Fairy Tale Unraveled

The reverberations of what this film lacks ECHOS, ECHOS, ECHOS through the empty theater!  The hollowness of this movie's story line, and characters echo throughout the film!  Too bad the wishing well couldn't fix that! Thousands of critics have said "it's not the worst movie I've seen......but"......I'll add my voice to that! That "BUT" is a big one! Yeah, maybe it's not the worst movie ever made, but the fact that people expected it would be says a lot!  I think since this movie was announced, it has seemed like a train wreck people just can't look away from!  Some critics say it was the train wreck they expected with others saying that it was bad, but not the train wreck they expected!

Okay, all politics aside, all bias aside, I really was hoping for a great love story and sound, or at least, coherent story line!  I really wanted this movie to be something that could be different, but at the same time embody the original in an honorable way!  I'm honestly wondering if they set out to literally make fun of the original movie.   I feel like they insulted the original in almost every way possible!  This is Snow White after all, and the stakes were much higher with this movie than any of the others!  Disney has gotten away with making remakes exactly the same frame by frame with music, and almost identical to the original script.  Examples of this are Lion King, Aladdin, Cinderella, and I'll throw in Beauty and the Beast too.  Lion King was a carbon copy and the others were slightly changed, or changed just enough to where it still worked.  Movies like Maleficent, Alice in Wonderland, Little Mermaid, and Mulan were almost completely different movies.  There was either a completely different take to the story, or absent characters, new characters added, new songs, and even changes to the character's initial nature.

The whole goal here for Disney was to revive the old, and prey on nostalgia for a guaranteed cash grab.  The other part of that goal was to bring the old into the modern age to "fix" everything wrong with it!  This has worked well and it has also failed! In the end these movies become extremely expensive copies of the original with longer run times, but not a lot of value added to the story.  For me there are a few exceptions.  Cinderella worked well because although it was a copy of the original, it added just enough extra, and the extra that was added was valuable. It worked well, it was beautifully written, shot, acted, and most importantly they didn't make an attempt to really modernize it.  I think Maleficent worked because it was pretty much a new story.  It brought the villain in as the main character.  Beauty and the Beast was great, but the extra they added really didn't bring any depth to the story.  Mulan was not even close to the original!  The Little Mermaid was close to the original and they kept the story line coherent, but there were a lot of changes.  I actually thought Eric's back story and development added to the depth of the story really well.  I think they honored the original well while also changing or adding elements that still worked.  I feel the same about Aladdin.

I think it's well known that Disney has been poking fun at its classics for years.  Frozen told us we can't marry a man we just met!  That's funny!  That was some lighthearted poking fun at old Disney tropes!  Wreck it Ralph showed us all the princesses talking about how their problems didn't suddenly disappear because a man showed up!   This is cute and funny!  I don't mind this bit of poking fun!  I feel like the lighthearted poking has turned into utter disdain for the Disney Renaissance movies.  This is ironic because it was these movies that really made Disney lots of money and helped to build up that company into what it is today! These movies gained the trust of millions of parents, grandparents and children!  Disney could be trusted to teach our children values and morals in society all while parents equally enjoyed the ride with their kids!  The stories and characters became treasured, cherished , and universally loved by all just as they were!

In the early 2000s there was a lot of complaining about the original princess stories and how their characters were so bland, so useless, and not good role models for children!  This cacophony of whining along side the 4th wave (or is it the 8th wave? I forget!) of feminism got Disney thinking that they had to go back and "fix" these characters.  We must girl boss-ify, and feminize them all!  With this comes the diminishing of the male characters in order to elevate the girl.  Isn't this so insulting to men and women?  This is a universal formula for girl boss-ification!  Another name is the universal feminist formula!  I've often wondered why boys might like these princess stories?  Well, some male commentators have said that they admired stories like Snow White because it gave them this idea that someday they could be a prince to someone.  I did not realize that held magic for them too!  We don't usually hear boys talking about this!

