2025, Marc Webb (The Amazing Spider-Man) -- Disney+
This is one of the rare movies in this project that is not a remake of a recent Disney animated movie, and by recent I mean that "new era" of original Disney animated musicals that started all the way back in 1989 with The Little Mermaid. Its kind of odd to say "new era", because only ten years prior had been Disney's last animated musical, Pete's Dragon. Ten years is not all that long in cinematic eras, at least it isn't these days. But what I am getting at is that this movie is a "live-action remake" of the Classic Era of Disney Animated Musicals (deemed worthy enough to get capital letters) that stretch from the 60s to beyond. The original Snow White was in ... 1937. Nineteen Freaking Thirty-Seven!! And I probably haven't seen it since my days sitting in front of grannie's TV during The Wonderful World of Disney every Sunday afternoon.
I don't have much recollection of the original animation, but a lot of imitators came to mind as I watched this movie. Less imitation of the animation and more of the motif that became part of the collective conscious. Think Amy Adams in Enchanted. Less imitator and more homage? I mean, the story of Snow White is built into our fairy tale brain, but was that ever from a non-Disney source? I am old enough that I had an actual collection of classic Grimm / Perrault fairy tales, so it must have been in there, but admitedly the core of the story must have come from 50+ years of exposure to Disney's adaptation. From the colour scheme, to "heigh-ho", to an evil queen with her hair tucked inside a skin tight dark wimple, all are indicative of the fairy tale but visuals from Disney.
Anywayz, this movie. Cough.
I was tempted to write three paragraphs consisting only of "Fair fair fair. Fair fair FAIR fair. FAIR ! Fair fair." This movie was really really REALLY trying hard to rebrand "fair" as not referring to Snow White's skin colour, but to fairness of judgement. As in, her father was a Good and Fair Ruler. But not even Mjolnir herself could have hammered that definition into the Magic Mirror's proclamation that the Evil Queen was ever fair. Snow White was the fairest, always and forever, as was her father. That mirror was a fucking liar.
Not bothering to comment on the "her skin isn't snow white" utter whiner troll shite on the Internet. If I roll my eyes any harder at that, I will hurt myself. There are plenty of other things to dislike about the movie without that weaksauce.
The tale begins with a fair (cough) kingdom ruled by a fair King and Queen who are equal with their people. Oh, they live in a castle and wear finery and probably don't actually do anything but they also spend one day a year picking apples and preparing pies for their people. I mean, I highly doubt they bake the pies, as they probably have people to do that but they carry the prepared pies to the tables, for the villagers & castle folk. The fair princess Snow White helps, so named because she was born on a cold winter night, and sure all the people seem to love her, but one does wonder what would happen if they didn't defer to her.
Fuck you King; howsa 'bout instead of serving us over-sized pieces of apple pies (from our orchards by the way) you release us from our vassal-state and pay us a living wage? Sure, you might own the land but....
Then the queen dies and the king gets a new wife, and almost immediately after sets off to fight in a foreign war, where he dies. New Wifey (Gal Gadot, Wonder Woman) takes the throne, and immediately makes changes. Once prosperous villagers (OK maybe they were making more than a livable wage) are conscripted into her royal guard, and Snow White is relegated to scullery maid. Nobody argues, because Evil Queen.
Waitasecond here; she doesn't actually have a NAME ?!?! She's really just called "Evil Queen". I would love to see her business card.
Snow White (Rachel Zegler, Y2K) grows up in her now impoverished kingdom, locked behind castle gates. One day she bumps into a thief stealing potatoes. Snow White's royalty shows through, as she does not like him being a thief. He is caught and tied to the gates, I guess the Evil Queen's version of a crow cage, but Snow White frees him anyway; I mean, it was just potatoes. That pisses off the Evil Queen, who has been getting "yer the fairest" from the Magic Mirror, until that act by Snow White. I am still convinced the Mirror was lying all along, but not sure why he suddenly got some courage. No matter, pissed off Evil Queen orders her Huntsman to take Snow White into the forest and cut out her heart. Not sure why she just doesn't have Snow White murdered right there in her throne room; its not like she has a reputation to uphold.
Part of me wonders whether the source fairy takes tell us why.
Of course, the Huntsman feels guilty and sends Snow White off into the forest to hide. In this version, he doesn't even kill a deer, from which to cut out a heart, but puts an.... apple into the box? He knows his fate; he's just delaying. The forest is initially dark and scary and definitely UnSeelie. I know that this is supposed to be representative of Snow White being a city girl and dark rural forests are scary, but I have always like to think of it as an actually fae infested wood with its periphery tainted by proximity to the Evil Queen. Luckily though, some Uplifted Animals find Snow White and guide her to the quaintest of quaintest cottages deep in the wood.
