There are still a few people left that represent the old guard of the Walt Disney Company that most of America grew up to adore.
David Hand, 91, father – who has the same name – was the director of the original Snow White and he is not happy with what he’s seen and heard about the upcoming live-action version.
Hand was commenting on the statements that have gone viral from actress Rachel Zegler who is playing Snow White in the upcoming remake. He’s furious over the 22-year-old comments trashing the original movie.
“I just mean that it’s no longer 1937,” Zegler said. “We absolutely wrote a ‘Snow White’ that … she’s not going to be saved by the prince, and she’s not going to be dreaming about true love; she’s going to be dreaming about becoming the leader she knows she can be and that her late father told her that she could be if she was fearless, fair, brave and true.”
Zegler called the prince a “stalker” and claimed he was “weird.”
“We have a different approach to what I’m sure a lot of people will assume is a love story just because we cast a guy in the movie,” she said. “It’s really not about the love story at all, which is really, really wonderful.”
She also joked that all the scenes with the Prince could be cut.
The actress even told Entertainment weekly that she only watched the original movie once.
“I think I watched it once and never picked it up again. I’m being so serious,” Zegler said.
Hand said that Zegler’s comments would have his father and Walt Disney “rolling over in their grave” and accused the current company for having no respect for the classics.
The son of the former Snow White director rebuked what he’s learned of the remake calling it “insulting.”
It’s not just conservatives and Hand that are upset with Zegler.
The very progressive outlet, Slate, is reporting that “people of seemingly all kinds of political and racial demographics now appear to have a bone to pick” with Zegler.
The writer for Slate agreed with Zegler that women are more than objects but that “her detractors are right in that women can be smart and capable but also want to fall in love.”
What’s also irked people is that the movie is almost 90 years old and a classic for so many reasons. It was an artistic masterpiece at the time, and it retold a famous historical fable from 1812 that used western European mythical creatures.
The film was declared a “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” piece of art by the United States Library of Congress being selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