I think a lot of little boys' go to Disney shows are Lion King, Hercules, and Sword in the Stone.  There are some great stories for boys in the Disney catalog!  I haven't always realized that boys sometimes think or dream about a love story.  That usually doesn't seem to be their focus, but yeah it makes sense that they too have an appreciation for the love stories! I think Disney has really failed in the realm of writing strong male characters lately!  We are not really showing boys that they can be the prince in the story!  We're not giving them good noble characters to look up to anymore! 

I'm not here just to complain about Disney, Snow White, and more! I'm going to present an idea or solution!  I really think Disney has had so many missed opportunities!  If you wanted a twist, a new take, or something different with these stories, why not write them from the Prince's perspective.  I think it would really be interesting to focus on the male character rather than the princess.  We all know the princess well enough, but who didn't get a backstory or personality in the originals? It was the Prince!  The male character didn't get a story line until The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast! This leaves you a complete open opportunity to write virtually a new character for the male leads in Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Cinderella!  I want to see these stories told from the prince's point of view!  I want to see a strong male lead! 

I just watched Snow White and the Huntsman, and I have a few notes! I watched this because I wanted to compare the storytelling of the different movies.  I also want to make a point about the male characters!  So, just quickly before I give you my thoughts on the new Snow White, please indulge me! I really liked this movie....mostly!  They had me till the ending!  I loved that they showed us these little moments throughout the movie that illustrated Snow's innocence, purity and kindness.  Now, we don't get a lot of these.  Her character is still kind of bland, but they tried.  One of the main themes that we are told is that her INNOCENCE AND PURITY ARE POWERFUL, but they really failed to show us that in the end!  Her innocence and purity are the only things that can take down the evil queen! The evil queen is truly evil; I believed it!  They give her a bit of a backstory! The best part of this movie is the huntsman!  He has lost everything, he's in a bad place, and he's essentially a drunk!  I mean this guy is drinking heavily throughout the movie!  

These two don't seem to like each other that much in the beginning.  This slowly changes.  There is this really sweet moment where Snow White is dancing with one of the dwarfs.   Yes, the dwarfs are there in a pretty prominent role, and yes they are played by real people, and it works; they are great!  It's this moment the huntsman falls for her, I think.  It's one of the sweetest moments!  The Huntsman's layers start to peel back and we see a really great guy in there.  It's easy for the feminist to place him in the toxic masculinity category, but he turns out to be a strong male lead!  He is the main character because he changes the most.  I think they mistakenly tried to make Snow White the main character with a change that is very, very bad for the end of the movie, and it doesn't work.  Mostly, they kept the characters and their arcs pretty simple adding growth and little changes that were set up and paid off.

Why do I like the huntsman?  I like his masculine character, not just because he's played by Chris Hemsworth.  I mean that's a nice touch and he's very masculine and handsome, but no that's not exactly what I'm talking about!  His very character is what Hollywood and Disney have lost in their story telling!  The huntsman gets things done!  He's brave, courageous, smart, just, and in the end we find his soft side!  There is something very attractive about a male character who leads and who feels a sense of duty to protect women!  Feminists find this toxic, but this is something that plays out well in real life and has for a very long time!  This also translates well on the big screen!  I don't see this as the man being controlling, or solving all of our problems as soon as he shows up on a white horse in shining armor!  I see it as a natural quality in men that is intrinsic and has intrinsic value.  The desire men have to protect women, and to preserve their feminine qualities is one of the most attractive things on the planet.  Why do good men have this sense of duty?  Why would they take risks to preserve something so different from them?  It's just that, because it's different from them.  They know that the feminine qualities and characteristics are valuable.  These compliment them, men admire these qualities, and recognize that they are needed!  Now I'm not saying every man on the planet is like this, or that there aren't bad apples, cause there are!

