Once upon a time, Walt Disney’s adaptations of fairy tales were known for being more upbeat and less dark than the source materials. In Disney’s Cinderella, the stepsisters didn’t slice off their own toes and flesh from their heels trying to fit into the Glass Slipper. Disney’s Ariel didn’t watch the prince marry another, then fall into despair and dissolve into spindrift.

In recent years, Disney content has been far less charming to the public or enriching for investors. Instead, Disney executives and performers provoke attention rooted in shock and disappointment, a practice known as “fan baiting.” As soon as “re-imaginings” are released that diminish or degrade beloved characters and reduce their stories to illogical, disconnected fragments, there are already social media posts calling fans irrelevant losers, and saying “this story isn’t for you.” The expected contemporary audience of newer, better fans, eager to see progressive ideology crammed into period costumes, continues to be undetectable via ticket sales or streaming downloads.

The latest installment in Disney’s ongoing destruction of beloved stories targets the animated feature that started the Disney empire, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. The changes are so extensive even the title is almost certain to change. The costumes are so embarrassingly bad, Disney originally denied the first images leaked from the set were actually performers from the production.

Upon getting the role (before any hypothetical supremacist extremist had time to note that the character’s name was her skin color), Rachel Zegler’s first tweet said she wouldn’t be bleaching her Latina skin.

Video clips featuring the female leads, Rachel and Gal Gadot, ooze disdain for previous Snow White animation and Disneyland rides (while appearing to be oblivious about other, earlier iterations). Rachel does most of the talking, with the much taller Gal gazing down approvingly, occasionally adding to Rachel’s points.

Rachel disdains the 1937 Snow White being in love with a guy who “literally” stalks her, then makes faces while saying, “weird, weird.” Up-to-Date Snow White isn’t dreaming of true love, doesn’t need a prince to rescue her, and seeks to find her true self. Rachel’s rapid-fire description of her Snow White is someone who is “fearless, fair, brave and true,” and whose dream is not love, but to be the leader her father told her she could be.

If there’s a princess who doesn’t need true love, is there a place for a prince?

Prince Florian is replaced with some rando named Jonathon. Rachel teases that whether the film will include any scenes of romance, or any of Jonathon’s scenes, won’t be revealed until it’s released. On set, Rachel reportedly lobbied for the scripted romance to be watered down, and to cut the number of scenes she had to do with Jonathon.

Rachel doesn’t mention Snow White experiencing fear and danger, or cooking and cleaning for the Dwarves who provided her shelter and safety. Replacing those generous and hard-working men, sharing a common physical trait and a lifelong bond, this production airdrops in seven “magical creatures.” The one little person and six individuals of various sizes, shapes, and identities, have as little in common as humanly possible, except for attire from the bottom of the Goodwill bins. Rather than a personality, each has a magic power. These aren’t characters, they’re gimmicks meant to be read as individuals. Instead of working as miners, the seven diversity-hires, and non-prince Jonathon, are bandits, who steal from the Evil Queen. This version’s Snow White is a leader -- of outlaws. I doubt she, or anyone else, is tidying up their bandit hideout.

Even the phrase that sparks the central conflict of the story, “the fairest of them all” is twisted into an entirely different meaning. The fairest woman is not the one who has the greatest beauty, but the woman whose leadership of others is the most just. The Evil Queen is indifferent to the fading of her own beauty as Snow White’s blossoms. The Queen’s jealous rage is triggered by the superior leadership skills of Snow White, who is young, untrained and inexperienced.

So, there’s no Dwarves, no Prince, no beauty -- what’s left?

Does anyone expect the guy-who-isn’t-a-prince to kiss the princess in a moment of grief and loss? Clearly, verbal consent cannot be extracted when a woman is so deeply unconscious she appears dead. I doubt True Love’s Kiss will have any place in this disjointed delusion.

The creatives behind this box office boondoggle reveal their shallow grasp of the material in the context of magic. What they call magical is a set of cardboard cyphers, assigned one special power each. They’re more like the denizens of discount comic book superheroes than enchanted fairy tale beings. Even if the team fabricating this monstrosity include magical elements from older tellings -- the talking mirror, the Queen’s peddler disguise, poison that only appears to kill -- they surely miss the greatest magic of all, love of a young man and a young woman, awakened in a kiss.

At what point does an update become a completely different thing?

Once upon a time, there was an up-and-coming Girl Boss named Snow Why. She experienced conflict within the home because her Evil Stepmother craved control over others and resisted the idea that Snow Why could be an effective leader. Snow Why needed no wisdom from other people or earlier times, just the freedom to find her true power within herself, and her destiny as a leader. She was a girl hero, because heroine is an old word, and old words are oppressive. Because of lived experienced of trauma within the home, she became a gang leader. Snow Why didn’t dream of true love and didn’t need a prince to save her. A soy-boy might be permitted to enter her orbit, as long as he was useful to her. She would vanquish her evil Stepmother on her own terms.

And she lived wokely ever after.

Image: Disney