“Snow White” has been plagued with backlash from the beginning. First, star Rachel Zegler‘s casting was criticized due to Zegler being of Latina descent. Peter Dinklage, meanwhile, called the live-action remake a “fucking backwards story” that he said was offensive to the dwarfism community. Disney later responded that the film would not be “reinforcing stereotypes” over differently abled people.
Now, the son of the director of the original 1937 animated film is saying that Walt Disney himself would disapprove of the new “woke” direction of the feature. David Hand, whose late father of the same name was the original film’s director, worked for Disney as a designer in the 1990s.
Hand told The Telegraph UK that Disney and his dad would be “turning in their graves” if they were alive to see the new “Snow White.” “It’s a whole different concept and I just totally disagree with it, and I know my dad and Walt would also very much disagree with it,” Hand said.
He added that it is a “disgrace” the studio is “trying to do something new with something that was such a great success earlier,” saying, “Their thoughts are just so radical now. They change the stories, they change the thought process of the characters. They’re making up new woke things and I’m just not into any of that. I find it quite frankly a bit insulting [what] they may have done with some of these classic films.”
Hand continued, “There’s no respect for what Disney did and what my dad did. I think Walt and he would be turning in their graves.”
Lead actress Zegler has expressed her own disdain for the original story and shared that she was not a fan of the first film. “There’s a big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her … weird, so we didn’t do that this time,” Zegler told Extra, adding that the movie is “really not about the love story at all” but is instead about the character’s “inner journey that she goes on to find her true self.”
Zegler continued that the revamped live-action Snow White character is “not going to be dreaming about true love, she’s dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be and the leader that her late father told her that she could be.”
“Snow White” co-stars Gal Gadot and Ansu Kabia and is directed by Marc Webb. The film is set to hit theaters on March 22, 2024. Actress Gadot told GQ that the movie is a musical and a “delicious and delightful” reimagining.
