The Horrifying Dwarfs in Snow White Are a Cautionary Tale

To say that Disney’s live-action remake of Snow White has faced some backlash is more than just an understatement — at this point, the controversy surrounding the project has swallowed the movie itself. The swirling dramas cut across the political spectrum, from the MAGA rejection of Rachel Zegler’s anti-Trump comments and Latina identity to the leftist rebuke of Gal Gadot’s staunch Zionism and past IDF service. Disney’s decision to lock both stars in a tower, or at least keep them from speaking to red-carpet press, has become a story unto itself. (The studio denies claims that the premiere event was reconfigured to prevent potentially damaging interviews.) As is so often the case, the attempt to stave off controversy has only created new problems.

For a more glaring example, one need only look at the film’s dwarfs — though dropped from the title, in contrast to the 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, all seven are still here: Doc, Bashful, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Sneezy, and Dopey. But seeing them onscreen in all their garish glory, even lifelong fans of the original movie will find themselves wishing the dwarfs had been excised from the story entirely. Unlike Snow White and the Evil Queen, they’ve been fully animated into CGI monstrosities.

These dwarfs do not resemble humans of any size. Their plasticky skin has an artificial sheen that makes them look like they’d crack if they fell over. At best, they recall garden gnomes enchanted to life by a particularly sadistic witch. With wildly exaggerated features and heads that take up a full third of their bodies, the dwarfs look disproportionate to themselves and to the actors around them. Cruelest of all is the reimagining of sweet Dopey — now a dead ringer for Mad magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman — who is just lifelike enough to take up permanent residence in the uncanny valley.

How did we get here? Although Disney will not acknowledge that these dwarfs were focus-grouped into existence, it’s hard not to see the yearslong controversy surrounding them as key to understanding the deeply upsetting finished product. Pushback on the use of the dwarf characters in the film began in 2022, when Peter Dinklage made an appearance on WTF With Marc Maron and said, “​​You’re progressive in one way,” referring to the casting of Zegler, “but then you’re still making that fucking backward story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together?” Disney countered with a carefully vetted statement. “To avoid reinforcing stereotypes from the original animated film, we are taking a different approach with these seven characters and have been consulting with members of the dwarfism community,” the studio assured.

Problem solved! Except the eventual choice to fully animate the characters and cast them with non-dwarf actors — save for one, Grumpy, voiced by Martin Klebba — created a different problem. As a number of actors with dwarfism pointed out, they had now been deprived of potential roles. “It’s not helping our community; it’s taking jobs away from our community that are very few and far between as it is,” actor Dylan Postl told DailyMail.com, proceeding to blame the decision on — you guessed it — our “woke nation.” Others interviewed used less loaded terminology, but came to the same conclusion. “It’s a missed opportunity to make a movie with seven little people where they actually have intended characters,” actor Katrina Kemp offered.

You can see Disney’s intention here, whether you consider it to be pure of heart (being inclusive and fair-minded for moral reasons) or cynical (avoiding as many movie-damaging headlines and potential boycotts as possible). The CGI dwarfs do not resemble real people with dwarfism enough to stir up too many bad feelings, and keeping the voice actors hidden takes the performers’ actual heights out of the conversation. Yes, the end results are abominations, but there’s at least a lot less to get worked up about.

The problem is that fears of getting yelled at on social media lead to the kind of mealymouthed compromise no one wants. Take Dopey, whose bumbling, silent rendition in the 1937 film has led to retrospective diagnoses of a developmental condition. Perhaps to preemptively stifle cries of ableism, the character in the 2025 Snow White doesn’t speak — not because he can’t but because he’s shy, which, in addition to pulling focus from Bashful, culminates in the hacky moment where he finds his voice, and the final reveal that he’s been narrating Snow White’s story from the beginning. Was Dopey enough of an issue to require this kind of reinvention? No one will be offended, but no one asked for this, either.

There is, of course, a benefit to considering our current values when reinterpreting classics from a less evolved era. But the new seven dwarfs aren’t an honest attempt at reckoning with a problematic past — they’re what happens when a studio puts playing it safe above all other considerations. Apart from being eyesores, they actively make Snow White worse. Surely, there were other options, whether removing the dwarf characters entirely, casting actors of varying statures, or simply casting little people actors in other roles. The film does feature George Appleby, an actor with dwarfism, as the bandit Quigg, with his height never remarked on — there’s no reason why Snow White should have to limit dwarf actors to playing the seven dwarfs.

Each of these potential solutions would surely have upset some people, just as animating the dwarfs did, but committing to the choice that’s best for the movie is always a better option than playing defense. If there’s a sense (and perhaps a fair one) that this film was doomed from the start, why not work to make something creatively defensible? Instead, we’re left with Disney’s answer to centrism, a live-action adaptation of one of its most classic films that can be described, at best, as inoffensive. In its repeated attempts to make everyone happy, the studio has delivered a Snow White destined to please no one.