On March 21, 2025, Disney released “Snow White,” an updated live-action reimagining of their first animated film, 1937’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.” This kind of remake isn’t new — Disney has been releasing updated versions of their classic movies for the past decade — but the reception towards Snow White has been much colder than its past counterparts. Is this just a fluke, or is this a sign of the beginning of the end of the live-action remakes?
“I grew up with classic Disney movies,” Mustafa Al-Janabi (9) said. “So I get why people love [Disney] a lot. But for me, all of the Disney movies I’ve seen in the past few years — and that’s not just like the remakes and [the animated] Disney movies, that’s also like Marvel movies and Star Wars — they just haven’t been worth watching at all.”
While live-action remakes, as they’ve come to be known, are a relatively recent phenomenon, the first example of Disney remaking one of their animated films is their 1996 live-action reimagining of “101 Dalmatians.” However, the modern trend of CGI-heavy remakes started in 2010, with the release of “Alice in Wonderland,” directed by Tim Burton, which proved to be a massive success, grossing over $1 billion. While “101 Dalmatians,” and its sequel, “102 Dalmatians,” were one-off projects, “Alice in Wonderland” led to many follow-up remakes, starting with “Maleficent” in 2014, and since then, there has been at least one Disney live-action remake released per year.
“I like that they’ve tried to incorporate the stories into real life perspectives,” Rhyan Parker (9) said. “Because [the original movies] were hand drawn, you can’t really go in depth, but with live-action, it’s real life, 3D. You can see all of the aspects and the environments of the movies in detail. I feel like they’re so popular, because people today can reminisce on the original while having a new version of it.”
Many credit these successful remakes to their stories and updating them with modern visuals and actors. The use of live action leads to increased realism in the stories, and the films occasionally deviate from their source material in interesting ways.
“I love how [Disney] is able to make stories out of themes like childhood dreams and fantasy,” Parker said. “I gravitated more towards Disney compared to Nickelodeon, because it was the essence of … you could dream anything. Like, ‘Oh, I could be a princess like that one day.’”
However, with the utter glut of live-action remakes, naturally a backlash started to form. Many saw the constant excess of remakes as increasingly cynical, and saw the entire series of remakes as a series of cash grabs to capitalize on their audience’s nostalgia. Even among those who like the remakes, reception of them has started to plummet — on Rotten Tomatoes, while many of the earlier remakes (such as Cinderella, The Jungle Book, and Beauty and the Beast) have audience scores of over 70%, the more recent remakes have been divisive — while movies like “The Little Mermaid” and “Cruella” have been received well, others like “Pinnochio” and “Peter Pan & Wendy” were panned by both critics and fans.
“To me, at least, all of the remakes just feel like cash-grabs,” Al-Janabi said. “At first, I didn’t hate them because I saw them as someone trying to tell a classic story their own way. But after so many, and most of them not being that good, [the remakes] just feel like a cheap way for Disney to make money … by relying on nostalgia, instead of taking chances with something new and exciting.”
Many Disney fans believe Disney’s most recent remake, “Snow White,” is among their biggest failures, as the film has flopped both critically and financially. While there has been controversy surrounding the movie — such as the casting of Rachel Zegler, a latina actress, in the role of Snow White, Rachel Zegler making fun of the original film, the depiction of the Seven Dwarves and the political views of both lead actors — other remakes have dealt with similar controversy and still have been successes. The 2023 remake of “The Little Mermaid” faced similar controversy with the casting of Hallie Berry as Ariel, but the film still prevailed, and became a massive success. “Snow White,” on the other hand, failed to make its budget back, making it a financial and critical failure for Disney. So why did it fail? The predominant opinion from those who have seen the film is mixed to negative, with many calling the story cluttered, the acting clunky, and the tone dull and unexciting.
“[Snow White] feels unnecessary,” Parker said. “I saw how it was perceived by the actor, Rachel Zegler, and she made it seem like she didn’t really like the story or the characters. I get the point that she was trying to modernize it, because the original was from the 1930s, but she could’ve phrased [her words] better. And if the people working on the movie aren’t dedicated at all to their work, then I don’t want to watch them.”
With the performance of “Snow White,” the future of Disney’s live-action remakes remains unclear. A Lilo and Stitch remake is releasing this summer, and while the reception towards it has been more positive than Snow White’s, only time will tell how the film does. But with the backlash to live action remakes growing, it looks like these films could possibly be on their way out.
“I just think, in 20 or 30 years, when we look back at this point in time, will any of the remakes hold up?” Al-Janabi said. “Like, why would you watch any of them when you could see the originals instead? … I grew up with “Snow White.” I liked it a lot, but even if I hadn’t, why would I want to watch a bad, live-action version of “Snow White” when I could just watch the original one instead?”
