow minions and progressively tiresome fart jokes that would be certain to turn any fresh-eyed animator or creative into a worn and wearied veteran.

Now more than ever, an investment in new stories, fresh perspectives, and brand-new art is vital. In a world where originality and creativity are becoming less prized, receiving support from the globe’s most influential animation studios could put a foot in the door for an entire sector of creative thinkers. But if Snow White is any indicator, then studios seem to be taking steps backward for the animation industry.

Grade: C-