The 1937 Disney classic “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” gets a more heroic update in the live-action “Snow White,” now playing exclusively in theaters.
This article contains spoilers for the “Snow White” live action film.
“Snow White” (2025)
“Snow White” Synopsis & Changes
“Snow White” opens with a little more backstory than the 1937 classic. Snow White (Rachel Zegler) was named for the weather she was born during, in a twist on her original name. Snow’s parents were very kind rulers of the land they ruled over. We see the king and queen holding a large party for the village, with everyone chipping in and celebrating together, sharing their abundance of food. Following the celebrations, we learn Snow White’s mother (Lorena Andrea) died of an illness when she was young.
The bulk of the backstory from here follows the classic.
Sometime after the original queen’s death, the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot) arrives. Unlike her name, the Evil Queen appears decidedly less evil and is enraptured by the King (Hadley Fraser), leading the two to marry. Sometime after, the King goes away to deal with an encroaching issue at the kingdom’s border and never returns.
The Evil Queen then rules alone over the kingdom, changing everything Snow’s parents enacted. The riches of the land now belong solely to her, she creates a stronger guard to enforce her new rules over the land, and she keeps Snow White locked away in the castle grounds as a servant. The Evil Queen does all of this so that when she asks her magic mirror the same question every day, it continues to answer that she is the “fairest in all the land.”
As reported in the early days of the films publicity, there is no Prince. The live-action movie introduces a more fleshed-out character for Snow White’s True Love. This is one of the biggest diversions from the original, but — as with “The Little Mermaid,” it makes him a more relevant character who viewers can become invested in.
For his introduction, Snow White happens upon a thief (Andrew Burnap) stealing food in the castle. The thief, not recognizing who she is, encourages Snow to steal as well since the queen lives in excess while the people struggle to survive. Snow White naively thinks she can simply talk to the queen about helping the villagers, but the queen responds with scorn. The thief is accused of being the leader of the bandits running around in the woods in the name of the late king.
Snow White manages to save him from direct execution, but the queen cruelly has him strung up on the castle gates to freeze. Snow is able to free him, but the queen spots her in the act.
The Evil Queen goes to her magic mirror to ask again, “Who is the fairest of them all?” However, now that Snow White is known by someone outside the castle, the mirror responds that Snow White is the fairest. The next few scenes are fairly faithful to the original.
The queen orders her huntsman (Ansu Kabia) to take Snow White into the woods and kill her. When the time comes, the Huntsman cannot go through with it, and tells her she must flee into the woods and never return.
Snow White escapes in a scary sequence showing the woods as twisted and terrifying, until she eventually finds a moment of calm in a clearing. Some friendly forest animals lead her to a small cottage to rest.
We then meet the seven dwarfs in the middle of mining an abundance of gems. They perform an extended rendition of “Heigh Ho.” I don’t know about you, but that song was ruined for me more than a decade ago when Walt Disney World remixed it for a commercial for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train. If you were somehow spared in 2014, you can watch it below.
In the words of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, “you’re welcome.”
From here, the changes are heavier, and the evidence of the film’s fraught production becomes clear.
The dwarfs find Snow White sleeping. She’s done no cooking or cleaning (and honestly? Good for her. She just narrowly escaped death!). Snow White explains her situation, and they agree to let her stay one night before she sets off to find the bandits. They bond over “The Silly Song,” and enjoy each other’s company until the morning when she leaves.
Snow White eventually runs into the thief she helped, who reveals his name is Jonathan and reports that the queen has sent the royal guards into the woods. After introducing her to the rest of his group of “bandits,” it’s revealed that they are just a group of performers attempting to help the poor people of the kingdom using their skills.
The royal guards find the group, and Snow tricks them with the help of some woodland animals. The group, and especially Jonathan, gain quite an appreciation for Snow White. Jonathan repays the favor by jumping in front of a crossbow bolt aimed at the princess.
