'Snow White' Highlights Disney's Poor Read on Female Empowerment
What does heroic action look like for a Disney Princess in a live-action remake?
[Spoilers ahead for 2025’s Snow White]
In 2019’s Aladdin, there’s a bizarre moment where the entire fate of all the characters hinges on a minor background player: Hakim, the Head Guard (Numan Acar). Here’s the scene in case you haven’t seen it:
It's the kind of overwrought, bizarre interlude where the film hasn’t done any real work on this character (understandable since he’s not a named character in the animated original), but now his loyalties are of the utmost importance. While the scene is meant to show Jasmine (Naomi Scott) giving an impassioned speech, it plays like a long-winded version of the Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad where she gives a soda to a cop during a protest. The underlying idea is that people (and to be more specific—conventionally attractive women) can change hearts and minds. But in practice, it’s pleading with those empowered to use violence to not serve evil and unleash terror on their fellow citizens.
I mention all of this because Snow White features largely the same climax. In the animated original, the prince awakens Snow White with a kiss and the Evil Queen falls off a cliff. It’s a tidy resolution to a fairy tale. But since the new movie wants to give Snow (Rachel Zegler) a chance for heroic action in defeating the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot), there’s a climactic confrontation at the castle where the Evil Queen demands that the soldiers eliminate Snow. We’re told earlier in the film that under the Evil Queen’s rule, farmers became soldiers. Now in this scene, Snow addresses the soldiers by name and reminds them of their pasts.
There are a myriad of problems with this scene. To begin, Snow addressing each soldier by name makes the scene feel like Snow read How to Win Friends and Influence People rather than having a genuine bond with the soldiers. There’s never a set-up with these minor characters to deliver the payoff at the climax. Snow White had this opportunity, as we had a long prologue showing a young Snow frolicking among the villagers as well as the bad times when she worked as a servant in the castle. At either point, there could have been a moment of connection between Snow and the soldiers, but the film doesn’t bother to give us that set-up.
There’s a gendered queasiness that underpins these scenes. While the attempt to empower Disney Princesses is admirable, the demonstration of that power is not action but a plea. As much as Scott and Zegler can command the screen and speak forcefully, the content of the scene is still a woman asking a man empowered to use violence to not be evil. Neither woman can take power, because that wouldn’t be nice. They can’t speak directly about how messed up things are because that wouldn’t be polite. Instead, they must continue to navigate the feelings of men who couldn’t figure out, “Are we the baddies?”
Disney is on the right track in understanding that they should flesh out their most famous female characters, but time and again, the way this plays out in the live-action adaptations rings hollow. If Snow is a leader, then there’s not time to do “Whistle While You Work,” about how good she is at handling domestic chores with the dwarfs. If Snow can inspire others, then there probably needs to be a scene showing she has that capability rather than scenes where she hopes her father is still alive and he can rule the kingdom again. There’s nothing wrong with a hero asking for help, and hey, even Captain America pulled this maneuver. But for the live-action Disney Princesses, this appears to be the only card they can play. The young girls who come to these movies should know they don’t need to ask permission from some rando palace guard to set things right.
What I’m Watching
I finally watched a movie that’s been on my radar since 2011: The Perfect Host. I’ve always been curious about this movie since it’s the only film that puts David Hyde Pierce in a leading role. I’m a huge fan of Fraiser, and Pierce is arguably the best actor on that show, so it was intriguing to see him land not only a lead role in a movie but a thriller rather than his excellent comic turns in comedies like Down with Love and Wet Hot American Summer.
Unfortunately, the movie is quite bad. Despite the solid premise—a bank robber (Clayne Crawford) on the run finds cover in a home belonging to a psychopath (Pierce)—and a great lead actor, nothing else works. The film is poorly lit, edited, and scripted with Crawford acted off the screen by Pierce. I understand why Pierce took the role, but the surrounding movie is unworthy of his talents. What I found peculiar is that something so shoddy snuck its way into the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. There are certainly dogs at Sundance, but rarely anything so technically inept.
What I’m Reading
Here are some recent articles that caught my attention.
