After seeing Snow White a couple of weeks ago, I’ve wanted to write about it for a while. Unfortunately, as often happens, life gets in the way. I wanted to write a blog begging the good people at Disney to stop this madness. Then today, we found out that Disney is “pausing” the live-action remake of Tangled. I find that particularly interesting since Snow White’s story was more like Tangled than the original Snow White. I tend to stay away from the Disney live-action remakes. Most of my professional experience is in animation, and I feel that the live-action remakes diminish the legacy of these animated classics, so I choose not to support them.
However, I saw Snow White because MacKenzie and I planned to discuss it in our podcast. I was also mildly interested because I saw that, even though the Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score was low, the audiences generally rated it a bit higher. So I went in with an open mind, but with low expectations.
I was still disappointed.
The first thing I will say is that I have no political beef with this film. While I’m not a fan of what Rachel Zegler (Snow White) said about the original, it’s her opinion and she’s entitled to it. You don’t have to agree with it, but she has a right to feel about the original however she feels about it. While I wish Gal Gadot (The Stepmother) felt a bit differently about what’s happening in Gaza, I can’t blame her, as an Israeli citizen, for having the opinions that she has about what is happening in that part of the world. Perhaps the most interesting thing about Snow White is that it’s that rarest of movies that equally pisses off both the left and the right.
My main beef with this film is that it honestly didn’t even look like they were trying. It didn’t look like the actors were trying. It didn’t look like the screenwriters were trying. It didn’t look like the costume designers were trying. It didn’t look like the director was trying. It certainly didn’t look like the VFX team was trying.
A lot of ire has been directed at the film for using CG dwarfs instead of hiring little people as actors to play them. I get the decision to go with motion capture because it presents a greater opportunity for interesting looks, and it adds to the fantasy elements of the film. But the motion capture was among the worst I’ve seen in a long time. This was much closer to The Polar Express than to Avatar. Dopey was the worst of all. They tried to humanize him too much, which made him look creepy. Also, they make him talk at the end, which totally destroys the iconic nature of that character.
The Original Deserved Better
It is not hyperbole to say that the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is probably one of the top-5 most important films of all time. It’s not one of Disney’s best, but it is great, and it showed that animation could work and be successful in feature-length films. Had it bombed at the theater, there might not ever have been another animated feature, and animation would have continued to be relegated to short and eventually television. Instead, it racked up $8 million at a time when a movie ticket cost a dime for kids and a quarter for adults. It remains in the top-10 box office rankings in terms of number of tickets sold. It cannot be understated how important the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is.
For that reason, it should have been left the hell alone. You’re not going to remake Casablanca, Citizen Kane, or The Godfather. So leave your stinking mitts off Snow White. This epidemic of subpar live-action remakes must stop. Thankfully, Disney might be getting the hint. Snow White appears to be a box office failure, to say the least. While I never wish for movies to fail because I know how hard they are to make, I am happy that the market is telling Disney to move on to other things. If the remakes of Lilo and Stitch or Moana do well, then the train could be restarted, but for now, it looks like the studio could start to look for content in other places.