Okay so part of the huntsman's desire to protect her comes when he finds out she is the good king's daughter and she would be better than the current queen.  Let's really get to the core of this story though!  Snow White is a story about a girl who possesses these feminine qualities perfectly.  She can be perfect in the fairy tale world.  Not only is she needing saving, but these qualities need saving. Why?  The evil queen is the exact opposite.  She's evil, cruel, self absorbed, vain, and controlling........so she's a girl boss!  THE ORIGINAL GIRL BOSS!  So the male opposite Snow White, whether he's a prince or not, needs to make clear his desire, and the need to preserve her and these qualities!  The core of the story is about preserving goodness, kindness, and purity!  Essentially Snow White can't save herself, she needs help.  There also needs to be a general consensus among others in the story that also see the benefit in saving this character and her characteristics!  

Where Snow White and the Huntsman takes a turn for the worse is when Snow White picks up a sword and kills the queen.  This one act makes the rest of the story completely crumble.  Everything they just built up comes crashing down!  It contradicts the story line and the very essence of her character.  I get that they were trying make her change in a way that places her as the main character.  I get that they were trying to transport the story to more of a realistic backdrop, but the whole thing falls down.  The truth is Snow White can't be the main character, she can't fundamentally change.  That's not to say that she can't have growth!  She could earn some of her iconic characteristics somehow!  Her essence is the reason for the story and as soon as you make her change she is no longer Snow White!  Literally any other ending would have been better.  I also get that she was the only one with the power to get rid of the queen, but her power comes from her innocence and purity.  They even blatantly tell us this, but they fail to put that theme into action.  In one scene the huntsman is trying to show Snow White how to defend herself, or even kill if needed, and she says "I couldn't do that."  If you are innocent and pure, you're not going to kill, no matter what motive the writers give you.  

So, they write a great character and her essence and purpose are clear, but then they just contradict it all!  This is the problem with bringing the fairy tale to the real world.  Snow White can no longer be perfect in her embodiment of these characteristics earned or not.  She now must grapple with more complicated emotions and real human nature.  You could write a story where this happens to an extent, but to make her character too complex would take away the very things that make her what she was supposed to be.  If you take a very simple character and try to complex them, their original purpose in existing gets lost.

Let's get to the dreaded kiss!  This true love's kiss is so problematic!  It really wasn't before the year 2000, but now it's just so dated and horrible.  Alright, I'll give you that. It's dated, FINE, IT'S DATED!  Is it all that horrible though?  In Snow White and the Huntsman this is maybe the most emotional scene in the movie!  I liked this scene!  It would be easy to say "Gross! A guy kissing a dead body, that's just wrong!"  Okay, I get it!  In this scene we have the huntsman brokenhearted, and spilling his heart out giving a speech that he wished he would have said when she was alive!  He tells her how broken he was after losing his wife, but that he felt alive again after meeting her.  He tells her how she reminds him of his wife and how much he loved her.  He's giving this beautiful heartfelt monologue to her and saying goodbye.  He kisses her, short and sweet.  For him this is goodbye, and he's realizing how much he loves her.  He's saying goodbye unexpectedly before anything could really get started between them.  This is both sad and beautiful. 

Just in my personal experience with funerals, it's not uncommon for people to cry over the body, talk to the body, and even kiss the body.  They are saying goodbye to the spirit,  the soul, and it's outer shell.  This funeral is the last time they will see that body, and they are remembering, and mourning the time when that body was inhabited by the soul.  This scene is not creepy, or "weird, weird"!  It's not like he was just so attracted to her that he couldn't help himself.  It's really a very sweet and emotional moment.  This is where we see who he really is.  All the layers peeled back and we might be surprised by his soft side. Remember, that despite having some layers, his character remains fairly simple.   He's leaving her behind.  She doesn't wake up til after he is gone.  He has no idea that his kiss brought new life into her.  

This idea that "true love's kiss"  can break spells, defeat evil, bring you back to life, or wake you from a deep slumber is kind of a metaphor isn't it?  I think it is!  When you really love someone, if you want to call it true love, life has new meaning and new purpose.  When you find the love of your life, it's hard to remember life before that.  One wonders "how did I ever get along before I met you? "  There is some truth to this no matter how much you want to dismiss it as Disney's problematic trope.  Snow White was Disney's first attempt to use the fairy tale to teach us a universal truth; love conquers, love lifts, love brings life, and love wins!?!  Isn't that what we like to say these days?????

