For 100 years, Disney has touched the hearts of millions, spreading happiness to those who found themselves believing they can do anything. They’ve recently taken on live action movies, recreating many of their old classics to make them more accessible to newer generations. However, many Disney fans are enraged at the changes being made in the process.
In recent years, Disney has released “Cinderella,” “Aladdin,” “Maleficent,” “Mulan,” “The Little Mermaid,” and many others, often following basic plots, but essentially creating a new movie. Herein lies the problem for most hardcore fans. If Disney is going to take the effort to make a movie loosely based on another movie, why don’t they just make an entirely different movie? They did it with “Maleficent” and were extremely successful, and they seem to be taking a similar route with the new “Snow White” movie, a movie heavily surrounded by controversy for the extreme amount of changes to the original story. The difference is that unlike the “Maleficent” movie never claiming to be a retelling of “Sleeping Beauty,” the new “Snow White” movie is supposed to be the live action version of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.”
The “Snow White” movie is already shaking up the internet for several reasons. For one thing, Rachel Zegler, a Latina movie star, is set to play the title character. Fans are outraged by her disregard for the original movie. In an interview with Variety, Zegler stated that “she’s not going to be saved by the prince and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love,” in reference to the old “Snow White” character. A few problems arise from that statement. For one, the whole plot is that “Snow White” gets poisoned and saved by the prince. Another is that dreaming of true love is bad, a dream that a lot of little girls have. Some other changes include nixing the seven dwarves themselves due to fear of portraying stereotypes incorrectly. Peter Dinklage, known for being a little person in the acting industry, first brought up the fact that it was a backwards representation. To rectify that, they are seven vastly different people, with only one of them a true member of the dwarfism community. That decision has been met with backlash, too, because it takes away roles from actors who actually have dwarfism and may struggle to find work. According to journalist and documentarian Cara Reedy, who is a member of the little people community, “‘He’s no dwarf hero,’” in response to Peter Dinklage commenting on the dwarves in “Snow White.”
The reason Disney gave for most of these proposed changes stem from the idea that the original movie came out 80 years ago, and, as Zegler herself said “it’s no longer 1937.” It may not be 1937, but the story behind “Snow White” written by the Grimm Brothers in 1812 is even older than that. Times were even more different then than they are now, so if this truly is the direction Disney wants to take, maybe they ought to make a whole new movie. Many Disney fans already view the movie as a cash grab and believe that, like with many other live action films, it won’t live up to the original. “They leave out a lot and they just aren’t the same usually,” said Noah Goldberg, a senior here at the school.
What this means for Disney’s future is unclear. There is no doubt that people will go see this movie and Disney will still earn money either way, but it might be important for the company to consider what their fans really want to see. Several fans have expressed interest in newer original stories, such as with the “Wish” movie. If Disney fails to consider their fans’ feelings, their future might be down the drain.
