Oh no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no with a toilet cracking explosion of... Liquid filth! Disney knew that they were going to have to release a trailer for Snow White sooner or later and well, it went about as well as you might expect.
Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen a movie make so many missteps and receive such nuclear level backlash in my entire career. From the laughably bad leaked photographs to the tiresome, updated for modern audiences premise. to the gratingly unpleasant interviews with the lead actress and even the baffling decision not to cast dwarf actors for fear of offending Peter Dinklage.
Snow White really was the perfect storm of everything so painfully predictable and ridiculous about modern entertainment, twisting and contorting itself into something barely recognisable from the original in a desperate attempt to pander to absolutely everyone. And when the announcement came that the project was going to be delayed by more than a year, almost certainly in response to the massive amount of negative publicity, it honestly seemed like they might just shit can the whole thing. Because really, what was the point in pressing ahead with a movie that everyone in the world seemed to despise?
How many hundreds of millions of dollars were you willing to lose just to make a point? Well, we got our answer at Disney's recent D23 Expo, their annual get-together where they announce a bunch of shit projects that nobody wants, and try to pretend that the company isn't falling down around their ears. Anyway, after basically going radio silent on this movie for almost a year and hoping that the backlash would die down, Disney decided that the time was right to release their first trailer. And in case you were wondering, yes, it was just as godly oversaturated with eye-damaging colours, just as laden with fake, edgy, self-important music, just as crammed full of eerily uncanny CGI animals that looked great in cartoon form but weird and unnatural in live action as you might expect.
And yes, there was no sign of Prince Charming because I think Rachel Zegler's made her thoughts on that character pretty clear already. All of Andrew's scenes could get cut, who knows? It's Hollywood baby.
And as for the dwarves, sorry diverse magical gender non-conforming vertically challenged individuals, these things are absolute nightmare fuel. I mean just look at them. Look at how jerky and unnatural their movements are.
Look at their weird, rubbery, soulless faces. It's like watching an interview with Kevin Feige. They would have looked bad enough in a purely animated movie, but the fact that they're superimposed next to an actual human being, so that we can very clearly see how fake they look, is just further proof that the entire concept behind this movie was a horrifically bad idea.
I mean, just pause for a moment and imagine how much better and more natural this scene would have looked. Not to mention how much cheaper it would have been to film if they just shot it on an actual physical set and used actual dwarf actors. It would have given Rachel Zegler something to actually play against instead of the horrifying reality that she was almost certainly dancing by herself in a big empty room for this sequence with some tennis balls on sticks as a visual reference for the dwarves.
On that subject actually, old Rachel's been suspiciously quiet in recent months. almost like she's been told by Disney that every time she opens her mouth and expresses another dumb, entitled, disrespectful and poorly thought out opinion, she actively shaves millions of dollars off the film's box office total. The last time she made a major appearance in relation to this film, it was during a very carefully controlled conversation with Halle Bailey, and if you know anything about body language and tone of voice, it's pretty funny to compare the quiet, demure, soft- and thoughtful Ziegler in that interview with the brash, outspoken, abrasively overconfident version we saw just a few months earlier.
The cartoon was made 85 years ago and therefore it's extremely dated when it comes to the ideas of women being in roles of power. Several months later. The cartoon is so beloved. It's like a monumental moment in film history.
It was like the first feature length cartoon movie to the point where it It won honorary Oscars and all of these amazing things that happened for that film are the reason that you and I really get to sit here today because it made Disney what it is. That, my friends, is what happens when someone gets the mother of all bollockings from their boss. It's Hollywood, baby.
The movie was always going to have a problem framing the central conflict of an evil stepmother. They're jealous of Snow White's otherworldly beauty when said stepmother was played by Gal Gadot, one of the most famously beautiful actresses in Hollywood today, and Snow White was played by... Well, you get the picture.
Fortunately though, the trailer manages to completely... Emphasize the problem even more. Yes, I know that Fairest of them all in this case is meant to represent truth and justice and leadership or something equally vague and intangible that's been awkwardly ported into a narrative that totally doesn't support it, but that concept is not conveyed here at all. It's the cinematic equivalent of putting a Lamborghini next to a Ford Escort and implying the Lamborghini is the one that feels jealous.
Somehow I don't think people are going to buy into this. Also, you've got to love the revamped version of the Whistle While You Work song that leaked online a couple of days ago. It's basically the perfect distillation of everything that's designed for modern audiences.
And in case you're curious about the difference, check out this little side-by-side comparison. Now you wash the dishes. Now you wash the dishes. You tidy up the room. You tidy up the room.
You clean the fireplace. You clean those cobwebs. And I'll use the broom.
And he'll use the broom. Notice how in the original movie, Snow White offers to clean up the dwarves'home with a little help from her animal friends. It's a little token of respect and appreciation on her part, in return for giving her food and shelter. But the horrifying notion of a woman doing any kind of domestic chores, even as a temporary response to a very specific situation, clearly doesn't gel with modern sensibilities. Because as we all know, modern independent women would never be seen dead sweeping up, or tidying, or cleaning dirty dishes.
All of that stuff just kind of... happens by itself now, I guess. So in the new version, she forces the dwarves themselves to clean up the place.
That's right, they take her into their home, offer her protection and food and everything else she needs, and in return she forces them to do even more work for her. This is the point at which identity politics, storytelling and simple common sense all come into conflict with each other, and the latter two are sacrificed in favour of the former. Anyway, whatever.
The point here is that if this trailer was Disney's big shot at turning around public opinion of their least popular movie since the Marvels, then I don't think it's accomplished its mission. In fact, it's just further proof that they should probably do their shareholders a favour and Batgirl this thing out of existence. It will not be missed. Anyway, that's all I've got for today.
Go away now.