Taking the fairy tale out of the fairy tale world and bringing it into the REAL world is really not the best idea!  Remember Enchanted?  This movie was a mashup of all the fairy tales!  It was kind of making fun of all the silly tropes and it did something quite wonderful; it, in a very literal sense, took the fairy tale and placed it in the real world.  You can't do that because one would soon take over the other, and one would cease existence. They did do this, and the end result was a choice!  The message was that the two worlds can't exist in the same realm at the same time.  Giselle had to make a choice, she couldn't have both!  She chose the real world because there was more to it, more depth, and more complication.  What they did there was brilliant, and it worked!  I loved it!  Everyone loved it! Once Upon a Time did something similar.  Disney needs to revisit that movie/show and look at what they clearly spelled out with it!  Now what they are doing with Snow White is still having it in a fairy tale world but bringing all of the real world issues to it in an attempt to modernize or make it realistic.  

Just because something is "realistic" doesn't mean that we can all relate to it.  Real people in the 80s and 90s never had an issue relating to the fairy tale.  Just because something is a fairy tale doesn't mean it can't be relatable.  When we stopped relating to the fairy tale was when we lost our creativity and ability to really think a little deeper about the moral of the story.  Suddenly, it became about wanting the character to be just like us!  We thought that having the character exist in our real world would help us relate to it more.  All the criticisms of the original Disney characters are actually kind of selfish and hollow.  I think there has always been more to these characters than we have given credit in the last 20 years!

I watched the original Snow White not long ago and it truly is delightful!  I did not really watch it a lot growing up.  Here's a little of what I saw:  She is lovely, soft spoken, and her characteristics are clear!  She is innocent like a child, kind, and over the top positive!  She sings and wishes for a prince to come!  She dreams of true love!  She is very frightened in the forest so much that her imagination is playing tricks on her!  Everything in the forest turns to monsters!  When she gets to the dwarf cottage she is so sweet and feminine and she wonders if it's children living there.  If they are children she seems to be very worried about them and wants to help.  She realizes that she is imposing, she knows that she shouldn't just walk in and expect to stay.  She figures if she cleans up and cooks a good meal that they will let her stay.  She knows the importance of being agreeable and the basic concept of the golden rule.  She doesn't just expect them to take care of her just because she's a princess.  She is totally fine with pulling her own weight, so to speak! She is the utter embodiment of womanly design!  She oozes femininity.  This is something that seems to be a problem in our modern day culture.  It's not acceptable anymore to be this feminine!  The innate womanly characteristics are to be ignored and the girl bossing should take their place!  This is supposed to make us look strong and capable and tell the world that we don't need a man!!!  We can save ourselves!!!  This is so backwards and messed up!     

The dwarfs in the original are so cute that they are still what the Disney company is mainly known for!  As I watched them in their original animation, I just couldn't help but smile.  They bicker and fight.  Their imperfections actually make them great characters!  Snow White wins them over with not only her beauty, but her willingness to help them out and add a womanly touch to their home.  It is implied that they all fall in love with her because of her beauty, but it's not just that!  The people who really complain about these old tropes really look too much into the shallow aspects, and they completely miss the deeper nuanced parts in the originals.   We entirely miss any deepness that was already there.  We just don't have the brains any more to see them and/or appreciate what was there to begin with.  The reason for this is that we are so used to being told everything that we can't catch on to what's being shown, or implied to us.  Writing has gotten lazy in recent years!  Another complaint is how weird it was that the dwarfs encased her body because she's so beautiful that they want to look at her forever!  SORRY, NO, could it be that they knew there was a solution?  They knew she was not gone for good if they got her that true love's kiss!  Now, if the dwarfs had treated it like the Cinderella story lining up every man in the land to kiss her to find the right fit, that would have been "weird, weird"!  That's not what happened though is it? 

