10 Ways the 'Snow White' Remake Failed the Original

4 days ago 14

Rachel Zegler as Snow White sitting down in the forest surrounded by animals.

Born with Autism (formerly classified as Asperger syndrome), Tyler B. Searle has been obsessed with storytelling since he was old enough to speak. He gravitated towards fairy tales, mythology, the fantasy genre, and animated movies and shows aimed at family audiences. When not writing, Tyler enjoys watching more cartoons and reading fantasy books in his home in Ontario, Canada.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is by far the most important movie in Disney's history, let alone one of the most important animated films ever made. It is the movie that Walt Disney built his company upon, and without it Disney would never have become the titan of popular culture that it is today. Thus, it was inevitable that it would be subjected to the trend of live-action remakes of Disney classics.

Snow White was fraught with controversy leading up to its release, but even without it, it's clear audiences and critics were never going to like this movie. This is because, out of all the live-action remakes, this is the one that disrespects the original film the most.

10 Too much filler

Emilia Faucher standing between Hadley Fraser and Lorena Andrea in Snow White (2025)

One of the strengths of the original 1937 movie is how well paced it is. By keeping the plot simple and adhering to the fairy tale structure, the movie never gets distracted by superfluous story tangents, and gives plenty of time for characters to endear themselves to the audience and the emotional weight to fill them with joy, laughter, dread, and sadness. Unfortunately, due to numerous re-writes, the 2025 movie goes in the opposite direction.

The most egregious example of padding revolves around Snow White's missing father; midway into the film, Snow White suddenly believes he is still alive and tries to find him, only for the Evil Queen to reveal that he's been dead the whole time. It doesn't add anything to the story or change Snow White's outlook on life or her father's legacy, so the plot went on a tangent just to extend the runtime. Other moments include the drawn-out climax, a sub-plot involving bandits fighting in the name of the king, and too many new musical numbers that replace nearly every song from the original.

9 Superfluous side characters

Andrew Burnap as Jonathan and Rachel Zegler as Snow White in Snow White

Befitting a fairy tale story, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is relatively light on characters, and they all fit classic archetypes. This gave Walt Disney and his team lots of room to play with the personalities, from the seven dwarfs getting unique personalities and gimmicks, to the huntsman's inner struggle between his duty to the queen and his love for the princess. Snow White keeps all the key characters, but also adds in some new ones to help fill out that runtime.

The Prince has been replaced by a rogue named Johnathan, who leads a band of bandits who steal in the name of the old king. Aside from him and one other bandit obsessed with crossbows, none of them have any personality, largely in part because there are 7, just like the number of dwarfs, so they feel incredibly superfluous. There's even a captain of the guard who faces off with them and goes through a mini arc when he sides with Snow White at the end, who treads on the toes of the huntsman.

8 Answering questions nobody asked

A common problem with the live-action remakes is that, to extend their runtime, they try to answer things that were left vague or never touched upon in the original movie. More often than not, this takes away the magic and mystery from some things being left unanswered, especially when the answers given are confusing at best and nonsensical at worse. Snow White might contain some of the worst examples of this.

Right off the bat, the film explains to us that Snow White was not given her name for having "skin as white as snow," but rather because she was born during an intense snowstorm. Another example is Dopey being mute not because he never tried to speak, but rather because the other dwarfs liked to pick on him and make jokes at his expense, so he stopped talking out of fear. Disney really needs to take heed to that old chestnut, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

7 Overuse of CGI

Rachel Zegler as Snow White with the seven dwarfs

The original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a technical marvel, and the culmination of a decade's worth of artistic innovation. While the character designs would be vastly outclassed only 3 years later by Disney's next feature, Pinocchio, the movie still looks gorgeous, especially with its background art that looks as if you've stepped into a storybook. Sadly, rather than go the route of Who Framed Roger Rabbit to re-capture that magic with 2D animation, Disney relied on CGI, to horrific results.

For the sake of fairness, the CGI on the animals is pretty good, especially since they have more personality to them than in 2019's The Lion King. However, nearly all the queen's magic is lackluster, and some of the CGI backgrounds and trees during Snow White's run through the woods, look more at home in a video game than a theatrical production. And then there are the dwarfs, who fall so deep into the uncanny valley that they become horrific and grotesque rather than lovable and endearing.

6 Fairest of them all

The Magic Mirror in the Snow White remake.

No other Disney villain represents vanity like the Evil Queen. Every day, she asks her magic mirror "who is the fairest of them all," and when the mirror says Snow White, it prompts the queen to try and kill her, thus kicking off the plot. However, the new movie decided to use a different interpretation of the word fairest, using it instead to represent one's character over external beauty... except not all the time.

