Disney’s Snow White Remake and the Risk of Rewriting Nostalgia

I’ve always found it fascinating how quickly people turn on a remake. Nostalgia is delicate, you tweak too much and people feel like you’ve vandalised their childhood. But Snow White didn’t just tweak the original, it pulled it apart, apologised for it, and tried to repackage it as something entirely different. The result? A film no one wanted, fronted by someone who didn’t seem to like the story she was remaking.

The love story that apparently needed explaining

The original Snow White is, at its core, a really simple story. Evil queen gets jealous, sends a huntsman to kill her stepdaughter, the girl escapes to the forest, moves in with seven tiny men, eats a cursed apple, and gets brought back to life by true love’s kiss. It’s not complex, but it’s iconic. And people love it for what it is, a fairy tale. No one’s watching it expecting social commentary.

Interestingly, there’s even a theory that the story was loosely inspired by the real-life tale of a 16th-century German countess, Margarete von Waldeck, who was allegedly poisoned for falling in love with the wrong man, Philip II of Spain. A love story cut short by political ambition. Which, if you think about it, kind of makes the original plot feel more grounded than it gets credit for.

But historical roots aside, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was also a technical masterpiece for its time. It wasn’t just Disney’s first princess film, it was the world’s first full-length animated feature. Before that, animation was basically short slapstick sketches, not full narratives. Disney’s team created a full cinematic world from scratch, pioneering techniques like cel animation and the multiplane camera, which added depth and realism to the scenes. The colours, the scale, the detail, it was groundbreaking. The whole industry changed because of that one film.

So when people get defensive about it, it’s not just because they loved it as kids. It’s because it mattered. It was the first of its kind. It had charm, it had craft, and it didn’t need to prove anything. It just worked.

Now compare that to the 2025 version, where the romance is erased and the film spends more time correcting the past than celebrating it. Rachel Zegler, who plays Snow White, said her version “won’t be saved by a man” and called the prince a “stalker.” She also admitted she hadn’t even seen the film in 16 years and basically slagged it off as being “weird.”

Which is… a choice. Especially when you’ve taken the lead role in it.

It’s like applying for a job, then turning up and insulting the company. You can modernise a story without making everyone who loved it feel stupid. And yet, that’s exactly what happened. The film seemed more interested in distancing itself from the original than honouring it. It didn’t come across as a fresh take, it just felt like it was embarrassed to exist.

And if that’s the tone coming from the lead actor, how are audiences meant to get excited?

Passion matters, especially with legacy projects

What made it worse was the contrast. When Wicked came out, the leads couldn’t have made it clearer how much they adored the story. Ariana Grande has talked for years about how much that role meant to her. She cried at the table read, shared behind-the-scenes moments that felt genuinely emotional, and clearly wanted to do it justice. Cynthia Erivo too, you could feel the respect both of them had for the original material.

That kind of love reads. People notice. And it makes them want to root for the film.

Zegler, on the other hand, couldn’t have sounded less connected to Snow White if she tried. She hadn’t watched it in over a decade, she referred to it as “weird,” and she slagged off the love story in interviews. Gal Gadot didn’t bring much warmth to it either. Her press quotes felt polished but empty, like she was promoting a product, not a character.

You don’t have to be obsessed with the original to take a role, but when a story is this iconic, it helps if it feels like you care. The Wicked cast leaned into the emotional weight of what they were making. The Snow White cast seemed to be actively distancing themselves from it.

And the audience picked up on that, of course.

It’s sad how much of the backlash was racial, but that wasn’t the only reason

There’s no ignoring the fact that a lot of online commentary crossed the line. The casting of a Latina actress in the title role triggered the usual noise, people quoting the “skin as white as snow” line from the original and pretending that was their only issue. It wasn’t. And it’s sad how predictable that kind of backlash still is.

But it also wasn’t the full story. Most of the criticism wasn’t about race, it was about tone. It wasn’t the casting, it was the condescension. People felt like they were being told off for liking the original. That the film wasn’t a love letter to a classic, it was a lecture about how outdated it was.

