After many incredibly successful remakes of everyone’s favorite classic Disney movies, the newest addition “Snow White” is facing an incredible amount of backlash and may already be doomed before filmmaking is completed.
The new movie is due to be released in late March 2024 but now there are several speculations that it may either be delayed or in some people’s opinion should be outright canceled, due to mass fan outrage for a variety of reasons.
The first complaint among many is about the leading actress, Rachel Ziegler. Ziegler is Columbian American. The outrage stems from the deviation of the original princess’s characteristics and the fact that the new snow white doesn’t have skin “as white as snow”. However, as seen with the casting choice in “The Little Mermaid”, it is a minor complaint that has been in a way used to distract people from the more prevalent concerns many Disney fans have. The concerns lie more so with Ziegler’s attitude about the original and the way she goes about expressing it. With that expression, she angered much more than the people who wished to maintain the “fairest skinned” ideologies of the princess.
In multiple interviews, Ziegler stated that the movie was dated and “very evidently a product of the 1930s”, angering many Snow White fans who grew up with Snow White as one of the original Disney princesses, and though it is old-fashioned it is still a classic and holds a place in the hearts of many.
She also stated that the Prince was “a stalker” and stated that the entire dynamic between Snow White and the Prince was “creepy” and “weird”. In the interview, she stated these things in a very sarcastic and derogatory way, mocking and disrespecting a movie that framed many children’s hope for love and complete and utter acceptance of one another.
She called the original scary and said that she watched only a small amount of it then never again looked at it again until production for the new movie began. She claimed there would be no love interest because casting a lead male was unnecessary for the new movie.
The original Disney movies are old-fashioned. That is a well-known and understood fact by many that they represent the time frame they’re from. This is many people’s contention; all of the newer Disney remakes refresh and encourage progressivism in feminism and anti-sexism.
Many of the new actresses who have had the chance to star as their childhood dream princesses acknowledge that their stories are changing for the more modern times in a positive way. The difference is that they chose to respect the old movies even though they are being modernized. Ziegler disrespected a classic childhood staple through mockery and ignorance.
Though the main actress’s blatant dislike of the original is a major cause for outrage, many more people are heartbroken about the loss of the Seven Dwarfs in the movie. The cause for this concern again comes from disrespecting classicalism but also because they are revoking the roles of the Dwarfs because of the controversy stereotypically casting little people carries. This movie is an incredible way to include an often ignored minority of little people in Hollywood; they have just taken away seven possible roles and missed an opportunity.
Many of the new movies have faced criticism but “Snow White” has already accumulated more bad press than every other remake combined. The chance of success with so many different people already being outraged about the movie is minimal, and Disney’s “Snow White” may be too deep in to recover before its release date in March.
