LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
Watching films is a thing of the past. Now we just post angrily about them and hope no-one is around to point out that we don’t know what we’re talking about.
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Live-Action ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’
- Thread starter NateD1226
- Start date
Chi84
Premium Member
Have you seen the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid?
GimpYancIent
Well-Known Member
Ehhhhh, maybe it's better Zegler not throw anymore ill-advised fuel on the fire. Sometimes silence is a good defense itself.
Ghost93
Well-Known Member
What homosexual romances? In Strange World a main character has a crush on a guy who is featured in one short scene at the beginning of the movie and is featured in a montage at the end of the movie. They do not hold hands or kiss, like the straight couple featured in the movie. In Lightyear, a supporting lesbian character is seen — in the middle of a montage showing the passage of time — kissing a spouse that has no lines and is not seen anywhere else in the movie.
Disney has never focused on a gay "romance," and suggesting that straight romances have been pushed aside in favor of gay ones is laughable.
doctornick
Well-Known Member
BTW in the list another example of romance is Felix and Calhoun in Wreck-It Ralph. Male and female, met during the film - it’s even a “love at first sight” thing and even get married.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
They fail the human requirement.
ParkPeeker
Well-Known Member
Good, maybe he’ll actually have screen time and they’ll have a “romance” that’s actually developed.
One thing that does get to me though is the potential loss of roles for 6 other little people, even though I understand the change especially after Peter Dinklage’s comments. Hopefully they have at least 6 other different roles filled by little people to balance out that loss in opportunity.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
They weren't really "casual interviews" though. With the exception of her "18 hours in a dress" comment last month, all of the now infamous statements from Miss Zegler were made in a tightly controlled and highly scripted format at a major corporate studio event; D23 Expo.
The videos aren't from fans who happened to catch Rachel Zegler at the gym and ask her about her movie. She and Gal Gadot were heavily scheduled and managed at that huge studio event, prepared with soundbites and Talking Points days in advance, and knew why they had been driven to the Anaheim Convention Center that day; to do standard PR work for their upcoming mega-budget Disney movie.
The most lengthy interview with Rachel Zegler that day was the sit-down they had with Entertainment Weekly.
The rest of the soundbites from that day were found along the traditional media format known as the "Step And Repeat" wall, often a red carpet type path into an awards show. But at D23 Expo it was a media lineup along a Step & Repeat wall after the big studio presentation, where the Disney actors/actresses would be interviewed with softballs from Variety, Extra, Entertainment Tonight, Hollywood Reporter, etc. to build hype for their movie.
This wasn't just one offhand comment from an actress stopped randomly on the street. This was a series of comments made all in one day by an actress who was being paid by her employer to be at a huge corporate event, who was prepped beforehand to have witty and faux-insightful things to say to the press, and where the media was specifically given access to these actresses in a symbiotic relationship of PR and smarmy softball interviews.
There's over a dozen of these types of interviews from various media outlets with Rachel along the Step & Repeat wall...
ParkPeeker
Well-Known Member
Hold on, isn't she doing PR work for the UPCOMING film, by saying it's not like the outdated original, but a brand new (better) version, one that is re written to update the outdated roles and views of the original??
Also people gravitate on the same 3 videos. A couple of days I ago I was curious why it was such a big deal so I watched a handful of interview videos from the same D23 day. And unlike many of the comments here that suggest she is ungrateful about the opportunity, in most of the interviews, she can't stop talking about how grateful she is, and how big this is for her, and how she worked with the best people, and how the crew was all amazing.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
It’s also been repeatedly ignored that in, all those interviews, Gadot is saying the same sorts of things as Zegler regarding how the film is updating the themes and characters of the original.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Exactly. But that line of messaging is a really tough needle to thread. You have to get it right. Snow White is known as the movie that made Walt Disney, and created an American cultural powerhouse that then reigned supreme for 80 years.
You really shouldn't be claiming Walt Disney's masterpiece is "outdated", and needs to be redone into a "better" version by smart young things over Silver Lake brunches.
You may certainly make that movie, that's Disney's prerogative and right. But that doesn't mean everyone has to like it.
What created this viral scandal I think, at the same D23 Expo where other actresses like Halle Bailey and Gal Gadot were delivering similar studio messaging, was the smirky-jokey "We're all so enlightened and better than our predecessors" attitude of Rachel Zegler.
Her delivery and tone on that very tricky message came off looking and sounding far too flippant and smug.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
We were typing/posting at the same time on that comment, but I believe several folks here have mentioned Ms. Gadot in this conversation. Some have even postulated that Gadot seemed to be shepherding Rachel Zegler into better answers that didn't sound so flippant.
