The living room smelled like popcorn and warm fabric softener — the kind that clung to the couch cushions and blankets that we wrapped around ourselves like royal cloaks. My siblings and I piled together, eyes glued to the screen as the TV hummed to life.
A swelling orchestral score, a flicker of blue light against the walls. The montage began: Simba’s triumphant roar, Belle’s golden gown twirling under the chandelier, Aladdin’s magic carpet soaring through the night sky. Jack Sparrow, smirking like he knew a secret we didn’t. My heart pounded with anticipation as the resonant voice declared: “There is only one Disney.”
Every fiber of my childhood heart believed it.
But there’s not only one Disney anymore — there’s about 16 versions of every movie, each one a little more soulless than the last.
The new “Snow White” movie — a grim and joyless reimagining of a classic — feels like the final shovel of dirt over the grave. A once enchanted world is reduced to a boardroom-approved PowerPoint “modernization,” its seven endearing dwarfs replaced with CGI, and a vague assortment of non-dwarfs that look more like background characters from a knockoff video game. Gone is Snow White’s defining feature — her fair skin. And the Evil Queen? She’s played by Gal Gadot, one of the most stunning women in Hollywood, a woman so effortlessly elegant that watching her seethe with jealously over another’s beauty is less “dramatic villainy” and more “questionable plot logic.”
Growing up, Disney movies weren’t just entertainment; they were the gateways into dreaming. I watched “Beauty and the Beast” and saw a girl who loved books, realizing that maybe, just maybe, adventure was waiting in the pages of my own. I saw “The Lion King” and felt the ache of loss and the hope of redemption long before I understood what those things meant in real life. “Snow White” was a story of purity and goodness, a simple but profound reminder that the world may be cruel, but kindness endures.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped believing that. Disney stopped believing that. They traded magic for messaging, storytelling for sloganeering and wonder for pre-packaged content suited for Twitter discourse instead of timelessness. The animation lost its artistry. The characters lost their sincerity. The stories lost their souls.
The public response has been as warm as a poisoned apple. Backlash to interviews has been brutal with audiences rolling their eyes at every attempt to spin the film’s changes as “bold and innovative.” Trailers have been drowned out with groans and early test screenings were disastrous.
Currently holding a 44% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the film was summarized best by Helen O’Hara of Empire Magazine — along with the common rating of 2 out of 5 stars.
“It’s at its best when it’s an old-fashioned song-and-dance princess story, with Zegler and Gadot broad but effective, and at its worst in any scene involving the digital dwarves,” O’Hara said.
Ouch. Meanwhile, The Guardian described watching it as “toe-curlingly terrible.” I wasn’t sure what that meant at first. I found out when I watched this movie.
The biggest irony? This film supposedly caters to the ultra-modern, perpetually “empowered” crowd … who don’t even seem to care about it. Because deep down, everyone knows something is missing.
Even the dialogue has been reshaped into a creativity taxidermy project.
“You’re called Happy ’cause you’re Happy, and I’m called Grumpy because I’m… misunderstood,” The new dwarf Grumpy says at one point.
No, Grumpy. The only thing misunderstood here was everything about what made these stories work.
Misfires don’t stop there. The costumes look like they were stitched together with craft glue, the flat cinematography could be mistaken for a Hallmark special and Disney’s bizarre comments about the “dwarfism community” only added fuel to the fire. Originally scrapping the dwarfs entirely after fears of causing offense — cue Peter Dinklage — the film backtracked and awkwardly reinstated some CGI stand-ins. It’s as if they’re trying to appease everyone and ending up appeasing no one.
But we are watching something greater than just a bad remake. We are watching the slow death of imagination. The idea that stories should stir something deep in a human soul is outdated. We no longer dream of castles and starry skies; we now bow to marketability and social media engagement. Princesses no longer yearn for love or adventures — they are corporate bullet points on “female empowerment,” which ironically feels far more restrictive than any fairytale.
There was a time when Disney understood that magic is not something that can be manufactured. It is not something you can rebrand or lecture into existence. Magic is fragile. It lives in the smallest details: in the hand-drawn flocker of candlelight on a castle wall, in the slow build of a perfectly timed musical note, in the whisper of a story that says, once upon a time…
Once upon a time, Disney had it.
But now? Now, the mirror on the wall reflects nothing but a hollow shell of what once was. And no matter how many live-action remakes they churn out, they will never recreate the magic they’ve forgotten how to believe in.
The world is angry. I’m angry. But maybe we’re all guilty of Disney’s mistake. Trading our authenticity for what’s palatable. Sanding down our edges to fit the mold of what’s expected until we wake up one day and realize we don’t recognize ourselves. Maybe that’s why this remake hits a nerve. It’s a mirror that reminds us we’ll never be good enough and reflects our own hollow attempts at reinvention. Slaves to other people’s opinions lose their own ability to dream — I’m guilty of that on deeper levels than Disney is in its attempt of a remake. I spend my days trying to remake myself over and over, only to find that my regurgitated self is pretty empty.
But hey, at least I didn’t spend $200 million learning it the hard way.
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