Warning: Major spoilers ahead for the 2025 “Snow White” remake.
Disney’s “Snow White” got another modern-day spin, more than 80 years after the animated movie “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” hit theaters.
Marc Webb’s “Snow White,” released on Friday, stars Rachel Zegler as the titular princess and Gal Gadot as her stepmother, the Evil Queen.
While this is not the first and only “Snow White” retelling (see: “Snow White and the Huntsman” and “Mirror, Mirror”), it is the most paint-by-numbers remake of the 1937 film and the Brothers Grimm fairytale.
Still, the new movie diverges from the source material in a few major ways. Here are the biggest changes.
Snow White’s name is a nod to the weather conditions when she was born.
In the animated movie, the titular character’s name refers to her “skin white as snow.” In the live-action remake, the movie opens by revealing that Snow White’s name is an homage to the weather on the night of her birth. The princess was born on an evening when a blizzard swept through the land, leaving the kingdom in snow and ice.
Her parents are a more crucial part of her origin story.
“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” does not mention Snow White’s parents. Instead, the animated movie kicks off with a storybook passage explaining that Snow White’s vain and wicked stepmother feared that someday the princess’s beauty would surpass her own, so she dressed her in rags and forced her to work in the scullery.
The 2025 movie starts with a similar storybook revealing that the kingdom was once ruled by Snow White’s parents, the king and queen, and the land flourished under them.
Snow White’s parents taught her to lead with love and make it a point to remember people’s names. They also baked apple pies and distributed them throughout the kingdom to share their wealth with the townspeople.
After the queen falls ill and dies, the Evil Queen arrives, enchants the king, and marries him. It’s only after they wed that she’s revealed to be evil and power-hungry. The Evil Queen then warns the king of a threat beyond the kingdom and leaves to investigate it, but he never returns and the Evil Queen completely takes over.
The huntsman gives the Evil Queen a box with an apple, not an animal heart.
In the animated movie, the Evil Queen instructs the huntsman to kill Snow White in a secluded glade and bring her back her heart in a box as proof. He instead tells Snow White to flee into the woods and puts the heart of a pig in the box.
In Webb’s film, the huntsman lets Snow White escape and puts an apple in the box. Although this small change doesn’t affect the plot, it avoids the unnecessary murder of an animal to trick the queen.
Snow White has her own ambitions and isn’t waiting around for her one true love.
One of the biggest critiques of the animated classic is that the heroine spends most of the movie daydreaming about her Prince Charming someday finding her.
From the start of the 2025 movie, it’s established that Snow White’s destiny is to be a leader who’s fearless, fair, brave, and true. “Someday My Prince Will Come” is replaced by a more empowering “I wish” song for Snow White, called “Waiting On A Wish.”
In the updated song, she sings about her hope to become her father’s daughter and the kind leader she was raised to be.
Her love interest, Jonathan, is a bandit, not a knight in shining armor.
Prince Charming from the 1937 movie doesn’t really have any discernible, distinguishing traits. He first encounters Snow White after hearing her singing beautifully and then wakes her from a sleeping death with love’s first kiss after a lengthy search.
In the modern-day reimagining, there’s no Prince Charming on a white horse. Instead, he’s replaced with Jonathan, the captain of a group of bandits.
Snow White and Jonathan have a more balanced romance, one that starts with her rescuing him.
Snow White and Jonathan first meet in the palace scullery, where she’s been banished to clean. Snow White sees him stealing food for himself and the other bandits and is caught by the palace guards.
As punishment, the Evil Queen chains him to the gate so he can freeze to death. Snow White saves him by untying him and letting him run free.
When Snow White later encounters Jonathan in the woods, she initially assumes he’s just a selfish, common criminal, and he writes her off as an out-of-touch princess. But as they get to know each other, they realize there’s more than meets the eye.
Instead of running off for good when the guards detect them, Snow White tricks the enemies and returns to fight alongside the bandits, which surprises and impresses Jonathan.