OKAY HERE WE GO! I'm not really sure where to start?! I guess I'll start with the music! First off, there's way too much music!  I like musicals, I love theater, I love Broadway!  I love Disney music, but this was way too much!  They hardly get the chance to tell the story!  It really takes away from the story! The music is not bad as music, but for a Disney classic....it just doesn't fit.  The first number was okay, it didn't really bother me.  Waiting on a Wish is a nice song, but as soon as she belts out those "ECHO, ECHO, ECHO" lines it killed the whole song for me!  That part was just out of place within the song and was obnoxious!  It was like fingernails on a chalkboard for me!  It has nothing to do with her voice!  Overall, I just think that song is weird, weird!  I don't think anyone on the planet is arguing Rachel's vocal abilities!  WE ALL KNOW SHE CAN SING!  That has been well established at this point!  The issue with the music is that it adds to the confusion of what this movie is, or was, or is supposed to be?  It feels too much like Greatest Showman, or Broadway theater.  You forget you are watching a Disney movie.  The Evil Queen's song is a good song, fun and clever, but please let me hear someone else sing it!  Gal is not a singer!  Her delivery of the song is confusing.  Is she trying to be cute? Funny? Evil? Serious? No one knows.  She struggles to find the right place in the song.  Heigh-Ho was great!  It's from the original movie and it was well done!  No grief about that! 

My favorite song is A Hand Meets A Hand.  This song is the only song that I can imagine fitting in with Snow White.  This is the only song that feels genuine to Snow White.  It doesn't feel like Broadway and its performance doesn't feel like a theater show!  Her voice is softer and it implies their love story.  This song does feel like it could have been in Tangled, or The Little Mermaid, however I can still appreciate it!  Although I like this song, its purpose is not lost on me! The purpose for this song is to give CONSENT prior to the dreaded, horrible, toxic True Love's Kiss!  This is ridiculous!  WILL SOMEBODY PLEASE TELL RYAN REYNOLDS THAT IF HE IS STILL LOOKING FOR THE INTIMACY COORDINATORS THEY ARE ALL OVER AT THE DISNEY LIVE ACTION STUDIOS STILL TRYING TO "FIX" THE CONUNDRUM OF THIS VERY PROBLEMATIC KISS !!  MY GOODNESS WE JUST CAN'T LEAVE THIS ALONE!  Disney is determined to have a conversation about the kiss on screen before it happens!  It's tacky and tiresome!  Can't we just let them kiss!  We just can't get over the fairy tale aspect of the true love's kiss!  We can't just leave it alone and let it be what it is; an old romantic trope for coming alive again and something that defeats evil!  NOPE WE CAN'T HAVE IT!  We have to find a way to give consent before hand so it doesn't seem like the guy is a jerk and that he's taking advantage of her in some way!  Can we please just get over it????  GET OVER IT ALREADY!!!!  Implying that they are in love prior to the kiss should be enough!  IT SHOULD BE, BUT IT'S NOT!  THIS TRUE LOVE'S KISS IS JUST A PROBLEM!   It's a problem that they have yet to solve successfully!  That's all I have to say about the music........

Has anyone else noticed that this movie is very different from that of the way Rachel initially described it?  I mean there wasn't supposed to be a love story.  Yeah the guy in the movie, his scenes were probably gonna get cut!  She wasn't gonna get saved by the prince!  Well, Disney what are you thinking letting the guy save her???? Yeah, he saves her a few times, but it really comes off as this competition, like who can save who more times.  If he saves her then, oh well, she just has to save him, again!  I am actually really glad they decided to re-shoot and let him be a hero, at least a little, but it's a poor attempt at best. I'm glad they sort of fall in love even though they have no chemistry and no reason to fall for each other.  The kiss is a half-baked. Literally, he halfway kisses her on the lips, how awkward! If I was Andrew Burnap, I wouldn't want to kiss her either. You can tell everyone is just disgusted by having to put this in there!  This leads to the new Disney problem.  They just could not stick to a story!  It was as if Tik Tokers and pod casters were writing this movie.  They kept getting swayed by the masses, then the studio, then Peter Dinklage, then the masses!  Well, this movie had about that many writers, 6 to be exact!  So, if you thought it was all over the place, that's why!

