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One of the cheekier moments in Disney’s new live-action Snow White remake is a romantic banter song called “Princess Problems.” It’s a nod to the champagne woes of royalty that also inadvertently doubles as a meta-co*mentary on how Disney views its famed line-up of female heroines. Though Disney’s animated princesses are in many ways the lifeblood of the co*pany’s legacy, they’re also sometimes treated like an albatross around its neck. Each live-action remake co*es with a handwringing press tour about how this adaptation will bring a “modern edge” for a heroine who’s “not going to be saved by the prince.”

The funny thing is that Snow White is one of only three Disney princesses who actually fit the passive, “saved by a prince” stereotype (the others are 1950’s Cinderella and 1959’s Sleeping Beauty). For the past four decades, Disney and its kids’ movie co*petitors have been actively subverting princess stereotypes. First came a wave of outspoken, rebellious heroines like Ariel, Belle, and Jasmine. Then came the fighters like Mulan, Merida, and Fiona from Shrek (“All the princesses know kung-fu now,” Sophia McDougall sighed in her seismic essay on strong female characters.) There was a late-2010s trend of making all the heroines inventors and scientists, which reached its nadir when the live-action Beauty And The Beast remake randomly had Belle invent…a washing machine (#feminism). Now, Disney has settled on leadership as the cause célèbre for its royal heroines. 

At first, it was an inspired trend. For decades, Disney used its heroines’ princess status as little more than an excuse for fancy palaces, pretty gowns, and interpersonal struggles with overprotective parents. But given that the ostensible point of royalty is to rule, there was a thrill to watching Disney realize it could mine the weight of that responsibility as story fodder for its female characters in movies like Moana, Frozen II, and the live-action Aladdin remake. 

Every trend burns out at some point, however, and we have reached that ignominious end with Snow White—a film that tries to make the case for empathetic female power and inadvertently beco*es pro-monarchy propaganda instead. Snow White ends with Rachel Zegler’s Snow White leading a populist revolution to overthrow a tyrannical, all-powerful queen, only to install herself as an all-powerful queen instead. That’s a happy ending that requires just as much cognitive dissonance as any “marry a man you just met” closer. 

If you squint, you can see what the script by Erin Cressida Wilson is trying to do. A brief opening prologue establishes Snow White’s parents as benevolent rulers who inspired a fair, free, generous spirit among their people and their daughter. But Snow White’s mom died young, Gal Gadot’s Evil Queen wormed her way into the family, and the king disappeared. As the Evil Queen establishes a jewel-centric fascist regime and demotes her stepdaughter to servitude, Snow White is left troubled by how bad things have gotten, but unsure how to fix them. In the original 1937 film, she sings “I’m Wishing” about her true love co*ing to rescue her. In this new version, she sings “Waiting On A Wish” about the more abstract idea of wishing things were better but feeling powerless to change them herself. (“Can I somehow, some way / Learn to be my father’s daughter? … Someone who just might be brave / Someone no one needs to save.”) 

While the animated Snow White is naturally demure, this modern version reflects the way young women are taught to suppress their power or silence their voices for the sake of being seen as “good,” something her roguish love interest Jonathan (Andrew Burnap) helps snap her out of. Only, where past Snow White adaptations like Mirror Mirror and Snow White And The Huntsman had their Snows White beco*e sword-wielding badasses (again, all the princesses know kung fu), Wilson’s script specifically wants to celebrate the aspects of strong leadership that are unfairly devalued because they’re associated with femininity—like listening, collaboration, and empathy.

The film is filled with moments that showcase Snow White’s more velvet-glove approach to leadership. She notices Dopey is being teased and helps him find the confidence to advocate for himself. She encourages Jonathan to expand his “steal from the rich” philosophy to include the “give to the poor” part too. Most pointedly, in her final confrontation with the Queen she refuses to pick up a dagger and instead makes a personalized plea to inspire the guards to turn against their authoritarian oppressor—a climax that would pack a bigger emotional punch if it weren’t exactly the same way Jasmine defeats Jafar in the live-action Aladdin. (Apparently a Disney princess’ ultimate power is making emotional appeals to armed men.) 

The idea is clearly to modernize Snow White without losing the demure softness that defined Disney’s earliest princesses. On paper, one can understand and even appreciate what the film is trying to do by uplifting kindness and empathy as their own form of strength and resilience—even if it’s a little weird that almost all of Snow White’s morality is rooted in her dad despite being raised by both parents. (Her mom’s big contribution was teaching her to remember people’s names; networking for the win.) But in practice, it’s kind of hilarious to see Disney flip from “true love will save you” to “being born with royal blood is your greatest strength,” as if that’s a more relatable message.

In fact, there’s a weirdly conservative streak to Snow White’s endpoint, especially co*pared to Disney’s other recent takes on female leadership, which at least had some element of political revolution at play. Moana convinces her fearful father to open up their long-isolated island nation. Elsa abdicates the throne because she realizes Anna is a better leader for Arendelle. Jasmine convinces her father to change the law so that she, not her husband, will beco*e sultan. Snow White, however, hinges its socialist uprising on a return to the status quo; literally restoring a birthright monarch over an outsider who married into the family. Snow White doesn’t even have her own ideas about how to make the kingdom better. She’s just returning things to exactly how they were under her parents’ rule—which is a risky gambit considering all it took was a royal death and one bad marriage to send their kingdom into kleptocratic fascism. Maybe hereditary monarchy isn’t the best political system in the world after all! 

Obviously, kids are just supposed to co*e away from this story feeling generally inspired to stand up for what’s right and treat other people with kindness. And, sure, a scene where Snow White establishes a parliamentary government probably would’ve been more than this 109-minute, CGI-dwarf extravaganza could handle. But as is, there’s something about the film’s heavy-handed messaging that feels both overthought and underdeveloped. 

Perhaps it would’ve been more interesting to have Snow White start with her classic “Some Day My Prince Will co*e” outlook and only slowly co*e to realize she can be her own hero instead. As is, she’s so self-aware of her potential from the start (“I close my eyes and see / The girl I’m meant to be”) that there’s not really anywhere for her arc to go. It turns out “waiting” isn’t the most interesting through line to hang a movie on.

Snow White is so panicked about how to deliver a progressive yet inoffensive message that it forgets to give its heroine an actual personality along the way too. It’s not quite as bad as the word salad that was Wish, which also had muddled political revolution on the brain. But despite Zegler’s considerable charisma, it’s hard to make a character co*e alive when nearly every line is an earnest moral lesson about how to be a good person. This version of Snow White can’t just like making pies, she has to bake pies for her people because those pies represent the values of hope and charity her parents instilled in her. 

The 1930s Snow White at least got to laugh at herself and passive aggressively boss the dwarves around. This 2025 take on Snow White is a role model first and a character second, a balance that’s often expected of these live-action Disney princesses but seldom of their male counterparts like Spider-Man or Luke Skywalker. Snow White ends the movie as a queen, but I’d take distinctive characterization over political strength any day. The true revolution would be letting live-action Disney princesses be fun again.