Snow White: Rachel Zegler Improves on the Original with a Few Key Changes

This article contains some very mild spoilers for Disney’s Snow White.

Long before seven Dwarfs show up as CGI motion-capture oddities instead of of lovingly hand-drawn creations, 2025’s Snow White was already making striking changes to 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. And believe it or not, not all of them were as disturbingly misguided as those Dwarfs of the Uncanny Valley.

Gone is the Prince, who is now replaced here by a roguish resistance leader. An instead of ending with Snow White revived by true love’s kiss—a scene which still occurs—the 2025 film continues on past the resurrection for a people’s uprising against the Evil Queen. “Someday My Prince Will Come” has been cut for pop ballads like “Good Things Grow,” which valorize self-actualization instead of romantic love.

While these alterations will certainly rankle purists, there’s one group that won’t care about the differences, and it’s the only group that matters: children. The film’s primary audience will be just as charmed with Snow White ’25 as children of the past were with Snow White ’37. And it’s not really the updated social mores that make the new movie work for modern audiences. It’s because of Rachel Zegler’s performance as Snow White is genuinely enchanting.

While many of the 2025 movie’s attempts to update the original diminish the work overall, Zegler’s ability to translate the sweetness of the original character in a way that’s accessible to modern kids is what connects this movie in its best moments with old school Disney magic. In a handful of moments, it even changes the story for the better.

A New Beginning

Both Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Snow White ’25 begin in same way, with an ornate storybook opening to reveal an illuminated manuscript which frames the tale. But whereas the 1937 film lets viewers only read about how Snow White’s wicked stepmother came into the princess’ life, the 2025 film features voiceover and a flashback sequence, showing the young Snow White living happily with her father and mother, and her sadness when her grieving father marries the Evil Queen (Gal Gadot).

This different setups fundamentally change the way the adult Snow White first appears in each film. In 1937, we watch as Snow White (Adriana Caselotti) tells the birds around her at a wishing well about how much she yearns for a man to come and find her. Within seconds of the introduction, a passing prince overhears her, climbs into the courtyard and immediately proclaims his love for her.

Even a child, more than willing to suspend disbelief and enjoy the spectacle, should find the prince’s sudden appearance an declaration of love a little odd. But then, romantic pursuits are never a child’s favorite part of a story, so the movie has always been fine just glossing through that and relying on musical stylings, albeit 1937 songwriting sounds nothing like the pop earworms modern kids have been hearing for all of their short lives so far. Now compare this to the 2025 movie’s extended opening setting where the adult Snow White played by Zegler isn’t singing about love from a prince she’s never met. She’s singing about the love she once knew and has since lost, the love of her parents.

As different as the expanded and modern version of the opening certainly is, it feels the same. Not because of the song that Snow White sings, a contemporary number that could come from any of today’s musicals (this movie is, after all, a Marc Platt Production). Rather it’s because of Zegler’s acting is completely without guile or self-consciousness.

Zegler seems to float across the screen in this sequence, looking upward and swaying as she walks, sending her dress billowing behind her. She lets a tremor of sadness darken her brow and turns down the corners of her mouth when Snow White remembers where that the love she wants is gone. Childlike innocence returns to her face when she looks into the well and instead of the prince from the 1937 movie she sees herself once again flanked by her parents.

The musical style, the longing for parents instead of a romantic partner, all these connect to today’s kids better than the 1937 movie. But the 2025 movie retains its innocence we all remember being charmed by in the original almost solely because of Zegler’s performance.

Floating Over Princess Problems

The biggest advantage the 1937 film has over its recent counterpart is the animation. The rotoscoping technique used by Disney animators still gives the movie a haunting quality, especially when matched with incredible effects, such as the interactions between Snow White and the animals or the mystic mists that surround the Evil Queen.

The 2025 film borrows its predecessor’s designs of the animals and the Dwarfs, but its state-of-the-art technology has a very different effect. The new film uses motion-capture technology and gives it Dwarfs realistic skin and hair while retaining the proportions and features of the original. The results are nightmare creatures, more akin to the grotesque Spitting Image puppets of the 1980s than anything from Disney’s past.

And yet, Zegler sells her scenes with what borders on visual abominations. When the Dwarfs surround her after she enters their cabin, she responds with awe and curiosity. The Dwarfs bicker as they introduce themselves, a bit that feels so mechanical that you can almost see the code appearing on screen, Matrix-like. However, Zegler commits to Snow White’s wonder at their antiques and her genuine pride when she recites their names back to them. We adults might (rightly) grouch at the film’s horrid visuals, but children will follow Zegler’s lead and allow themselves to be taken away into the fantasy.

As great as Zegler’s acting is, her singing is even better. The 2025 movie wisely retains some of the numbers from the 1937 film (albeit with unnecessary added lyrics) and adds a few numbers of its own. For the most part, the songs are fine, with the wrong-headed postmodern ditty “Princess Problems” being the only outright mistake. But Zegler is an incredible singer, and effortless delivery makes these by-the-numbers tracks feel like “When You Wish Upon a Star.” She sings them with full conviction, never once winking at the camera, even when Jonathan (Andrew Burnap), the movie’s roguish stand-in for the Prince, gripes about unrealistic princess story tropes in “Princess Problems.”

Zegler makes us believe in the fantasy world of Snow White, something that the movie’s special effects and musical numbers can’t achieve without her.

The Most Talented Of Them All

Unless you’re one of the ding dongs complaining that Snow White isn’t Caucasian because her name’s Snow White (I don’t know if you’ve seen snow or German people before, but those two colors aren’t the same), then it’s clear that Rachel Zegler is the best part of the movie. If Snow White is a success, overcoming what appears to be poor initial tracking, it will be entirely thanks to her performance.

Which is a good thing and bad. Zegler stunned in Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story and was fun in the overstuffed The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, but has had way too many lackluster projects like Shazam: Fury of the Gods in her filmography. If Snow White flops, maybe she’ll get out of the blockbuster market and toward better, more interesting projects that are equal to her talents. Whatever happens, Snow White proves that Zegler can do something that none of Disney’s high-paid filmmaking pros or cutting-edge technology can do by making a classic fairy tale for modern audiences.

Snow White is now playing in theaters.

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