What ‘Wicked’ Got Wrong & Disney’s ‘Snow White’ Made Worse

A funny “inverse parallel” struck me when I thought of this revisionist remake alongside the 2024 movie Wicked: Part One. The story of Dorothy in Baum and at MGM is “Us Us Us” (i.e., Dorothy needing and finding friends/allies) but Wicked transfers the story to the Witch, whose story is all “Me Me Me.” The story of Snow White both in fairy tale and at Disney is “Me Me Me” (Snow finding her own place in life), but the 2025 revision makes her story about “Us Us Us.”

Of the many complaints I heard about the 2025 version of Snow White, not one of them mentioned the strange insistence on altruistic motives for Snow (Rachel Zegler) throughout the script. I don’t discount the other complaints. I’m sure the filmmakers thought the de-emphasizing the original’s romance elements would be in line with feminist thought. And I don’t doubt that they shifted the meaning of the “Snow White” name so that the film wouldn’t seem to be trumpeting the virtues of Whiteness. But I was quite surprised that the film opens with a long musical number telling the audience how from childhood Snow was taught by her royal mother and father to serve the people rather than ruling them. In expansive scenes showing kid-Snow working in the kitchen with the plebes, we’re told via song that “the bounty of the land belonged to all who tended it.” This redefinition of Snow White’s character arc away from personal wish-fulfillment and toward a super-altruism becomes particularly ironic given the much-excerpted scene regarding Snow’s interaction with the dwarfs.

Online pundits made much of this scene, in which Snow seems to be ordering the dwarfs, in their own house, to clean things while she sits back and supervises. Admittedly this was a change from the attitude of the 1937 Snow White, who industriously cleans the house herself to repay the “little men” for their kindness to her. But in fairness, the exact connotation of the 2025 Snow-scene is that she’s discreetly telling the dwarfs to clean up a big mess that they just made – and without even mentioning that the rough talk from six of them hurt Dopey’s feelings. The rather mild commandments from 2025 Snow are not that different from 1937 Snow being a little strict with the dwarfs as she becomes their surrogate mother. 

Further, the cleaning-scene is nowhere near as egregious as all of the instances in which 2025 Snow is constantly worrying about the fate of her precious people, under the tyrannical rule of the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot). Even her alleged “romance” with the handsome bandit Jonathan (Andrew Burnap) is predicated on her trying to persuade him to help her free her people instead of doing things for the benefit of himself and his fellow forest-thieves. In a duet between Jonathan and Snow, he accuses her of focusing on “princess problems” (are those like “white people’s problems?”), but there’s no real suggestion that this Snow is entitled in the usual way. 

In contrast, the Queen is selfhood personified, and her competition to be “fairest in the land” has less to do with feminine beauty and more to do with their differing definitions of what is “fair.” For Snow, “fair” signifies the total social equity she raised to believe in, and which she never questions for a moment. (Presumably she believes in “inclusion” too, since she inhabits a multi-racial medieval kingdom.) For the Queen, “fair” means whatever gets her what she wants.

Her big solo number, “All is Fair,” is a terrible song with awful doggerel lyrics. But the song gets across the script’s labored point: the Queen only uses the word “fair” ironically, as in the saying, “All’s fair in love and war.” And the Queen would amend even that only to “self-love,” because she’s incapable of any other form of love. Additionally, this means that her command of the kingdom is founded on the Hobbesian idea of “the war of all against all,” endless competition for self-gratification. This is certainly an atypical script from credited writer Erin Cressida Wilson, best known in cinema for erotic/psychological thrillers like Chloe, Secretary, and The Girl on the Train. In all likelihood, she just took the money and wrote what some Disney functionaries told her she had to write.

Nothing else in Snow White is as interesting as the battle of Snow and the Queen as representations of altruism and selfishness, respectively. The script’s treatment of this important theme is both jejune and naive, particularly when it suggests that the only good reason for having a love affair is to get your “non-aristocratic prince charming” help you promote the cause of equity. But it’s at least a better theme than anything in Wicked: Part One, with its endless self-pitying “me me me” refrain.  

What else? The CGI dwarfs, I guess. If I’d seen the film as a kid, not knowing any of the backstage rumpus brought about by Peter “Dickhead” Dinklage, I would probably have found the animated little people reasonably entertaining, assuming I’d never seen the 1937 original. They’re not horrible, but they would have been better played by costumed dwarfs.

Performances? Zegler sings well but as an actress she’s bland, and I for one can’t tell if she could do better with a better script. Burnap tries harder to bring charm to his good-hearted rogue so I think he probably can act. Gadot looks great as the Evil Queen, but she’s also utterly one-note in terms of character. The entire significance of Snow’s “death-by-apple” is bungled with some extraneous stuff about rescuing Snow’s lost father, who’s not really alive anyway yatta yatta yatta. When the reckoning comes between Snow and her adversary, the Queen manages to snuff herself in a scene that I found reminiscent of the climax of 2005’s The Brothers Grimm. Given the context, I guess Disney could have found worse sources to steal from.

There’s no question that Leftist politics informed the decision of 2025 Snow White to downplay romance in favor of group ethics, but I have seen far, far worse examples of ideological distortion than this one. Snow White probably wouldn’t even crack the Top 50. 

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