Okay on to the "Prince", I mean non prince.  Alright, I don't really care if they want to downgrade him, but at least make his character good.  Not only was he downgraded, but he's a criminal, he's selfish, and he insults Snow White.  Not that I'm opposed to him calling her out on some stuff, but it doesn't really fit the original story very well. He even makes fun of the idea of a prince. I will admit he does change and so does Snow White, but everything about the development is so weak it's not believable!  She sings about wishing to be a better person, but does very little to actually be a better person.  She doesn't really earn any of the things she's trying to achieve.  

Jonathan is literally Flynn Rider.  Here they had a chance to create a totally new character and personality, and they just copied an older one.  It would have been more interesting to make Snow White a Robin Hood type character stealing food from the castle and sneaking out to give it to the people.  I was okay with her character being weak in the beginning, but they didn't really do that very well.  It's inconsistent and incoherent.  She stands up to the queen a few times, saves Jonathan, and doesn't seem to be particularly shaken by the huntsman, but she runs away and is scared of the forest, and terrified of the dwarfs?  It's questionable.  Rachel does okay acting, but her performance technique combined with the music is just not Classic Disney movie, not even Disney movie remake. Overall, her acting in this movie is flat and uninspired!  When she's not singing her acting is monotone and one note! Her character is very one note!  She would be great on Broadway or in a movie like Greatest Showman.  Andrew Burnap does a great job acting.  I enjoyed his performance as Jonathan more than any of the others!  Again, I would have liked to see him acting out a really great character not a knock off of Flynn Rider.

Right about now, I'm dreaming of Lily James and Richard Madden in the live action Cinderella that was done nearly 10 years ago!  I mean Andrew Burnap is adorable and I'm enjoying him on screen, but the character and the love story leave much to be desired.  Cinderella and the exploration into the prince was so beautifully done!  They did that one right!  They made me believe in love at first sight!  The dialogue was pretty simple, yet very telling.  The scene where they fall in love is a conversation, each line feeding into the other.  Each back and forth line giving the other person reason to fall further in love!  They kept the story simple; they kept the characters simple.  They added value to the original by giving the prince a name and a story.  The costumes were amazing and the whole thing just looked good!  It left me wanting more, but in a good way, not as if it was lacking anything!  I didn't want it to end.  Even now when I watch it, I wish it didn't end!  That was a great expansion on the original!

Whistle while you work! Originally Snow White whistles and sings with the cute animal characters to clean up the cottage.  In this re-imagined bucket of slop they insulted the original by having her boss the dwarfs around.  She might as well kick her feet up and sit back while she barks orders!  In my opinion, this was not a needed change, nor was it cute at all! This shows a very entitled Snow White! The whole reason she is cleaning in the first place is because they are providing for her and she is repaying them.  She's doing this because she's kind and considerate, and she knows the golden rule.  It's not just simply that she's a woman, so this is her job.  I think the original was much more nuanced than that!  Of all the ways they could have showed her being good and kind they chose to have the Dopey story line expanded.  This was okay and sweet at times, but just seemed like a little bit of a let down.   The dwarfs have no reason to like her, they just do!  All of the connection she had with them in the original is lost.  Everything we love about the original character and story are lost in this one!

The background and CGI animals I didn't mind.  I'm not a film expert or CGI expert, so, I'm not going to comment on that too much.  There are times when the lighting seems strange.  The dwarfs are another story! I will comment on this because you don't have to be a CGI expert to know they are bad! They look weird, weird and out of place.  I think the decision they made with the dwarfs was a huge miss!  They should have hired real people to play them.  I personally believe that Disney's initial plan was to ax the dwarfs altogether.  That's not the only thing that looks bad!  The costumes are horrible and her hair cut will most definitely go down as the worst design in the history of Disney.  I think Rachel is really beautiful.  There was no reason for a wig or that terrible excuse for a hair do.  I can't take her seriously because she looks so bad.  On the other hand, the only thing going for the queen is her costumes.  She looks pretty good, but she looks terribly uncomfortable the entire time.  How could this all go so wrong????