The definition of fairest coming from inner beauty is only said at the end of the movie when the queen confronts the mirror after Snow White rallies the people behind her. If that was the case all along, then why did the mirror say the queen was the fairest? By that logic, anyone in the kingdom could be fairer than her due to her wicked heart, especially after she tricks Snow White into eating the apple. Yet the mirror still says she is the fairest.

5 Mishandling the dwarfs

The seven dwarfs, as seen in Disney's Snow White remake.

The seven dwarfs were a major leap in character animation; not only did the animators capture the essence of their personalities through body language (such as Dopey's hitch step), but they gave the dwarfs a wide range of facial expressions, which made them more dynamic than previous cartoon characters. Years later, the dwarfs still rank among Disney's best side-characters, and the Team Disney building in Burbank, California, depicts the dwarfs holding up the roof of the studio to signify their importance. This makes it all the more baffling how little is done with them in the remake.

The dwarfs feel like an afterthought throughout most of the movie, having little to no involvement in pushing the plot forward, and instead spending most of their time bickering. Due to the altered climax, they also play no role in the downfall of the Evil Queen, and Grumpy's character arc is thrown away so that the film can instead give Dopey an arc about gaining the confidence to speak. They even block the way into the castle, but the Queen just moved around them to get back inside. Combined with their ugly designs, it feels like Disney put only the bare minimum into its keystone side characters in their attempts to modernize the story.

4 Fumbling the Evil Queen

The Evil Queen is one of Disney's best female villains. Her design and animation cuts an imposing figure thanks to her dark colors and regal composition, and when transformed into her hag form, she cuts loose and revels in her wickedness under the mask of anonymity. All of this is tied together by a wicked performance by Lucille La Verne, whose acting was so powerful that, while recording the scene where the queen pretends to have a heart attack, the production crew feared that she was suffering a real one in the recording booth.

Snow White passed the mantle of the Evil Queen to Gal Gadot, and to say that comparing her to La Verne is night and day is an understatement. Gadot's performance is pretty hard to take seriously: she plays the role too over-the-top, making the queen silly rather than intimidating, especially when she breaks into musical numbers. Her facial expressions also barely change, so when she's not silly, she instead feels as stiff as the diamonds she love so much.

3 Misunderstanding the transformation scene

Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen in Snow White.

The most iconic scene in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is when the Evil Queen brews a magic potion to transform herself into a hag to go after Snow White in disguise. Not only is it gorgeously animated and properly built up to make it feel like dark magic is at work, but it is thematically poignant because the queen, driven by vanity, turns herself ugly and dies ugly, reflecting how this lifestyle is self-destructive. This should have been an easy thing for Snow White to adapt, but nope, they messed it up as well.

First off, the potion brewing process is rushed through with no buildup, due to it being part of a song sequence. The tone is also wrong: the colors are too bright and the transformation, while decently animated, doesn't look or sound nearly as hideous as the original. Finally, it's not permanent. The queen changes herself back after poisoning Snow White, destroying that self-destructive theme.

2 Snow White's new personality

While Snow White from 1937 is not as complex as future princesses like Ariel, Belle, Elsa, and Anna, she is still a very likable character. She is kind, empathetic, and matronly, who can take charge of a situation. However, she isn't perfect, and breaks down in fear several times due to the horrible situations that have been thrust upon her.

This new version of the character, by contrast, is never allowed to show moments of vulnerability. When the huntsman holds a blade to her throat, she stares him down defiantly, unlike the original, who screams and covers her face like one would expect in that situation. It makes the character harder to relate to, because she no longer feels like a real person, only a Hollywood construct that the film repeatedly says is strong, brave, and kind.

1 It fails to justify its existence

The Evil Queen handing Snow White an apple in Snow White

When you are making a live-action remake of one of the most important movies in animated history, you had better have a justifiable reason for it. Sadly, we all know why Disney is making these movies: some of them have made over $1 billion, and Disney is eager to keep chasing that dragon. But since Snow White was a box-office bomb, they can't even use that as a justification, so we have to look at what else the story presents.

Simply put, the movie has nothing of value to say, especially when compared to the original. It's not doing anything new, just playing things safe with its emphasis on egalitarianism politics and Snow White's new characterization. This is easily the biggest insult to the original Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, because nothing about that movie was safe. It was a gamble that could have cost Walt everything, and thus, its story shows that, if you want to make something that will be remembered for generations to come, you need to take risks and sometimes put your faith in the unknown.