‘Disney’s Snow White’ was released to mixed reviews in March 2025 and yet it remains surprisingly faithful to the 1937 animated version of the classic fairy tale in a way that ‘Wicked’, which opened to far stronger reviews and box office sales, departs in visual style and storytelling from ‘The Wizard of Oz’. Many of the criticisms related to the casting of Rachel Zegler, who is of Colombian descent, in the titular role, and to the appearance of seven dwarfs – hardly politically correct in the twenty-first century – with the CGI iteration of the dwarfs also replacing actors who would have been suited to the roles.

There is also a contemporary twist which means this is not a fairytale in which the princess gets to be rescued by the charming prince, and this is for the most part a two-hander between Zegler and Gal Gadot as the evil stepmother who rules her (mysteriously disappeared, presumed dead) husband’s kingdom with an iron fist. This is also, though, a surprisingly Marxist parable where the workers, pure in heart, get to march up to the castle gates, led by Snow White who declares ‘It’s time’ – like something out of a Clint Eastwood western – and defeats the wicked queen with the force of honesty, integrity and social justice.

The film is a microcosm of contradictory forces – criticized for trafficking in the tropes that are deemed offensive to a contemporary audience, but also attacked for its departure from the original. Zegler is winning here, showing that her Oscar nominated role as Maria in ‘West Side Story’ was no fluke, and she proves herself here to be a worthy adversary to the wicked stepmother, and we can imagine this timid, naïve yet feisty heroine as a monarch in her own right. Indeed, the end of the film suggests that a new, more democratic and egalitarian type of rule can be countenanced in which a redistribution away from the queen’s hoarding of wealth so that the workers don’t have to starve is the order of the day.