Why I Liked Snow White (2025)

Expanded from a comment I posted to the Bitchuation Room (with Francesca Fiorentini) podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbuIKm_nSWQ&lc=UgznhlFcnBPRHqAqaoB4AaABAg.AGDTkzT4j11AGDZhKqW9k7

Usually I avoid watching remakes of classic movies, but I wanted to see and support this one. Most children's movies about young women, whose happiness in life depends on them marrying a wealthy prince-in-tights, need to be updated, IMO. (The Maleficent movies did a great job of updating Sleeping Beauty, albeit they're pretty intense for younger kids.) Partly because of that, I really enjoyed Snow White--not nearly as much as Maleficent, though--and may see it again.

Besides featuring a more empowered Snow White, the movie's acting is impressive. Even though I hate Gal Gidot's pro-Zionist stance (and would have boycotted the movie if Zegler's pro-Palestinian views hadn't countered it), I think she is a pretty good villain. If I was a kid, she would have scared me even more than the original Disney queen (who gave me multiple nightmares when I was little).

Zegler's performance is also very impressive. Complaints about her casting as Snow White (she's half Colombian and only half "white"), tend to overlook all the times Caucasian actors had their faces painted for non-Caucasian parts (and if the Neo-Nazis get their way, that’ll soon happen again). Had this movie been made a generation ago, society's "group think" might not have condemned it for being "woke." In 1997 Disney released a live-action Cinderella with (non-"white") Brandy Norwood as the star, and to a large extent, the public was spared complaining by white supremacists.

Snow White 2025 isn't perfect, though. As someone I know pointed out, the dwarfs are no longer as easy to identify just by looking at them (e.g., "that one's Sneezy," "that one's Sleepy," "that one's Happy..."). Also, although the dwarf's mine is wondrous and spectacular (as are other environments like the dwarfs' house and the haunted forest), I strongly feel that diamonds, rubies, etc. should all be left in the ground. Albeit, I wasn't expecting that concern to be remedied in this movie.