Snow White Fails Because Disney Sucks

If Disney Wanted to Honor the Original, It'd be like Game of Thrones

Disney’s Snow White finally made it to the theatres, and I, like many, will skip the disembowelment of its previous bowdlerization of a classic Teutonic fairy tale into American twee.

I admit enjoying the years of impending disaster prediction by American and English social media writers who have nothing better to do than take the piss, especially when the star of the movie, Rachel Zegler, made the mistake of putting down the 1937 movie, which wouldn’t be getting a live action remake if the original was forgettable. I note a live-action Black Cauldron isn’t in any known plans, just saying.

My Saturday highlight was looking for the reviews from people who actually went to see it to find out how truly awful it turned out to be. According to the reviews, the obvious reshoots and add-ins, like weird CGI “magical creatures” who are soulless extrapolations of the cartoon dwarves in the Disney cartoon, are just embarrassingly bad. The plot sounds like young maiden discovers the joys of socialism, the magic power of remembering people’s names, and gets rid of evil step mom so everyone in the kingdom can have a cool dance party in matching clothes. There’s a super-cute homeless dude who has to kiss her once, but he’s not really into it, and she thinks he’d be a creepy stalker if he was, so no pressure, LJBF. And unfortunately for those of us who wanted to go full-on h8tr, it sounds like Rachel Zegler is undeniably a talented and emotive singer, even if the songs she had to sing were lame.

Why Can’t It Just Have Been a Lame Homage?

So given that this was clearly a Rachel Zegler project, and that Zegler thought the cartoon movie’s plot was super-stupid, why couldn’t Disney just have eviscerated what they thought was popular from the old movie (cute dwarves, adoring animals, evil-upon-evil stepmother who must be destroyed, dreamy castle, and pretty princess dresses), put Disney plot #3 with the too-cool-for-you-Boomer twist #4 on it, and done away with having to come up with a weird reason for the olive-hued Zegler whose skin is not “white as snow” to be called “Snow White.” She could be “Raven Hair” or “Goldie Face” or “Howly Sings” and Disney could have a whole new princess for its commercial pantheon and another line of dresses to sell to drag queens.

Go Grimm and Scream Yourself to Sleep

As it is, it sounds like the movie appeals to no-one. It’s too long and not catchy enough for children or children-at-heart who will sing along to the songs and dress up like the characters. There’s no consistent plot or tone and the art is all over the place so the film nerds who want to think they are so sophisticated would have a reason to love and admire it. And Gal Gadot is not campy enough to chew up the movie and Rachel Zegler can actually sing, so it’s not bad enough that the h8ters can satisfactorily hate-watch it.

There’s an original before the “original” cartoon and Disney ruined fairy tales by making them pretty and giving them a happy end. That’s not what they’re like! In the Germany I grew up in, everyone got read fairy tales as well as other classic children’s literature and it was all about knowing your place, and learning the horrible consequences what happens to people who misbehave. The girl who engages in identity theft in The Goose Girl gets placed inside a barrel spiked with nails (on the inside) and rolled down a steep hill. The Little Mermaid’s prince marries a princess and she turns into sea foam because did she really believe he’d marry a fish? She was lucky she didn’t get served up for dinner at the reception! My husband and children joked that German children screamed themselves to sleep, and given that I like to fall asleep to true crime podcasts as I go to sleep, I will say yes, and maybe it gives a better perspective on life than Americans have who always expect a happy end.

The Real Snow White is More Game of Thrones Than Disney

I pulled out one of my German fairy tales books (Die Schönsten 50 Märchen Von Grimm) and that story reads more like true crime than a Disney movie. The stepmother does have a way-too-honest and blunt magic mirror that not only tells her Snow White (lil’ miss albino complexion) is a thousand times prettier than she is, but also rats out that she’s still alive even after each of the step mother’s multiple attempts to kill her. First, she had the huntsman take Snow White into the woods but after Snow White begs for mercy, he finds it hard to kill someone so innocent but figures the wild animals will do her in quickly enough. However, she finds the seven dwarves’ house and runs into it for shelter and passes out after drinking their dry wine. There is no distinguishing between the dwarves other than they do a routine kind of like the Three Bears about everything she ate and ruined, and when she wakes up they offer her a role of domestic servitude in exchange for them protecting her from her stepmother.

Because of the mirror and because Snow White is childishly stupid and vain, the stepmother comes back in various disguises to murder her. At first, she appears as a corset-lace seller (I think this is what Schnürriemen means) and laces up Snow White so tight she stops breathing. But the dwarves show up and cut off the corset. Next time she brings Snow White a poisonous comb that little Miss Dumb-Dumb brushes her hair with until she passes out, but the dwarves get rid of that, too. It’s only then, and after the dwarves have warned Snow White to never let in a stranger, or take things from a stranger, that stepmom shows up with a poisonous apple, and all she can do is leave it on the stoop. And after she leaves — what does Snow White do? Yup, she eats it and appears to die again!

It’s only then that the dwarves make a glass coffin for her and put her body on top of a mountain so animals can come by and watch it decompose. And only then does a prince show up. He doesn’t kiss her and die from poison apple residue! He shakes the coffin like a bratty kid trying to shake open a Barbie box and Snow White coughs up the apple chunk in her throat and he takes her back to his castle to marry her.

Evil stepmom is in the castle neighborhood, so she gets invited, and boy is she mad to see Snow White, even though she’s now in a different kingdom. But it’s Snow White’s kingdom now, so as part of the festivities, they find some iron slippers, heat them up in the fire and make stepmom dance in them until she dies.

The Lesson and My Remake

So the lesson here is that no matter how much plastic surgery and fillers you get, there’s always going to be a new hottie getting all the likes on Instagram or OnlyFans. And there’s no point trying to get her account cancelled or doing something skankier or more outrageous than she did, because she’ll still be more popular and if you try to burn her, she’s going to burn you instead — and hard.

Let’s see that one in the theatres, maybe with Amouranth or Jennifer Lopez as the evil queen and some frighteningly young celebutard influencer as Snow White (possibly Vivienne Jolie). Add the snarkiest gay fashion commentator (please send recommendations to the studio now!) as the Mirror and we’ve got something people will want to see.