Snow White
It’s time to whistle while we work, ladies and gentleman. And watch out for poison apples.
The first trailer for Disney’s upcoming live-action remake of Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs dropped during this weekend’s big D23 event and it has one huge problem. Or should I say . . . little problem? One huge little problem.
The film stars Rachel Zegler as Snow White, Ansu Kabia as the Huntsman, Andrew Burnap as Jonathan (the prince, methinks) and Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen.
Now, before we watch the trailer I just want to point out that if I was a Magic Mirror and Gal Gadot asked me who the fairest one of all was, I would not hesitate to say “You, my queen.” But I digress.
Let’s watch:
Until now, all we’d seen of the film—which lands in theaters on March 21st, 2025—was a still image of Snow White and her dwarf buddies. At the time, I said I was glad that the dwarves were actually dwarves (earlier leaked images had people worried they would not be) but I wish they’d cast real people—little people, specifically—rather than have animated dwarves.
This trailer honestly makes me kind of angry. My opinions on this matter have sharpened since that image was released, especially with the new Time Bandits show on Apple TV, which erased little people entirely.
Apparently, in the current cultural moment, we are supposed to be so sensitive to prejudices against our concept of “dwarves” and “halflings” and what have you, that we no longer cast little people in our shows and movies. Of course, the dark irony here is that there are many little people actors who would love to get roles in movies like Snow White and shows like Time Bandits. Honestly, I’m still a little annoyed with Peter Jackson for not casting little people in the Hobbit roles in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. (And, of course, the Very Diverse And Progressive Rings Of Power commits the same erasure with its Harfoots and Stoors, which are certainly a rainbow coalition, but include zero little people as actors—huzzah for progress!)
Some—though obviously not all—of this trend can be traced back to the most famous LP actor, Peter Dinklage, who commented while on Marc Maron’s WTF Podcast:
“Literally no offense to anything, but I was sort of taken aback. They were very proud to cast a Latino actress as Snow White, but you’re still telling the story of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ Take a step back and look at what you’re doing there. It makes no sense to me. You’re progressive in one way, but you’re still making that *&$*(@# backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together. Have I done nothing to advance the cause from my soapbox? I guess I’m not loud enough.”
The irony here is that rather than change the nature of the story to not include dwarfs at all (if that is such a harmful stereotype, which I don’t think the LP community would necessarily agree with) Disney simply animated the dwarfs instead, removing little people from the cast entirely—or, rather, not entirely since we know LP actor Martin Klebba voices Grumpy—but entirely from the screen. And it’s not like there are a ton of LP roles out there, especially when so many of them are taken by regular sized people. The only major show in recent history to have LP in it was Disney’s Willow reboot, and it was mostly Daikini—and genuinely awful.
Writing at IndieWire, Kristen Lopez notes: “If you’re a member of the LP community, or the disability community in general, you’ve seen this story before: the media frenzy, followed by backpedaling, followed by the eventual erasure of disability altogether.”
That certainly seems to be the case with Snow White, which has even removed “And The Seven Dwarfs” from its title entirely.
Not only is this bad for LP actors, it’s bad for the movie. Frankly, watching these dwarfs in action is a bit jarring. They’re so clearly animated when standing next to live-action Snow White. It’s one thing when it’s a deer or a bunny rabbit, another when it’s an actual person (albeit a little person). This is a pretty big mistake on Disney’s and director Marc Webb’s part. Very disappointing all around, though nothing new for the disastrous run of mediocre live-action remakes of Disney classics. At least this one looks colorful, unlike the bland, desaturated look most of these movies have been given.
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