Snow White and the group rush him back to the cottage, where she pleads for Doc (Jeremy Swift) to tend his wounds. Doc successfully heals Jonathan and the groups have a small celebration. Snow White realizes something must be done about the queen and decides to search for her father, whom she believes is still alive.
The royal guards appear to be getting close to finding Snow White, so Jonathan and his crew leave to lead the guards in the other direction. Jonathan is caught and interrogated by the queen before she locks him in the dungeon. The queen then decides to take matters into her own hands. She magically disguises herself as an old woman and makes a poisoned apple to dispatch Snow White herself.
In the morning, the dwarfs set off to work while Snow White packs to leave. The old woman appears at the door of the house, saying she heard of Snow from Jonathan and sympathizes with her. The forest animals can see through the Evil Queen’s disguise and race off to find the dwarfs. The old woman presents the poisoned apple as the only thing she has to give, and Snow White bites into it. The queen reveals herself and announces that she killed the king as Snow White succumbs to cursed eternal sleep.
The dwarfs arrive too late, finding Snow White unconscious. They mourn and watch over her body as Jonathan escapes the dungeon with the help of the Huntsman.
There’s no glass coffin, just a stone slab under a pergola, but given the accelerated timeline of the plot, it makes sense. Jonathan is arriving during the funeral, not days later into a vigil.
Jonathan lays a sad kiss upon Snow White. With this True Love’s Kiss, the curse is broken and Snow White is reawakened. Now knowing the truth about her father, she is determined to confront the queen and release the people from her reign.
Snow White walks straight through town to confront the queen, with the people gathering behind her. The Evil Queen tries and fails to get the people on her side before ordering her guards to kill Snow. However, after Snow White reminds them of how the kingdom used to be under her father’s rule, the guards refuse the queen’s orders.
With everyone turned against the Evil Queen, Snow White tells her to leave and never return. The queen runs to the Magic Mirror and breaks it in a rage. This causes whatever magic was in the mirror to consume the queen entirely. She turns into dust, more akin to the weird effect of Voldemort’s death in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” than Thanos’ snap, and is absorbed into the mirror.
With the Evil Queen gone, the land returns to happier times and Snow White takes her place as the kingdom’s true leader. They once again have a large celebration, but this time, everyone is dressed in pure white. It’s meant to be an homage to the leading lady, but all I could think was, “it’s giving small world finale.”
Film Review
The Remake Problem
The obvious issue with reviewing this movie is the inherent comparison to its 1937 source material, “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” This adaptation does a mostly-good job of staying true to the original, while also expanding and updating the story. The main story is all still present, but we are given more to fill out details of the world, the main characters, and what happens after Snow White is saved by the True Love’s Kiss.
The only extreme changes to the original story are the identity of the “prince” character and how the Evil Queen meets her demise. Most of these changes felt like a natural addition to flesh out a bigger story surrounding Snow White.
The one real issue with the new plot components is the back-and-forth over the king’s status. There were multiple moments where the script seemed to tell viewers the king was missing, then alive, then dead, but then maybe alive in a way that felt a little redundant. And then ultimately, he was dead all along. It seemed to be trying to set Snow White up for a “I am capable, I can do this on my own” revelation but that didn’t really pay off. It was just weird.
The Magical Elephant in the Room
It’s not a bad live action adaptation, but it’s critically weakened by most of the cast and the very obvious editing hack job from adding in the traditional dwarfs.
If you’re not familiar with the controversy, it was originally announced that, due to cultural sensitivity around the term “dwarf” and the related depictions, the dwarfs were meant to be replaced by “magical creatures.” The film was delayed by a year for these changes.
The result of that year-long delay is a disjointed narrative, awkward characterization, and pacing problems. There’s no getting around it. The original “magical creatures” become Jonathan’s band of bandits who serve absolutely no purpose. It’s glaringly obvious that they are only still in the movie because it would have been harder to edit them out during scenes that are pivotal to Snow White and Jonathan’s relationship development. As a result, there are strange moments where the audience is clearly being asked to care about these characters with no reason to.