Meanwhile, Snow White’s opinion of Jonathan changes and she develops romantic feelings for him after he selflessly takes an arrow for her and saves her life.
Later, when Jonathan gets captured and thrown in the palace dungeon, he tells the huntsman that Snow White showed him how to have hope and courage.
Snow White doesn’t clean up the dwarfs’ cottage when she arrives.
In the animated “Snow White,” the princess cleans up the dwarfs’ cottage to earn favor with the inhabitants, hoping they’ll let her stay.
After the dwarfs return from work and meet Snow White, she offers to keep the place clean and cook for them, as long as they let her stick around.
The new movie avoids Snow White being relegated to the dwarfs’ maid or chef. Upon arrival at the cottage, she falls asleep. When the dwarfs find her, they agree to let her stay with them to be out of harm’s way. And during the musical number “Whistle While You Work,” everyone gets involved in cleaning up the home.
The Evil Queen killed Snow White’s dad.
The king’s unexplained disappearance is a big part of the remake. Snow White goes on a journey in search of him, with the help of the bandits, because she believes she can restore the old kingdom.
When the Evil Queen, disguised as the hag, convinces Snow White to bite into the poisoned apple, she calls the old king a fool. At that moment, Snow White realizes that she’s the Evil Queen in disguise and that her stepmother murdered her father.
Dopey has his own character arc.
In the animated movie, the other dwarfs make fun of Dopey because he can’t talk, or never tried to.
In the 2025 film, a CGI Dopey is also silent and afraid to speak, but Snow White is kind is helps him find his voice. First, she teaches him to whistle, and he ends up being a natural.
Later in the movie, when Snow White awakes from her sleeping death, she says that the kingdom is her destiny and that it’s time to step into her role as a leader.
Snow White warns the dwarfs that it’ll be difficult because the Evil Queen will try to stop them. Then, to the surprise of everyone, Dopey says, “Let her try” and adds that they’re not afraid anymore. At the end of the movie, it’s revealed that he’s actually the narrator.
Snow White and the Evil Queen have a pivotal confrontation in which the princess spares her stepmother’s life.
There’s no fight or standoff between Snow White and the Evil Queen in the original movie because by the time the princess wakes up, her stepmother has already fallen to her death.
But in the remake, Snow White heads to the castle to take back the kingdom. In response, the Evil Queen tells Snow White that if she wants the throne, she has to kill her with a dagger she conjured.
Predictably, Snow White refuses, so the Evil Queen gives the weapon to one of the palace guards and orders him to kill the princess.
Recalling what her mom taught her about making it a point to remember peoples’ names, Snow White stops the guard by calling him by his name, Paul. She also reminds him of how he used to be a farmer and share his grove of cherry trees with others. Then, Snow White calls out the names of the other guards, winning them over with her kindness and turning them against the Evil Queen.
Snow White tells the Evil Queen to leave and never come back. But the villain tries to kill Snow White with the dagger. She’s intercepted by the crossbow of the bandit named Quigg knocking the dagger out of her hand and turning it to dust.
The Evil Queen’s death is completely different than what happens in the animated movie.
In the animated “Snow White,” the dwarfs chase the Evil Queen (in her hag disguise) up a cliff. While trying to move a boulder toward the dwarfs to knock them over, a lightning bolt strikes the ledge, and the Evil Queen falls to her death, the boulder crashing down with her.
Even though Snow White spares the Evil Queen’s life in the remake, she still meets her demise.
After running back to her room in the castle, the Evil Queen rushes to her Magic Mirror, who calls her vain and says that Snow White’s beauty comes from deep within. Therefore, she’ll always be superior to the Evil Queen. Angry, the Evil Queen smashes the mirror. In shattering the mirror, she also disintegrates into ashes that get pulled through the magic vortex, presumably into some kind of void.
In the aftermath, Snow White becomes the new queen and restores the town to its former glory.
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