The new Snow White, starring Gal Gadot as the evil queen and Rachel Zegler as the titular Princess Snow White, reeled in just $3.5 million for the Thursday opening, suggesting a total opening weekend take of less than $60 million. Disney executives must be very worried that the movie won’t recoup its $209 million budget.
Rachel Zegler wouldn’t be my first choice to play Snow White in a live action remake of the Disney classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937). She would probably be on my shortlist to play Miss Stapleton from The Hound of the Baskervilles, whom Dr. Watson describes as “darker than any brunette whom I have seen in England.”
So if I’m thinking that Rachel Zegler is too dark for Dr. Watson to believe she’s Mr. Stapleton’s sister and therefore right for that rôle (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was setting up a twist for Sherlock Holmes to discover), then the racists were certainly going to think that she’s too dark and therefore wrong to play Snow White.
With the dismal box office and lukewarm reviews, racists feel vindicated in criticizing the casting of Rachel Zegler, as she’s not quite lily white. YouTuber Dave Cullen gleefully points out that the Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter score of 71% is based only on 500 or so verified review, so that with thousands of unverified reviews the score plummets to 22% (now 21% as I write this). But hey, let’s not question whether the unverified reviews are coming from people who actually watched the movie.
Tony (Ansel Egort, left) and María (Rachel Zegler) in a scene from West Side Story
The movie was a lightning rod for controversy long before it came out. Casting Zegler, who played María in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, predictably caused racists to complain that Snow White has to be not just white but very pale.
The editors of Cosmopolitan give a good overview of the earliest pre-release controversies, starting with Zegler’s old interviews.
In an old interview with Entertainment Weekly, Rachel said the original Snow White is "extremely dated when it comes to the ideas of women being in roles of power and what a woman is fit for in the world." (Reminder: Snow White premiered nearly 90 years ago in 1937.)
And in a separate old red carpet interview, Rachel noted that in the original Snow White, “There’s a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her....weird, so we didn't do that this time.” She also said the new version is “really not about the love story at all” but focuses on Snow White’s “inner journey that she goes on to find her true self.”
At this same red carpet event, Rachel also said her Snow White is "not going to be dreaming about true love, she’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be and the leader that her late father told her that she could be."
See, the naysayers are not being racist! The rabble-rousers have a problem with the tone of Zegler’s words, not her skin tone.
Fans of the original Snow White feel like Rachel has misunderstood the movie and are wondering why she took the role if she herself wasn't a fan of the original. And again, some people feel like re-writing an iconic Disney Princess to be someone "dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be" is "pseudo feminism."
Liberals have plenty to criticize this movie for, though. Peter Dinklage, best known as Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones, was among the first to criticize the Snow White production. Nadira Goffe for Slate:
The beloved actor, who has a common form of dwarfism, had some choice comments about Disney’s decision to adapt Snow White. In January of 2022, when appearing on comedian Marc Maron’s podcast WTF to promote the film Cyrano, Dinklage accused Disney of hypocrisy when the topic of the Snow White adaptation came up, expressing bafflement that the company was proud to announce they had cast a Latina actress as Snow White, but are “still making that fucking backwards story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together.” (The original film has been criticized as ableist in its portrayal of dwarves as childlike.) Dinklage’s message to Disney could be summed up as, to borrow his words: “What the fuck are you doing, man?”
Disney hastily responded in a statement to Good Morning America, saying that it would consult with members of the dwarfism community to take “a different approach with these seven characters” and “to avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film.” Furthermore, the Wrap reported that casting sheets showed that Disney had abandoned the seven dwarves for a nondescript group of “magical creatures.” In the end, as the movie’s official trailer shows, the seven dwarves will appear as animated characters.
Yeah, I don’t know. Consult? Looks more like sidestep. Here’s the trailer, see for yourself.
Maybe I will watch it on DVD or BluRay. Doubt it will pleasantly surprise me like Barbie, which also got quite a share of right-wing hate. Without the culture war, I wouldn’t have even cared to watch the Snow White trailer.
Have you seen this movie? Please let me know in the comments. If you’d write a review, please let me know so I can reblog it to Movie Review Group.
