Rachel Zegler Has Turned People Against Her Snow White Remake With A String Of HORRIBLE, Pompous Interviews
So ICYMI, Disney has a live-action Snow White movie coming out in 2024 staring Rachel Zegler in the titular role alongside Gal Gadot as the Evil Queen. Marc Webb (500 Days of Summer, The Amazing Spider-Man) is directing and the script is from Greta Gerwig, who just became the first female director to make a billion dollar movie.
Here's the thing, everything you just read is cool because, if you're reading this, the odds are that you are a 18-35 year old dude named Matt, Mike or Chris. This movie ain't for you unless you have a child you want to get 2 hours of peace from. So the quality of this movie, good or bad, is meaningless to you and not something you should care about or criticize.
The movie itself is not what's being criticized here. What's being criticized is Zegler's comments and how in the world they are supposed to be promoting the movie. Here is what stood out to me;
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1. That she doesn't give a shit about the original and actively dislikes it. That fact in a bubble is a nothing burger because plenty of actors, directors, writers that feel that way about projects. A great example is Tony Gilroy, who made the best Star Wars anything since the original trilogy in 'Andor' (Mando close behind after a shaky 3rd season) despite not liking Star Wars. The weird thing is her willingly publicizing that fact and doing so months and months and months ahead of the movies release (some of these clips date back to last year). If I was a fan of XYZ IP, what good comes from me hearing that the star of the live-action dislikes it in the form that I loved?
2. Her implication that the original movie is "weird" or "creepy". What follows that is the idea that anyone who likes the original must be some sort of creep or weirdo. That's also bizarre because the original movie is totally vanilla, even by much tighter 2023 standards vs 1937. This isn't 'Song of the South'. Again, I don't get the thought process behind alienating the fans of the IP.
3. This smugness that them reimagining Snow White is some sort of massive favor to the movie-going world. It's really not. There is nobody in the world that is upset with the cartoon. There is nobody clamoring for it to be fixed. The sole reason it is being made is because Disney is banking on it making a ton of money (which they typically do, by the way) and moving merch. There is no significant level of artistic integrity involved here.
Just a PR nightmare. And now, these comments make people want to criticize the movie. I'm not talking the bozo trolls who will shit all over anything involving a woman, Disney etc for likes. Just regular people who don't care who are now mad and asking "at what point is a remake no longer a remake?". This is a live-action remake of the 1937 cartoon, not an adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fairytale. So if you're go into a remake wanting to change foundational elements and themes of the movie, why not just make something else. Make a new story if you are confident in those elements you are changing.
Again, this is nothing to really do with the state of remakes, feminism, gen z or any of that. It's the question of how does any of this help promote your movie? What person hears that type of promotion and is convinced to go watch a movie? Nobody. And all of this sucks because Zegler was an awesome Maria in Spielberg's 'West Side Story' and watching her document her rise from a regular joe to the limelight was actually pretty cool. I guess there was just too much radioactive exposure to the Hollywood cesspit.