When going to see Disney’s Snow White (2025), there is a temptation to give the movie the benefit of the doubt. It’s not as though most Disney fans want the studio’s live-action adaptations to be bad. But when it’s clear the film has been strapped with an overwritten script and plagued with negative backlash, it’s hard not to notice its faults. In truth, there’s nothing wrong with Disney attempting to update its own successful features. However, when the studio loses sight of the heart of its stories, that’s when audiences seem to react in a negative way, and the scripts suffer.

Sadly, Snow White was an expected disappointment in a few areas. The film moved the focus away from its biggest stars, the dwarfs, and added a little something extra to their characters that went practically nowhere. The writing left a slew of unanswered questions, but the biggest one might be: Why give the dwarfs magical powers only to do nothing with them?

Disney’s Live-Action Snow White Gives the Seven Dwarfs Magical Powers

Image via Disney

In Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), the dwarfs appear to be relatively normal. They are smaller in stature, but mine gemstones with the usual techniques and seem to have no magical assistance or elements about them. In fact, the only person who seems to possess any sort of otherworldly power in the original film is the Evil Queen. Whether it was meant to be a moralistic statement or not, the original could be perceived as attempting to link sorcery with dark arts and evil. There is no explanation as to how or why Snow White’s stepmother has access to these powers or a magic mirror. Much in the vein of the fairy tale on which it was based, she simply does.

Snow White offers little more explanation for the Evil Queen’s powers or the magic mirror. She appears one day after the death of Snow White’s mother, the queen, again with a magic mirror in tow. Considering the movie is almost two hours long, it is surprising Disney did not choose to delve more into the queen’s backstory (at least in this area) when it obviously had the time. The dwarfs received similar treatment. When they are first shown in the mines, singing their signature song “Heigh-Ho,” they appear to have the ability to illuminate the rock surfaces of the caves where they work. Aside from offering audiences a bit of a light show, that is about as far as their abilities seem to go.

Upon first seeing the dwarfs being given new abilities, it is easy to assume the writers might do something more with this idea. Perhaps the dwarfs will use it in their face off with the Evil Queen somewhere down the road. Their new powers might come into play in any of their interactions with Snow White (they never do). Or maybe the powers will relate to how their mining plays into the commerce of the surrounding kingdom somehow (this movie is much more political than the cartoon, after all). Still, none of this happens. They display their powers in that first initial scene, and then they are completely forgotten about for the duration of the movie.

One small nod to the dwarfs’ new mystical nature could potentially be the scene where Jonathan (the thief who falls for Snow White — in lieu of a prince) is injured by an arrow. Jonathan is brought to Doc, who basically says he is “not that kind of doctor.” Doc says he is more knowledgeable about rocks and the land than he is about the human body and aiding in ailments. Still, he takes on the task and, in an off-screen scene, somehow assists in the healing of Jonathan’s wound. When the other characters ask Doc how he did it, he spouts off some nonsensical words that are somehow meant to offer an explanation as to how he accomplished such a feat. No one seems to understand him, and the scene moves on — Disney simply chose not to address it.

Disney’s Snow White Took Away the Dwarfs’ Victory Over the Evil Queen

One of the most tragic parts of the new Snow White remake is how the dwarfs are side-lined in their own story. The script is unfortunately overloaded with characters, including a band of thieves who are almost completely forgettable. Few of them even get a line of dialogue. And they all look oddly similar to the early leaked set photos of the “seven magical creatures” audiences assumed were replacing the dwarfs in early production. An initial attempt by Disney to remain inclusive and inoffensive to the real-life dwarf demographic. In this newer version, in fact, the word “dwarf” is never used to refer to Snow White’s seven forest-dwelling friends.

So, instead of rewriting the dwarfs (or dwarves) in a different light and casting them with real on-screen actors, like in Mirror Mirror (2012), the dwarfs become CGI beings with meaningless powers. Now, the powers could simply be there to separate them from any association with a real-life community. An understandable move by Disney, but within the context of the story, it does not make a lot of sense. In fact, once Jonathan’s band of thieves show up in the film, they seem to take a more active role in the plot than the seven dwarfs. The script begins to feel as though the thieves were certainly meant to replace the dwarfs, and the dwarfs were added back into the action at a later time. Again, it simply feels like too many characters for one movie to focus on — similar to Asha’s seven companions in Wish (2023).

The Seven Dwarfs Voice Cast

Jeremy Swift as Doc

Tituss Burgess as Bashful

Andrew Barth Feldman as Dopey

Martin Klebba as Grumpy

Jason Kravits as Sneezy

George Salazar as Happy

Andy Grotelueschen as Sleepy

Indeed, when the final face-off happens between the Evil Queen and Snow White, the dwarfs are barely involved. In the original movie, they chase the Evil Queen — now an old hag by her own design — to a cliff’s edge where she falls to her doom. In this version, she transforms back to her true form after thinking she killed Snow White and has one final face-off after the princess is awoken with true love’s kiss (yes, it’s still in there). The thieves and the dwarfs find hidden ways into the castle and, in the pivotal moment when Snow White is about to be murdered by the queen, it’s one of the thieves who come to her rescue with his crossbow. The Evil Queen storms off and when she attempts to destroy her magic mirror out of frustration — is consumed by it. According to the plot summary on Wikipedia, this scene is meant to explain that the mirror is the source of her powers, but that’s more implied than outright stated.

Disney’s Snow White Left a Lot of Unanswered Questions

Image via Disney

It’s not just the magical elements of Snow White that Disney failed to explain or at least clarify enough to be understood. Small, seemingly insignificant plot points were breezed over in certain parts as if viewers would not notice. For example, years after Snow White’s father disappears, and she’s relegated to servitude in the castle by the queen, she approaches her stepmother one day on behalf of her people. The queen looks at the necklace around her neck that her father gave her and comments on it as if seeing it for the first time. It’s incredibly difficult to believe that the queen would never have noticed a piece of jewelry Snow White wears every day that was so important to her departed husband.

Another quick but confusing incident happens in the forest when Snow White distracts the queen’s guards from chasing after Jonathan and his band of thieves. Snow White manages to hang a garment resembling her own from a tree and creates a diversion to allow Jonathan time while he’s being pursued. There is no explanation as to where the extra garment came from or how Snow White managed to rig it from the trees. It is just a thing that happens, and then the movie continues along its merry way.

The truth is that a good portion of audiences did not expect Snow White to be good. But this was Disney’s big chance to prove the viewing public wrong and put out something just as magical as the first Snow White film. Sadly, no amount of script doctoring or re-shoots could apparently save Snow White, and the script brings up more questions than it can answer.