Snow White is the latest in a long-tradition of live-action remakes of Disney properties that includes titles such as 2023's The Little Mermaid, 2019's The Lion King and Aladdin, 2017's Beauty and the Beast, and the Lilo & Stitch and Moana.

Rotten Tomatoes has now aggregated an official Tomatometer score for the live-action remake of Snow White starring Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot. While the score could fluctuate as more reviews are added, at the time of writing, thoughts from 51 different critics have been tabulated to give the movie a firmly Rotten 45% score with an average rating of 5.4 out of 10. Not counting sequels, this the third-worst Tomatometer score for a Disney live-action remake, only ahead of 2022's Pinocchio (27%) and 1996's 101 Dalmatians (39%).

What This Means For Snow White

Its Opening Weekend Could Suffer Even More

While a score of 45% means that nearly half of critics gave the movie a positive score, the average score being 5.4 points to the fact that critics trended much more toward negativity than toward being legitimately mixed. Though Zegler has drawn quite a bit of praise, many have found fault with various aspects of the movie, including its lack of new ideas, its blandness, its scattershot collection of characters, its questionable CGI, and Gal Gadot's performance. This is largely borne out by Rachel Labonte's 5 out of 10 Snow White review for ScreenRant. Read an excerpt below:

At the end of the day, though, this is simply another movie telling one of the most well-known tales in storytelling history, and the next installment in what seems to be a never-ending list of live-action reimaginings. The movie is not deserving of its pre-emptive scorn, yet still falls prey to the familiar live-action remake problems.

This sour critical reception may result in a diminishment of its opening weekend projections, which are already low for the $250 million movie. At the time of writing, the movie's 3-day domestic box office debut is expected to land in a range between $37.5 and $53 million. Unless international markets provide the movie with a huge boost, which doesn't seem necessarily likely given the fact that movies harnessing nostalgia for pre-1980s properties don't always have strong global recognition, it could very well fail to hit its break-even point, which is likely $625 million or more, given its budget level.

Our Take On The Snow White Rotten Tomatoes Score

Audiences Could Still Give It A Chance

Ultimately, it remains to be seen if Snow White garners the same reaction from audiences that it has from critics. Of the 11 Disney live-action remakes and their sequels that have earned Rotten scores, five have received Fresh scores from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. This includes The Lion King, Mufasa: The Lion King, Maleficent, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, and Aladdin, the latter two of which are Verified Hot on the platform. If the new movie follows in their footsteps, it could still find a way to connect with audiences.

Snow White's potential is underscored by the fact that, of the 11 Disney live-action remakes that have received Fresh scores on the platform, only two additional titles from that roster are Verified Hot: 2023's The Little Mermaid (67% from critics and 94% from audiences) and 2021's Cruella (75% from critics and 97% from audiences).

The split between audiences and critics is further emphasized by the fact that four of those Fresh titles have Rotten audience scores, namely 1994's Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book (80% from critics and 56% from audiences), 2020's Mulan (71% from critics and 46% from audiences), 2019's Lady and the Tramp (67% from critics and 49% from audiences), and 2023's Peter Pan & Wendy (65% from critics and 11% from audiences).

Snow White's Controversies Could Sink The Movie Further

It Has Been A Lightning Rod From The Beginning

This critical reception adds another demerit to the movie after a seemingly endless rush of Snow White controversies that have occurred in the lead-up to its release, which was delayed amid the 2023 Screen Actors Guild strike and means that there have been multiple years for issues to crop up. These issues, some of which have been posed by well-meaning individuals, and some of which come from a place of bigotry, have been raised since before production on the movie even began. This includes certain groups protesting the fact that a Latinx actor was cast in the title role.

[Each issue has probably] soured a sector of the audience against the project...

These controversies also include backlash against the property's representation of dwarfism, Zegler's criticism of the original movie in which she called the prince "a guy who literally stalks her," the two leads' opposing views on the Israel-Palestine conflict, and more. Whatever the source of any individual Snow White controversy, it seems probable that each one has soured a sector of the audience against the project, so the Rotten Tomatoes audience score improving on the critic score is not necessarily a guarantee.

Source: Rotten Tomatoes