Snow White: Review, Conflict, and Controversy

Author:
Jørgen Thompson
Updated:
Apr 7, 2025

'Waiting on a Wish"

I did something extremely embarrassing recently… Just the other day I went for the first time in my entire life to the movie theatre alone, by myself. No friends, no family, just me and my lonely thoughts. The reason why I went to the theatre by myself is because no one I knew was interested enough to go and see Snow White in theatres. I went in thinking it might not be as bad as people are saying, and I walked humiliated since I’m a grown man walking out of a Disney princess movie by myself, sneaking out the back door so that no body sees my shameful walk. Now for the question at hand, was Snow White (2025) worth watching in theatres, absolutely not. Would I watch it on Disney +?, probably not, but It also wasn’t the worst live-action I’ve ever seen, and it really could’ve been a lot worse than it was.

The Key points I’m covering in this video is the emotional impact, the characters, the plot, the dialogue, and the cinematography or the visuals.

Emotional Impact

Something I was not expecting was for me to actually feel something in this movie, even if it was for just one scene. There was one song in particular that was actually really well done, it was the Waiting on a Wish song, that one shocked me, and It was one of the first song we were introduced to so it was off to a decent start.

I was having a hard time feeling anything else after that mainly because I’m clearly not this movies demographic, I wasn’t expecting to like this movie very much and it definitely wasn’t my cup of tea. I’d say if anyone was going to really enjoy this movie it would be little girls who are just discovering what princesses are, so if you have a little girl that fits that description, then it might be worth watching for you.


Pros	Cons
Rachel Zegler is a good singer	Not the movies target audience

Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen

In Defense Of Gal Gadot's Snow White Performance
Screen Rant

Fun Fact:

As of 2025, this is the lowest rated Disney live action remake of any of their animated movies.

Characters

Snow White

Starting with Rachel Zegler as Snow White, she could be considered as the glue that is trying desperately to hold this production together. She’s the best singer by far, and she didn’t get on her soap box and preach to us about the patriarchy as much as I thought she was.

As some of you may know, Rachel Zegler has some fairly radical views and she has a tendency to upset a lot of people Because of her outspoken opinions. For one thing, she has been very openly pro-palastine, Using her social media platforms to advocate for Palestinian rights. She even goes on to chastise Donald Trump supporters saying "May Trump supporters and Trump voters and Trump himself never know peace." I’m just giving you some of the lore since it’ll be important later on.

As far as the film goes, she did a great job with what she was given, however I’m still not a fan of how they wanted to make everything “progressive”, which I believe makes this film significantly worse. She called the original film “weird” because it had too much patriarchy.

Evil Queen

Oh man… How is Gal Gadot going to come back from this?

Her acting was so incredibly dull, and over the top at the same time. It felt like she was still in the process of finding the right acting style through the entire movie, kind of like finding the right way to let out a fart. Gal Gadot is the embodiment of an over due fart. She had only sang one song, which makes me think that she might’ve had more songs in the first draft, but her singing wasn’t good enough to have another in here. Maybe they felt like they had to give her at least one song because it would’ve felt weird if they didn’t.

Another reason for her bad acting might be because of her ongoing conflict with Rachel Zegler. As previously stated, Zegler is pro-palistine. This is a huge conflict between the two actresses since Godat is very much pro-palestine. She is Israeli after all. However, her ongoing support has also led to a lot of criticism as expected. Her support for Israel amid other conflicts has led to significant public discourse, including disruptions during her Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony by both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian protesters.

I like to imagine Rachel giving her the finger off camera to throw her off her groove, but maybe her acting is bad because this is just not the right role for her at all.

Dopey

I couldn’t help but shake my head at the character development of Dopey because they just did something that goes completely contrary to what Dopey is embodied as. They gave Dopey a speaking role at the end, but In the original film, Dopey never spoke because they couldn’t find the right vocal match for his character, and it makes sense why. The word Dopey basically means stupid, and yet by the end of the movie, he’s reading books to children, and motivating his companions with his silky smooth voice.

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20-fun-and-creative-party-ideas-to-make-your-next-event-unforgettable

So now that he’s not Dopey, then what is he?

The Seven Bandits

I’m going to skip the seven dwarves for now just because I think it’ll be better to talk about them when we get to the visuals. The seven bandits on the other hand… why were they even here? The only important bandit is Jonathan, I don’t even think they bothered to give any of the others a name. It honestly felt like the seven bandits were originally going to be cast as the seven dwarves, and as it turns out, that’s actually true.

In January 2022, actor Peter Dinklage criticized Disney's decision to remake Snow White, labeling it a "backward story." In other words, he liked that they were progressive with the casting of Snow White, but did not like that they were still making that stereotyped dwarfism. Disney responded saying that they were “taking a different approach” to avoid stereotypes from the original film, and it wasn’t CGI creatures.