Some are now saying all the controversy surrounding the dwarfs was lies because director Mark Webb recently said that they always planned on CGI-ing the dwarfs.  So, if Mark Webb is right why is the Seven Dwarfs missing from the title?  Why didn't Disney come out and just say that the leaked photo of the "7 magical creatures" was not a replacement for the dwarfs?  If they had, it would have saved them a lot of backlash!  If they always planned on doing the dwarfs, then why weren't they done better?  I mean $270 million wasn't enough to make something better?  Why does the movie feel like 2 completely different movies pieced together like a patch work quilt?  Why are the bandits, "7 magical creatures", in the show, but very choppy and unfinished as if they should never have been there?  Why was the movie delayed an entire year for re-shoots?  What did they re-shoot?  I'll tell you what they re-shot! They re-shot more scenes with Jonathan in an attempt to make a believable love story.  They probably re-shot the terrible kiss.  They most definitely re-shot the ending.  The original ending failed 5 test screenings.  Gal and Rachel were supposed to sing a song as they battled just before the witch was pushed off of the cliff.  It all got cut because the whole thing was so bad! 

I have to talk about this ending!  The string of unearned payoffs rob the viewers of satisfaction in the story.  It's completely anti-climactic!  No points are made, the changes in character arcs are weak, and the story feels unfinished.  They give us all these ideas and themes, but then do nothing with them later.  For example, the dwarfs' magical powers, the notion that her father could still be alive, and the purpose of the bandits.  None of these ever flesh out satisfactorily.  It's as if they started a bunch of stories, then just forgot to finish them, and hope we don't notice! If the queen is so evil and the task of reclaiming her kingdom is challenging and daunting, yet in the end ,it's not hard at all.  Even though no one in the kingdom has seen her for years they just decide to follow her to the castle doors?  They have no reason to really!  I'm supposed to believe that all of the palace guards are won over simply by Snow White remembering their names and reminding them of what their redistributed contribution to the Socialist/ Communist society was???  Definitely weird, weird!    She saves her kingdom and defeats the evil queen by singing and remembering names........that's it!  She never even says Thank You one times to anyone who saves her!  I'm not sure if this could have been more pathetic......it might be the worst movie I've seen!  

I have nothing against the running theme of kindness in the movie, but they showed us very little and instead decided to repeatedly tell us about it.  Why didn't Snow White nurse Jonathan back to health after he took an arrow for her?  She could have done something for the dwarfs other than boss them around and teach them how to whistle.  That wasn't even her idea, it was something her mother taught her. Jonathan has no reason to be inspired by her courage.  All she did was walk around a forest for a little while.  The story telling has become just that......TELLING!  Everything is told.  Does anyone remember what subtext is, or reading between the lines? The art of getting your audience to infer, or guess something?  Getting the audience to understand an unspoken theme, rule, or feeling?   This has become a lost art!  

This is without a doubt the blandest Snow White ever made!  The end scene with everyone dancing in white really does look like a prescription drug commercial!  Another movie reviewer mentioned this and I just can't unsee it! This is, without a doubt, worse than any other version!  Mirror, Mirror's Snow White was okay, but that movie failed due to the universal feminist formula!  Armie Hammer would have been the perfect prince. No, he was perfect when he was allowed to be the prince, but they had to ruin that by making him a complete fool while under the queen's spell.  A puppy love spell, yeah, he was acting like a dog for half the movie!  It was so bad!  I can appreciate their attempt to make a new twist on the story, but making the true love's kiss the thing to break the spell on the prince was a total feminist move!  An utter embarrassment! It's no wonder very few people have heard of that movie!