I found the compare/contrast with Halley Bailey's interviews along that exact same Step & Repeat wall at D23 Expo to be more relevant though. Somehow, Bailey delivers nearly the same type of studio messaging on her Princess remake that Zegler did. But Miss Bailey comes off being far more gracious to the original source material, and thus far more likable.
And Miss Bailey doesn't appear to have a smug bone in her body. Rachel Zegler though... oozes smugness and smirkiness.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Speaking of graciousness, if I were to try and summon up some of Halle Bailey's grace on this issue...
I will say that the messaging and Talking Points given to these actresses at this media event were really tough to deliver while still being respectful of the original works. It's not easy to explain at a Disney fan event why you need to remake and rethink a Walt Disney masterpiece. I do not envy them trying to strike that delicate balance. The studio put them in a rather precarious position, and the studio should have polished and fine tuned that messaging for them better than they did.
I will say that the messaging and Talking Points given to these actresses at this media event were really tough to deliver while still being respectful of the original works. It's not easy to explain at a Disney fan event why you need to remake and rethink a Walt Disney masterpiece. I do not envy them trying to strike that delicate balance. The studio put them in a rather precarious position, and the studio should have polished and fine tuned that messaging for them better than they did.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
Yet the fact that Gadot was the first one to declare, loudly and with pride, “She’s not gonna be saved by the prince!” entirely militates against that theory.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
Yes, both actresses were delivering their studio approved messaging at all of those formal media interviews.
So, knowing that, that new plot point probably was going to be a problem with audiences eventually in 2024. But just like these viral things do, you can't control them. These viral stories are created by random individuals with nothing more than an iPhone and a couple of Social Media accounts. It's entirely decentralized, amateur, and uncontrollable by big companies like Disney.
The D23 interviews were a year old and forgotten. The movie is still six months away. No one should have been talking about Snow White in August, 2023. But then someone from the Snow White movie set leaked that now-infamous photo of The Seven Portland Hipsters and it went viral, then the follow up punch of finding all of Rachel Zegler's sound bites on this movie from D23 Expo.
A perfect viral storm.
In an age where messy viral sensations often make more news than tightly scripted corporate messaging.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
On the contrary, this "controversy" has been very well managed indeed. I just hope the film can rise above it all and be judged on its own strengths (as well as weaknesses). To make this about Zegler's perceived lack of graciousness is, frankly, absurd.
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TP2000
Well-Known Member
Managed by who? Who manages something that goes legitimately viral on Social Media?
This was a viral thing. It wasn't created by Disney's studio competition down Riverside Drive, it wasn't scooped by the Hollywood media (who were very compliant in all their D23 Expo coverage that went largely unnoticed a year ago).
It went viral. Tracking how that works with a few hundred million people on Social Media is impossible. Because it's viral.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
This discussion has been had before, and I see no sense in rehashing it.
You’re right about one thing, though. The “controversy” has by now gone viral and is part of mainstream discourse. It’s for this reason that I feel the film’s chances have been irreparably hurt and that box-office failure is all but inevitable now. No doubt that’ll make some here very happy.
TP2000
Well-Known Member
If you can unlock the mystery of how something goes viral, good or bad, you would become a Billionaire offering up your services to every big company in the Free World.
Disney tried to go viral a few times in the late 2010's, and like all big companies that tried, they failed miserably. Because "Viral" is not controlled by anyone or any company, it is controlled by hundreds of millions of people acting independently and responding instinctively to what they see or hear on Social Media. It can backfire as easily as it succeeds.
And for every one viral sensation, there's probably 1,000 that never took off or got noticed.
Disney's funniest "Lame Corporate Viral Attempt" was the Avengers manhole cover they put in the planter next to Mission: Breakout at DCA in 2017. The day after they tried to create a faux hazmat situation around the manhole cover at the Premiere Party for the new ride the night before. No one cared. It all looked too slick and professionally produced. Instinctively, it felt forced and Corporate. So it was entirely ignored by the fans who were supposed to care. It did not go viral.
There's the silver lining. And the proof that this viralness is not controlled by anyone really. All of this happened six months before the movie came out. Disney has plenty of time to fix it; regroup, rebrand, relaunch, with new messaging.
If this was truly controlled by some organization that wanted to do harm to Disney movies, they would have waited until next March to get this viral news cycle going. The movie is releasing on March 22nd, 2024. If this had been organized or managed by anyone in August 2023 to damage Disney on purpose, they're idiots.
They should have waited until Tuesday, March 5th to start it. But it's viral, so no one is in charge of it.