Valnet Blues: How Online Porn Pioneer Hassan Youssef Built a Digital Media ‘Sweatshop’ by Umberto Gonzalez [TheWrap] - I wasn’t contacted for this story, but I knew someone would break it eventually. People love stories about scuzzy, successful entertainers, and Valnet fits the bill with its acquisition of ScreenRant, CBR, my old haunt Collider, and others. The throughline that runs through the company’s vision whether it’s the porn empire that preceded Valnet or the network of websites they operate now is one of exploitation where the people at the top pay almost nothing to people who make things but work to game the system through search engine optimization (SEO).
While I’m a bit salty over this (my former co-workers and I made Collider a trusted destination for entertainment coverage, and now it’s largely SEO bait made by underpaid contributors), my ire is reserved more for a company that isn’t giving writers a chance to shine as individuals. Some young writers are desperate to break into entertainment journalism, who have real voices, and it does not matter in the Valnet model. The bylines they offer have no worth.
The larger question is if studios and publicists will ever catch on to the dwindling value of sites that lack devoted readers but rather serve as buckets for SEO terms. The traffic numbers don’t tell the full story of a devoted readership. To put it another way, a website like The Reveal has fewer readers than a Valnet site, but those are real eyeballs rather than someone who stumbled across “The 8 Best R-Rated British Movies on Prime Video Right Now.” If I worked in a studio’s press office, I would start asking sites not for their traffic numbers but for their bounce rate (the amount of time a reader spends on the site before going elsewhere).
Six Short Thoughts on the Most Insane Trump Story of All Time by Garrett Graff [Doomsday Scenario] - One of the disheartening things about the latest Trump scandal is that it is merely a prelude to further scandals. Most Presidential administrations work to project competence and squash scandal; Trump, because he’s unfit to be President and only pulls sycophants into his orbit, creates constant chaos and you wait until the wheels fall off. I don’t know how bad things will get over the next four years (or more!), but the news about national security leaders having an unsecured group chat over Signal is a reminder that in addition to the economy heading into a recession and DOGE gutting the federal government, we have bozos at the helm of American defense. As Garrett Graff points out, accidentally inviting a major reporter to your NatSec group chat raises some deeply troubling issues. For example, Trump appears fairly checked out of these decisions (it’s only airstrikes, not an unflattering portrait in Colorado), and those surrounding him are left to try and interpret what he wants. Leadership!
Meanwhile, the administration’s current response is to claim that none of this was classified anyway, so it’s no biggie. These are the same people who couldn’t stop whining about Hillary Clinton having a private email server.
Heartthrob, Hero, Closet Intellectual: The Many Faces of Bruce Willis by Jason Bailey [Vanity Fair] - For a more uplifting read, check out this profile of Bruce Willis for his 70th birthday. Before people were aware of Willis’ mental decline due to the onset of dementia, there was the assumption that he was taking a bunch of direct-to-video stuff out of laziness and greed. In retrospect, it now seems clear he was taking these paydays on DTV roles because it’s not only what his cognitive ability could manage, but because he was likely aware that time was running out on his career, so he couldn’t take six months to tackle some kind of meaty role with an auteur director.
Also, as this article points out, there were numerous times earlier in his career when Willis was fine with foregoing money if it meant an opportunity to make an interesting movie or work with someone he admired. This was not a guy solely driven by money. I think it’s easy to assume that because Willis made his name in blockbusters, there was nothing serious about him, but that overlooks how he took chances on rising filmmakers and gave some truly fantastic turns beyond action movies. Even though Willis is alive and loved by his family and friends (his kids frequently share celebrations of their father on Instagram), there is a sense of loss that we won’t get any more great performances from him. We need to treasure the ones we have now in films like Death Becomes Her, Twelve Monkeys, The Sixth Sense, Looper, and others.
What I’m Hearing
Lady Gaga has a new album out, and it’s kind of wild how she makes memorable pop look so effortless. I’m not an aficionado of her work, but I always put on her latest album, and MAYHEM is a lot of fun.
What I’m Playing
I wrapped up the platinum on The Last of Us: Part II Remastered and the game holds up wonderfully. I’m so curious about the upcoming season of the HBO series, but the story is there for a power narrative about two young women consumed by grief and rage and the question of whether there’s any chance of redemption in a world so broken.
I’m not sure what my next game will be for the next few weeks, but in mid-April, I’ll likely start Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which I’ve heard great things about from people who played it on Xbox.
Hey Matt, really enjoying your writing, thanks! Just jumping on here to say you HAVE to play The Great Circle. Its the best Indiana Jones story since The Last Crusade and was a total blast. I didn't want it to end.