In July 2023, leaked set photos indicated that the Seven Dwarfs were reimagined as a diverse group, including actors of various ethnicities, genders, and heights, with only one actor having dwarfism. This move aimed to modernize the characters but faced criticism for potentially sidelining actors with dwarfism. Actors with dwarfism, such as Jason "Wee Man" Acuña, criticized Disney for not casting dwarf actors in these roles, arguing that it deprived them of significant acting opportunities.

So instead of getting rid of those actors entirely, they decided to make them bandits and the problem was solved… Except for the fact that there is absolutely no reason for them to be in the film anymore, they didn’t even try to give them a single reason to live.


Pros	Cons
Rachel Zeglers overall performance was well done.	Her outspoken opinions ultimately ruined the promotion of the film.
	Gal Godots performance was stale and cringe.
	Dopeys character development is destroyed the moment he speaks.
	The seven bandits have no point to them at all, they were meant to be the dwarves before backlash.

The Seven Bandits

Quote:

"Pies are luxuries. They don't need luxuries. It confuses them."

— Evil Queen

Plot

Once the bandits get introduced, it’s like everything starts happening in 2x speed. Snow White sings a song with Jonathan, the bandits come out of no where, they get ambushed by the queens guards, Jonathan gets shot with an arrow, get immediately revived from by Doc, they all have a dance party and the bandits leave. The sum it all up, that is the full extent of the bandits and most of it wasn’t even about them.

They did add quite a bit of scenes compared to the original mainly because they had this seven bandits issues that they had to squeeze in there, and because they were really trying to expand Dopey’s character which made the movie worse in so many ways. They expanded the plot around Dopey by having Snow White teach him how to whistle, eventually leading to him inevitably speaking.

The pacing gets thrown out the window during the last 40 minutes of the film. They must have forgotten about the part of the story where Snow White gets put into forever sleep mode because she’s not sleeping, she’s taking a nap. I close my eyes for three minutes and she’s already awakened by Jonathan, which was also very anticlimactic. From there, Snow White speed runs defeating the evil Queen in what feels like 5 minutes. However, the moments that stayed true to the original film worked pretty well, definitely would’ve worked better without all this clutter surrounding it.


Pros	Cons
The scenes that resembled the original film were reasonably developed.	The pacing was way too fast after the seven bandits scenes.
	Dopey speaking was atrocious.
	Too much clutter.

Dialogue

I found most of the dialogue to be necessary to the overall story, however most of what was said wasn’t received very well because of the little chemistry everyone has on set. I don’t truly believe anything that Jonathan says to Snow White because their relationship feels so forced and under-developed. Everything that the Evil Queen says has a bit of cringe sprinkled on top usually because their just statements that don’t make much sense, and Gal Gadot didn’t really help with that.

All of the lines from Dopey felt like he was supposed to be the one to kiss Snow White, their’s more chemistry between them than Jonathan.They really tried to be funny in some parts, but nothing really landed. Except for maybe one scene where one of the bandits leaves the party with an arm full of food and says “thanks for having us” to Snow White. It wasn’t even really that funny, but it made me smirk a bit, and it’s one of the only lines said by the bandits.

Not all of it was bad though, I’m just ripping into it because Hollywood production companies need to be set at a higher standard for movies.


Pros	Cons
Most dialogue was necessary	Little chemistry between actors creates stale dialogue
	Humour never landed

Uncanny Valley

Rachel Zegler Leads CGI Dwarfs in a Revolution Against Gal Gadot’s Evil Queen in Snow White
Consequence Film

Fune Fact:

Dylan Postl and Jason 'Wee Man' Acuña were two of the many little-people actors who wanted to play the Dwarfs in this movie.

Cinematography/Visuals

We finally made it to potentially the worst aspect of the film… the CGI dwarves.

Disney decided to go with the CGI approach after the backlash from Jason Acuña and not putting little people in a role that is clearly a role that they would excel at. They are defining these dwarves now as magical creatures, and they look absolutely disgusting. It’s the exact same problem they ran into when they created The Polar Express. This is a classic case of the Uncanny Valley effect. Uncanny Valley is a pyschoplogical phenomenon where people feel a sense of unease and are repulsed by entities that closely resemble humans but aren’t quite realistic, and that’s exactly what’s happening here.

Not only that, but people are just getting sick and tired of looking at over-used CGI. It makes everything look cleaner, but it also makes everything around it look incredibly fake. I get that they’re majestic creatures, but it’s so strong that it takes you out of the story completely. This is sadly becoming expected of Disney content now.