After years of languishing in production hell, Snow White (2025) has premiered at last and—to the surprise of absolutely no one with a modicum of common sense—it hasn’t been well received.
Not only has it been declared rotten by the masses, it didn’t even come close to breaking even.
In the wake of this financial and critical failure, it would seem Disney has decided to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of Rachel Zeigler and her numerous publicity blunders. While I’m sure her vocal (and often inaccurate) critiques of the original film (along with her other public diatribes) didn’t do the remake any favors, I think we should be honest with ourselves. Even if Zeigler was the embodiment of Snow White’s humility and kindness, this movie would have still blown chunks.
The failure of Snow White (2025) was death by a thousand self-inflicted cuts.
Not only did they hire a spoiled brat with no respect for the legacy she is meant to represent, they created another unnecessary controversy by placing little people out of work to appease an actor that had nothing to do with the production and replaced them with nightmarishly awful CGI.
They then subjected the already tortured script to numerous rewrites in a desperate attempt to make it somewhat presentable to a public that was already disinterested in the product.
The result is a lamentable mess of cinematic proportions.
Prince Charming is no longer a prince—nor charming— but a Temu Flynn Rider with a merry band of colorfully costumed weirdos who totally weren’t supposed to be the replacement seven dwarfs until they were memed into oblivion by less than impressed online critics.
Snow White being the “fairest of them all” no longer refers to her appearance, but the goodness she has within her. This wouldn’t be an issue were it not for the fact that it raises questions as to why the Evil Queen cares if Snow White is considered a good person as it’s obvious she only cares about being considered “fair” by superficial standards.
Snow White breaks into the dwarves’ home and forces them to clean up for her rather than doing it herself in gratitude to them for allowing her to stay with them.
The costumes look cheap, the songs are forgettable, the list goes ever on.
It doesn’t take an accredited film critic to see why the public at large have rejected this movie. Besides the long list of bad decisions listed above, this movie suffers from the same fatal flaw that plagues most, if not all, reboots: It attempts to fix a story that wasn’t broken for an audience that doesn’t exist.
It’s more than a bit ironic when you compare and contrast the making of the two Snow White films.
Getting Snow White (1937) made was an uphill battle for Walt Disney.
In spite of Disney’s prior successes with animated shorts, no one thought making a cartoon feature-length film was possible. Cartoons in the 30s were little more than whimsical diversions to entertain movie-goers before a real, serious movie began. The idea that an animated film could possibly hold a crowd’s attention for an extended period of time was absurd. Audiences, critics argued, wouldn’t suffer a bombardment of bright colors and slapstick comedy for over an hour and would simply walk out of the theatre.
In addition to financial woes which lead to him having to mortgage his own home, Disney had to contend with the technological limitations of his time. Though the revolutionary multiplane camera was a boon for the production, every cell, every frame, still had to be hand-drawn, inked, and painted. Artists religiously studied the movement of real-life actors for hours on end in order to make their cartoon renderings as life-like as possible. Scores of songs and scenes were scrapped and had to be rewritten/reanimated to ensure nothing was out of place. Let me emphasis this had never been done before and they had no idea if their backbreaking work was even going to pay off.
Had Snow White been a commercial failure, it would have undoubtedly spelled the end of Disney’s career.
Fortunately, the tireless work of Disney and his animators paid off and Snow White made 8 million dollars at the box office. This was at a time when a child’s movie ticket cost $0.25. To this day, it remains one of the highest grossing cartoon films ever made and changed the history of animation forever.
Juxtapose Disney’s challenges with the company in its current form who had every advantage when making this movie: A dragon’s hoard of money, world-wide brand recognition, decades of critical success, and an army of sycophantic press dedicated to carrying their water for them.
They had all of this and they still failed.
Snow White (1937)—while “extremely dated” to some—was a labor of love. Disney persevered with the Herculean task of making this movie because he believed in the story. He believed in animation as an artform, and the value of collaboration with highly-talented and dedicated people. He believed in innovation and finding new, creative ways of bringing stories to life. He believed in all these things so much he was willing to take money out of his own pocket to finance the film.
What do the current heads of Disney believe in?
They obviously don’t believe in their own stories as they constantly take a hatchet to them every chance they get, ruining them in the process. They don’t believe in animation, otherwise they wouldn’t insist every cartoon film they have ever produced needs a live-action counterpart. And they certainly don’t believe in innovation as every future project is either a remake or a sequel to a successful property that came out over a decade ago.
At this point, I’m not even convinced they believe in money if the latest reports of their dire financial straits are true.
I’m not claiming Walt Disney was a perfect man by any stretch, but he certainly had something that the current heads don’t: Vision.
So, will Disney take this Titanic level failure as a sign they need to course correct? No. At least I don’t think so. While it may seem obvious to everyone else that their current trajectory won’t lead to a satisfying ending, you must understand that you and I seem to live in a different universe from the people who orchestrate these films. It’s conventional wisdom that all that a company as impactful as Disney needs to be successful is a good product. Nevertheless, they would rather plunge to the freezing depths as their flagship sinks than admit defeat and bring back the quality family orientated media they were once famous for.
My prediction is they will likely hang on for a decade or so before slowly fading into obscurity.
I say this without a hint of satisfaction. I grew up with Disney and Snow White was my favorite movie for several years.
That being said, I’ve been disabused of any notions that Disney will learn from any mistakes they make, however costly, however embarrassing.
The Crooked Pen 