It can’t have been an easy job and I don’t envy whoever had to make these calls, but yeesh.
The Evil Queen
Yeah, I need a whole subsection to talk about the Evil Queen.
She is, by far, the film’s other biggest weakness. Perhaps we lost essential scenes on the cutting room floor, but I can’t imagine anything would have redeemed Gal Gadot’s lack of gravitas and overall poor performance.
The “evil” part of the Evil Queen is evidenced by exposition from other characters. When she’s on screen, she’s certainly cruel and vain, but also flat and awkward. She was given an excellent wardrobe, one of the best in the film, and a villain song. Who doesn’t love a villain song?
I love a good villain, and there wasn’t one to be found here. The singing and dancing were almost painful to watch.
However, I do have one good thing to say about the Evil Queen. The Hag transformation scene was really well done. It was cool, it was creepy, it was smooth. So, props for that.
The Fairest of Them All
There was a lot of hullaballoo about Rachel Zegler’s casting. I was even skeptical, though I really enjoyed her performance as Lucy Gray-Baird in “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.” But Zegler carries this movie and earns her role. She’s a good Snow White.
The new drive of Snow White as a character was refreshing. Not only is she trying to survive the murderous intent of her stepmother, but she also sees that the Evil Queen is hurting the entire kingdom. The newer details we get of Snow’s family and life before the Evil Queen’s arrival give her a compelling drive to help the people of the land. She strives to be like her parents, who we get to see were very close to her. It’s this grander picture of what the land was like when the king ruled that makes Snow White become more of a hero figure that drives the story.
The Dwarfs
I did not personally feel negatively towards the dwarfs. Many people seem to have issues with their CGI appearance (which, admittedly, leaned a little toward uncanny valley at times), but I ultimately felt that they were still true to form and individually quirky.
The biggest change to the dwarfs was Dopey, who was given a character arc as he slowly found the courage to speak. I thought this was a neat little addition to the story, as it’s never explicitly said Dopey could not speak. The original film merely explains Dopey’s speech as “he never tried.”
It leads into a new scene for “Whistle While You Work.” Snow White teaches Dopey how to whistle, and together, they rally the others into cleaning up the cottage (rather than Snow White and the animals in the original). Zegler does a fantastic job with this song as well.
The Music
The 1937 classic had multiple iconic musical numbers, and “Snow White” brings some of them back. The new renditions of the classic songs changed very little and were executed well. Most of the new numbers were entertaining and matched the tone of the classic material. They weren’t quite the same caliber of composition, with some lyrical weakness, but they didn’t ruin the movie.
Of the new songs, “Waiting on a Wish” is the star. (Not to be confused with the Star from “Wish.”) The reprise is used well, too.
Rachel Zegler is a talented singer, and she has time to shine in many of the bigger songs. She also carries the movie.
Many of the other actors’ performances were flat. Jonathan sounded a little auto-tuned.
As I mentioned earlier, the weakest musical number was the Evil Queen’s solo, “All Is Fair.” Not only did this particular song feel a little disconnected from the rest of the film, but the performance was almost comical — unintentionally.
Our Score
Overall, “Snow White” was quite enjoyable and felt like a decent reimagining of a classic movie. With the overall fun, exciting, and sometimes silly vibes, I think this movie deserves 4 not-so-grumpy dwarfs out of 7.
Bonus Review: Junior Reporter Edition
Our youngest Junior Reporter (age 6) saw the animated film on Wednesday and the live-action on Thursday. He found both to be “scary but actually very interesting.” He gave the live-action two out of two thumbs up, but ultimately preferred the original.
“Snow White” premiered in theaters on March 21, 2025. The film earned $3.5 million in previews and is projected to make $50 million during its opening weekend.
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