The Dwarves Miners own the house and are away for part of the day slaving away in the mines, using their magic powers (yes, the exhibit magic) to light up the location of gemstones, which they cut out of the stone and load into mine carts for... well, I am not sure we are ever given a reason the "miners" mine the gemstones. I kind of thought they were hinting that the Evil Queen has tasked them with this duty for her throne room is going to be littered with an endless supply of perfectly cut gemstones. But I am not sure if it was edited out, or underplayed, because I don't recall any reason for all this labour.
But complaining about minor miner duties is burying the lede. The real complaint here, and admittedly, I thought it was all the blame of Disney's terrible sub-titling, but why aren't they called DWARVES ?!?!? Seriously, if anyone is going to give fuel to the "woke agenda" bonfires its choosing to ... to what?? Choosing to not offend little people? I mean, they went with entirely CG representations of these not-dwarves!! If they wanted to separate themselves from whole "dwarf" label (and we will completely ignore the fact these are not and never were "little people" but fairy tale dwarves, i.e. the folk tale fae creatures used as inspiration for Tolkien's story species) then just make them weird human miners with odd personalities and funny names.
Umm, isn't "dwarfs" more correct in this context?
Shaddup you.
When the miners return home, they find the lady who broke in and slept in their beds. Most of them are suspicious but a few are at least understanding of her plight, being a Princess who was almost murdered by her step-mother (cough, E. Queen). Despite being a bunch of bachelors (no implication of familial connection) living together, they don't really get along. Even if you ignore their distinct personalities and/or named-traits, they all seem to pick on Bashful. But with a song and some gentle chastising, she shows them how to work together and clean up their house, in a way only a young woman can. And by whistling. Not at young woman, but.... oh nevermind.
Snow White is convinced her father is actually not dead, just that he never came back from the war in the south. She hopes to find the rebels in the forest, or bandits or whomever is rumoured to be still loyal to her father, and not beholden to E. Queen. What she finds instead is that the rebel/bandits are actually just unemployed minstrels, and more than a little buffoonish, led by the potato thief Jonathan (Andrew Burnap, The Front Room). The two make googley eyes at each other when the Evil Queen's henchmen show up and attack. Jonathan is injured and she takes him back to the "miners" where she begs Doc to help the cute boy. "I'm not that kind of Doc," he says, implying he's probably a doctor of philosophy or something to that eye-rolling effect. Whatever he does helps either way. The two decide they are in love, and that Jonathan and his Minstrels should head off to look for their King. They instantly get caught, cuz, you know they aren't bandits nor rebels, just fucking useless musicians and actors.
From them the Evil Queen learns where Snow White is hiding and concocts her poisoned apple bit. Apparently the Fair King had a rather diabolical Evil Queen Ready dungeon/lair in his basement all along. Putting on the Kindly Old Woman disguise, which has never ever been kindly looking but Halloween Witch scary, she gets Snow White to bite the apple, and thus, sleep of death. Jonathan and the now imprisoned Huntsman escape and find Snow White and all the weeping miners (folk core prog rock band). He steals a kiss and she wakes up.
Snow White's pissed, and decides that even though she doesn't have an army, not even any rebels, she will head back to the castle and ... guilt them into surrendering? Which is exactly what she does. Once the Evil Queen realizes that five guys wearing her armour would rather do what Snow White says, instead of her, she runs back inside and gets all pissy in front of the mirror, sealing her fate. Seems her power, and maybe long life, was tied directly to the mirror - smashing it out of frustration is not the best choice. The End, but for one long song and dance number which must have used up the urine of every man, woman and barn yard animal to get all the clothes that bleached white.
I did not like this movie, in case my mockery was too subtle for you. I knew going in that I am not a fan of musicals, but usually I can tolerate, and some, I even like. Give me one banger of a tune and I am OK. There were none, not even the ones they stole from the original. To me this felt like a boardroom full of Purple Suits (I guess that is the collective noun?) paving the way for a off-Broadway stage musical production, and didn't really care if the movie did well or not -- they just needed the framework, set visualizations, musical numbers and visually appealing costumes.
It does not adapt the original nor any fairy tale source material well. It seems to shoe-horn in some standard, run of the mill musical components, wedged in between all the "I remember that!" scenes from the original. The (lack of) story is forgivable in a 1937 animation, but here it is just brain-numbingly empty. Nothing feels like world building, nothing feels lived-in, nothing feels enchanting. Not a single song is memorable nor are any of the visuals above passable. Characters are more often labels, not people -- see E. Queen reference above. This movie does not have much going for it, so I hope it at least appeals to seven year old dim witted children.
As for the dwarf controversy, the CG one, as we already covered the dwarf vs miner one, I was not horrified nor annoyed. I get what they were trying to do -- recreate the original animated visuals but with some resemblance to ... real people? For Average People they must seem very Uncanny Valley (maybe that's where dwarves er miners come from?) but for someone raised on video game cinematics and The Lord of the Rings they are just passingly acceptable fairy creature depictions. Nothing offensive, nothing too terrible. But to tie in the original complaint, if they were not mythical creatures, why the fuck not just cast real little people?
Hmmm, too late to back out of the Stupid Boy Project, Mr Stupid Boy?
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