Disney fans hate change

Anyone who’s ever watched a Disney Adult vlog will tell you, the most dramatic part isn’t the character meet-and-greets or the overpriced food, it’s the reactions to change. A new ride, a different font, a minor tweak to the park layout, and you’ll see grown adults spiral. These people go to Disney because they want things to stay exactly the same.

Disney is built on repetition. People return to the parks and to the films because they want to feel like a kid again. That’s the magic, not realism, not reinvention, not subversion. It’s emotional comfort.

So when the studio suddenly decides to rip up one of its oldest stories and tell everyone how strange and outdated it was, the backlash isn’t surprising. Disney’s brand is nostalgia, and Snow White made a lot of nostalgic fans feel like they were being talked down to.

People don’t like feeling like they’re in a lesson

Another key point that gets missed is how quickly people switch off when a film starts to feel like a values seminar instead of a story. Snow White isn’t a documentary. It’s a girl in a fairytale forest eating a cursed apple. It’s meant to be fun. Sweet. A bit magical.

Instead, this version of the story came with so much explanation and defensiveness that it started to feel like homework. It’s fine to update an old story. But people shouldn’t feel like they’re being educated for liking the original. That’s never going to land well.

Then came the politics

As if the film’s tone hadn’t divided enough people, Zegler posted a strongly anti-Trump message in the lead-up to the 2024 election. It was deleted, but it had already gone viral by the time it was removed. And whether you agree with her or not, it was a disastrous PR moment.

Donald Trump went on to win 77,284,118 votes in 2024, that’s 49.8 percent of the total votes cast. He now holds the record for the most cumulative popular votes of any candidate in US history, which, regardless of where you stand politically, shows just how massive his base still is.

Zegler’s post alienated a huge portion of potential viewers. The timing turned a film release into a political statement, and a quiet boycott followed. She later apologised in The Guardian, but by then the damage was done.

And it’s hard not to wonder if anyone was guiding her at all, because it certainly didn’t feel like it.

Then there’s Gal Gadot

Gal Gadot’s casting as the Evil Queen added another layer of controversy. Not because of her performance (though people slagged that off too), but because of her very public support for Israel during the ongoing war in Gaza.

A huge number of people are, understandably, deeply uncomfortable supporting anything tied to prominent Israeli figures right now. Gaza’s Ministry of Health reports that over 50,000 Palestinians have been killed, with more than 113,000 injured. The scale of suffering is beyond devastating. It’s not just war, it’s slaughter. Entire neighbourhoods have been levelled, hospitals bombed, and civilians buried beneath the rubble. For many, watching a film led by someone who has openly and repeatedly supported the Israeli military feels morally impossible.

There was already a boycott Disney movement long before Snow White came out. It existed in smaller online spaces, particularly after Disney donated $2 million to Israeli humanitarian organisations with no publicly known donation or equivalent support for Palestinians. When the new Lion King film came out, the boycott was still there, but it stayed relatively low-level.

Then they cast Gal Gadot. And it was like someone shone a flashlight straight onto everything again. Her support for Israel isn’t subtle. The donation wasn’t forgotten. And together, it created a message that felt far from neutral. For a company that usually avoids taking political positions, it’s hard to understand how they didn’t see this backlash coming.

I genuinely don’t understand how this was allowed to play out the way it did. It’s not even that it was a controversial choice, it was an obvious one. There is no way this wouldn’t have triggered global backlash. And yet, they did it anyway. Either no one thought it through, or they didn’t care.

Nostalgia isn’t passive

Nostalgia doesn’t mean loyalty. People don’t show up just because something has the same name or the same costume. They show up when they feel like the thing they loved is still being treated with care. That it still holds the same spirit.

This version of Snow White didn’t treat the original with care. It treated it like something that needed fixing. That tone filtered through every interview, every clip, every promo quote. And in doing so, it pushed away the very audience that would’ve happily shown up if they’d felt even a hint of affection.

The story isn’t the problem. The audience isn’t the problem. The problem is the disconnect, between what the film tried to be, and what people actually wanted.

It’s one of the lowest ever rated films on IMDB.