DISNEY'S SNOW WHITE

The biggest hot take of the year is that 'Disney's Snow White' is a perfectly fine film. Does it have problems? Of course. Does it come close to the original film? Not a chance. But compared to most of the other remakes, 'Disney's Snow White' is a much more enjoyable sit. Rachel Zegler is an absolute star; she is everything you could want from a princess - so incredibly charming and captivating and absolutely carries this film. She and Andrew Burnap, the new love interest character, have fantastic chemistry.

My biggest win here is the music. For the first time in a remake, it isn't afraid of being a musical. Even though 'The Little Mermaid' had incredible vocals, the staging of the numbers didn't visually live up to the song itself. 'Disney's Snow White' has fantastic vocals - thank you Rachel - beautiful choreography thanks to Mandy Moore who choreographed 'La La Land' and Taylor Swift's 'The Eras Tour', and both the new songs, not the Evil Queen's new song that's actually replaced 'Wish' for the worst Disney villain song, and the three songs from the 1937 sound incredible. Visually speaking, this is also finally a remake that actually has colour. 'Beauty and the Beast', 'Aladdin', 'The Little Mermaid' and so many more have had weird blue/grey colour palates, but 'Disney's Snow White' really leans into its vibrant setting and really makes it stand out in the line-up.

The bad: for me, it largely comes down to Gal Gadot. While I love a remake actually using its villain, Gadot was not even close to the right choice for this role. She is so bland and miscast and the Evil Queen's new song is so poorly performed. The Evil Queen should be campy and menacing and here she is stiff. Hell, this movie is already being called "too woke" - just cast a drag queen at this point like they should have done with Ursala. The CGI on the "Dwarfs" (who are never referred to as dwarfs in this version) just comes across as rubbery. They are enjoyable as characters but they also have much less screen time in this version.

People have been complaining about plot changes, but it's pretty similar to the other remakes. Arguably, 'Snow White' had to be bulked up more than other Disney films - the 83-minute animated film is fairly simple, Evil Queen asks Mirror a question, Snow White sings about wanting a prince, Queen wants her dead, she meets the Dwarfs, some cleaning happens, she bites an apple, prince kisses her, she wakes up. To make the story work in 2025 lens changes were bound to happen, the same way they did in 'Snow White and the Huntsman' and 'Mirror Mirror'. This is not a "Disney has gone woke" issue but a "this fairytale came out in 1812 and needs to be changed to work for modern audiences" issue.

We get more backstory on Snow's parents and more interactions between her and the love interest. Like every other Disney Princess post-'The Little Mermaid' she now gets an 'I Want' song about wanting more than living under her stepmother's evil rule. Actually, most the changes are simply making the 'Snow White' fairytale fit the modern Disney princess structure. Post-1989, Disney Princesses will still fall in love (she still falls in love here, we still have true loves kiss, so don't get your panties in a twist) but that can't be the only thing of note; she has to be a character with values and beliefs. The message is never don't fall in love, you don't need a man, but that you can fall in love but want "adventure in the great wide somewhere", "to be part of your world", "paint with all the colours of the wind", "to know how far you'll go".

Let's get into it. At D23, the Disney Expo, Zegler said the following:

"The original cartoon came out in 1937 and very evidently so. There's a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her. Weird! Weird. So we didn't do that this time. We have a different approach to what I'm sure a lot of people will assume is a love story just because we cast a guy in the movie, Andrew Burnap, great dude. [...] But it's really not about her love story at all, which is really, really wonderful. [...] All of Andrew's scenes could get cut, who knows? It's Hollywood, baby!"

Clearly somewhat sarcastic and tongue and cheek, it's a little Buzzfeed hot take circa 2012, but I wouldn't even call this offensive or even worthy of backlash. However, in my opinion, what this allowed racist internet trolls to do in an effort to not look racist, instead of attacking her background they could now attack her character. And oh my goodness, the way these people are treating this 23-year-old actor was like she murdered their family. She made a comment that an 88-year-old film was outdated and it would be updated. Maybe it wasn't said in the most "media-trained" way, but nothing she said isn't what all these remakes have already been doing. In 'Cinderella', she meets the prince several times before the ball, also so he doesn't appear as a stalker. 'Beauty and the Beast' makes a huge point to make sure it's clear Belle wants to stay so people didn't scream "Stockholm syndrome!".

What baffles me the most is who these comments are coming from. They are people who, for one, just aren't the demographic for the film, both not being little kids nor Disney fans and two, probably have never even seen the original film or at least not since they were a child. It's absolutely disgusting the way these people are attacking Zegler over a Disney Princess film. 19 remakes have been made, all pretty equally bad or average, and none of the cast have ever received this level of hatred. Complain about the films being unnecessary, that they are just here to make money and artless, but to attack a person's background and appearance so hatefully is absolutely disgusting. There are so many bigger issues in the world than who is playing Snow White; direct that anger literally anywhere else. At the end of the day, if a young girl can look at Snow White and be excited that she looks like her or aspire to be like her, what is wrong with that, and why should you internet trolls take that away from them?

'Disney's Snow White' will be talked about for drama surrounding its release, and that's a shame because it has far more going for it than most other Disney remakes. From Zegler's charming performance to the vibrant musical numbers, there is a lot to enjoy here... even if you have to sit through some terrible CGI characters and an awful Gadot performance.

The weirdest thing about the film is that this is Marc Webb's first time directing a film since 2017. He did '(500) Days of Summer', two Spider-Man movies (the best ones) and two indies then disappeared from the big screen only to return with 'Disney's Snow White'. Truly a wild slate of films.