Snow “Woke”

by Nathan Milkes 

 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is the first feature-length animated film in U.S. history. In October 2016, Disney announced that they would be making a live-action remake of the 1937 film, which would simply be called Snow White.

Recently Disney announced that people wouldn't play the companions of Snow White with dwarfism.  As a Disney spokesperson said to the Hollywood Reporter, “To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community”.  This means that there will be no dwarfs in the new movie because Disney thinks that the original film reinforced stereotypes. 

This was met with lots of anger, such as Mohamed Wahib from 705. “I think they should have kept the dwarf and cast actors with dwarfism to play them because, in the original story, they’re dwarfs.” 

 However, some others have different opinions.  Leslie Daniel from class 702 said, “I think that it’s good there won’t be any dwarfs in the new Snow White movie because I think the original movie was offensive to people with dwarfism”. These show that Disney fans have different opinions about the change from dwarfs to no dwarfs in the movie.

Another controversy of the new movie is that many fans of the original Disney movie think that it is going to be, “Good but not good,” as Leslie Daniel puts it. “I think that it won’t be true to the original plot, so it might not go as planned. I think they’re trying to change the story, by aiming it at kids of the modern day, instead of aiming it at all ages.” Recently, many remakes of classic Disney movies have been big failures at the box office and many people think this movie will be no different.

Mohamed Wahib predicts, “I don’t think that the new Snow White movie will make money at the box office, and if it does, I doubt it will be as much as Disney was making a few years ago from each movie.”

The final controversy of the Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs live-action remake is that there will be major plot changes. Disney announced that they were going to make plot changes, such as that the prince would no longer kiss Snow White while she was asleep. Another change is that Disney is planning to make Snow White a totally different character. There are going to be other changes, but they are unknown.

According to Leslie Daniel, “Recently Disney has been trying to make all their movies more kid-friendly, despite lots of anger from fans. I think this is right in some movies, but in others, the problem is either too small for it to matter, or if changed would alter the plot too much."

All this new information about what people think about the new snow white movie may shock you, but just remember that almost every remake of everything has lots of controversy too! No matter what people say about Snow White, you can still form your own opinions after it drops on March 21, 2025.