Disney's original plan for Snow White included a 3 movie series.  They were going to do this whole world building thing that would be on par with Lord of the Rings!  One movie would be just about the queen.  I think they were going to attempt something like they did with Maleficent.   If anyone is still questioning just how big a disaster this was and if Rachel ruined her career by spitting her vitriol at the public time and time again!  Well, this whole plan, it's gone, it's over!  It's all been cancelled.  Rachel was set to voice a new character in Toy Story 5.  She was going to be in the new Pirates of the Caribbean movies.  She had other contracts with other studios for horror films and animated voice over work.  ALL OF IT GONE!  All ash among the bridges she's burned! So, yes there have been consequences!  Disney has distanced itself from Rachel and all who were involved in this movie.  They've all been fired!  Mark Webb and Greta Gerwig were contracted to work on upcoming Marvel films and those have been cancelled.  

Rachel was supposed to perform as Snow White at the Oscars, SNL, Jimmy Kimmel, and at Disney World.  All of these were cancelled.  The London premiere was cancelled. The LA premiere was scaled back, not allowing any press.  Disney sent Rachel 5000 miles away with Mark Webb to sing at a castle in Spain, and then to Japan for a small event.  All of this while Gal Gadot went on her own little press tour in the USA.  So, did her online behavior contribute to the downfall of this movie?  I think so!  When you insult the source material, inject your feminism, politics, and DEI into every promotion of this film, and then hope that virtually half the nation never knows peace, uh yeah, no one wants to support you!  When you insist that people will still line up to see you no matter what, proclaim you're a narcissist on nation TV, and tell people that if they disagree with you, then you don't need their money, you don't need their business! Yeah, so just hit that unsubscribe button! That's exactly what the world has done!  We've all hit that unsubscribe button!  I don't care what her politics are!  She can post whatever she wants.  She can say "Free Palestine"  all she wants.  The problem arises when it's attached to the promotion of the movie, and she continues to preach to people as if she's the moral authority!

Disney did better with diversity and inclusion when they weren't so focused on being PC!  When they focused on telling a great story, the diversity and inclusion came on its own more organically.  When they let the story die in the name of DEI, then they take an authoritative position and begin to preach.  This is not good!  Storytelling has suffered for years across the board!  This has probably been the most apparent example.  I think people just want a good story!  We want to be entertained, not preached to.   DEI has become a representation for let the story DEI (die).  If you must make stories injected with feminism, equity, diversity, or even make socialism/communism look good, then write a new story!  By the way this movie has the undertones of the Socialist/ Communist thing.  This movie is supposed to show us what Communism looks like when done right, I guess.  Not entirely my words, but the words of the BBC.  Stop taking old classics and changing them into something they never were! 

Disney either has terrible writers, or they think we are all stupid! Maybe it's both! They clearly have lost the art of inference and subtext. I really tried to enjoy this movie!  I really wanted to like it! My daughter kept getting up to use the bathroom! That's right the bathroom was more fun than watching this movie! In her defense, I had to bribe my kids to see this with me! I don't think we've eaten more pizza, popcorn, candy, and drinks at a movie before! That was one of the best parts of seeing this movie!  Thank goodness it wasn't longer!  

My son kept saying, "why is this so dramatic?" Yeah, that's right it's completely over-acted! Like I said, it's like a theater production!  He also said when Jonathan appeared, "At least he's good looking!" The princess looks so bad that even the kids notice and they notice how much better looking the lead male is! The most entertaining part of this show was watching my kids' reactions! That was more entertaining than the movie! To be fair, my 8 year old son kind of liked it, so parts of it were good! So, parents, if you want to be entertained, take your kids and just watch how they react!

This entire movie was one big question mark!  I'm still not sure what they were trying to do!  I think we've reached the pinnacle of bad story telling!  In summary Snow White is gonna be the leader she was always meant to be without actually doing ANYTHING! Literally nothing, she does nothing!  She's a useless character in her own story!  Instead of just singing about stuff, yeah you're gonna have to get up off your lazy free loading butt and actually do something!  I find it incredibly ironic that by trying to give depth to the story and write a girl boss character, they managed to write a character that has all the former complaints about Disney princesses!  GOOD JOB DISNEY!  I took my kids to this to show them the best example of the worst story telling EVER!