We are at a creative age in which bad guys are usually misunderstood. The Cash success of Universal Pictures’ adaptation of “Wicked” Has only consolidated the obvious: the bad guys we know that they are not really so bad when we get to know them. The evil witch of the West, one of the most cult villains in the history of the cinema, has been thoroughly and pleasantly revised in Elphaba, an intelligent and moral young woman who rebels against a fraudster who calls herself as a magician and demonizes her to his people to ensure that they remain loyal to him.
But “Wicked” is far from the only modern pop culture that tries to rethink the epitome of villains. Perhaps it is fitting that some of the recent examples come from the Walt Disney company that for the first time established themselves as a place, on which classic stories can be told and retired on the big screen. Films such as “Maleficent” and “Cruella” are not only named after unforgettable villains. They also try to get the audience to rethink characters, curse the babies into a sleeping death and try to murder dogs to make a fabulous fur coat.
In fact, Disney’s feature film began with a princess named Snow White, like the entire company, how Walt Disney liked to say it started with a princess named Snow White. In the animated feature of 1937 “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, The heroine of the same name is terrorized directly from the goal by an evil queen who is so terrifying and evil that she doesn’t even have the pleasure of having her own name. If her title was not sufficient within a few minutes after the early days of the film, the evil Queen of Schneewittchen has not only banished as a servant, but is also overwhelmed by jealousy that she is no longer the fairest in the country that she shows a hunter to kill Snow White.
When Disney announced that it had rebuilt “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” as a live action/CGI film with the title “Simply White”, it was easy to ask whether the new interpretation of the evil queen would be softer, friendly or only more complex. Now that the film has arrived (You can see yourself here /Films review), It is good and bad news. The good news? This evil queen, as shown by Gal Gadot, is as bad as before. The bad news? Gadot’s performance is absolutely terrible.
Snow White with careful tries not to make the evil queen likeable
In order to talk about why Gadot’s performance fails so completely, it is important to make it clear what she tries and how this attempt can be successful without actually working. As mentioned above, this bad queen does not receive any additional dimension or depth in the “Snow White” script that Erin Cressida Wilson is attributed. To be honest, that’s a good thing. Among the annals of Disney’s guys, the evil queen may not be the worst, said everything. (Cruella de Vil also tried to murder 100 dogs to make a coat. That could be a little more terrible, no?) But it is also a decisive factor in the best way. As shown in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and director Marc Webbs Remake, the evil queen is as beautiful as vain – someone who is obsessed with the fact that she has a magical mirror whose only purpose is to confirm that she is the most beautiful woman in her kingdom.
“Snow White” expands the story from the animated original in general, but still only flooded the surface of what is going on with the evil queen. From this new film we learn that she arrived in the nameless kingdom after his king lost his queen through an illness and that she enchanted him to fall in love with her. Of course, as soon as that happens, the true colors of the woman appear; She sends the king into his death so that she can control the country and convinces its residents to put down their agricultural tools in favor of the weapons of a soldier. But although we see new evidence of the queen’s magic, there are only as many details (most of which is visually shown instead of being explained by dialogue or narrative). And the broad lines of what the evil queen does with Snow White stay in the remake of the same as in the original film: she sends a hunter to kill our heroine, and gets angry when she realizes that the hunter lets her go and then turns into an old woman to poison snow white with an enchanted apple.
Gadot’s performance is deliberately one -dimensional, but it still fails
On paper, the way the evil queen is brought to life in the live action “Snow White” makes sense and feels loyal to the spirit of the animated original. It is true that there are many differences in this new film, but these changes (some of which are more sensible than others) should mainly ensure that Snow White are in need instead of a helpless virgin. The most remarkable and obvious change for the evil queen this time is that she gets her own song entitled “All is fair”. After the hunter sang after noticing that he did not kill Snow White as ordered, the evil queen should scatter Snarky, Böser extravagance in the sequence, full of female dancers who endeavor around her, how she reminds the hunter that she is responsible, everything she says, and therefore, fair. (The political under text of this film is not particularly subtle.)
It is not only that “Snow White” accidentally in the cinemas almost five years until the day of the time of the time of Gal Gadot and some of their celebrity friends via an Instagram video (a Mawkischer Clip that was immediately mocked by the world) arrives in cinemas to the cinemas. It is the case that, although gadot swings with their performance both within and outside of their large musical number according to the fences, they are awkward and unclear. The choreography in the “All is Fair” scene is just as striking as stilted, just one or two steps from someone who makes a robot set of dance movements in the 1980s while sang how bad they are.
Now Disney has a long history of extravagant animated villains, especially in modern times (Think of Ursula in “The Little Mermaid” Or scar in “The Lion King”). Unfortunately, many of these villains have been unsuccessfully reinvented since then in the studio’s live action remakes. It is just as much to do with the fact that the actors in question do not really embody these characters as with our expectations of who should be these antagonists, and, more often because the screenplays of these films fail their actors as spectacularly. Although Wilson’s script doesn’t just sparkle, the problem is primarily gadot. Where she feels slimy and evil, she instead makes a failed camp attempt and stumbles over dialogly lines that should make it clear how hideous the queen is.
Gadot looks the part of the evil queen, but cannot bring the character to life
Just as the evil queen seems to be terrible and malignant in the script “Snow White”, the Casting Gal Gadot of Disney theoretically makes sense. She is a well-known actress who is not too far away to bring Wonder Woman, one of the most famous comic superheroes of all time. (And although the “Wonder Woman” feels as if it had come before five lives, Gadot is undoubtedly excellent in this first film.) But it is also not difficult to take other actors into account at the age of 40 – Gadot meets this milestone at the end of April – and imagine it in the unmistakable dress of the evil queen.
What could “Snow White” have looked like with exactly the same script and the same music if Rachel Zegler was forced as Snow White to face Scarlett Johansson as the evil queen? Or Aubrey Plaza? Or Keira Knightley? All of these actors, apart from similarly shining and previously worked with the Walt Disney Company, would have felt reasonably intimidating as the villain of the film and possibly brought sequences such as the “All is Fair” figure to live with verve and energy. (Incidentally, it is worth noting that the excessive word -rich texts of “all is fair” do no favor. She falls flat in this scene, but the song itself is not a winner either.)
Every remake of a Disney classic stands in front of a huge mountain of a creative challenge, especially one that arrives after a long series of other frustrating examples. Many of the other recent Disney remakes have either tried to easily soften their evil – think about how Luke Evans as Gaston in The 2017 “Beauty and the Beast” Is only a touch of less women hostile and disgusting than the animated version – or simply cannot help but fiddling with her representation. Introduce the flat pictures and the non -inspired vocal performance from the otherwise revised Chiwetel EjioFor as a scar in Jon Favreaus “Lion King” Remake or Melissa McCarthy as Ursula in “The Little Mermaid” or Marwin Kenzari as Jafar in “The Little Mermaid” or Marwin Kenzari as Jafar. The 2019 version of “Aladdin”, And so on and so on.
Nevertheless, even these performances from one reason or another were unforgettable. Gal Gadot as the evil queen in “Schneewittchen”, on the other hand, is awkward and even flinch to watch her. It is the type of performance that lives in people’s memories for the wrong reasons.
“Snow White” is currently playing in cinemas.
