Why the Legacy of 'Snow White' Endures

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Our IMAX screen shifts into family mode this week with the opening of the live-action musical Snow White. Meanwhile, we’ve got plenty of grownup escapism carrying over from last week, with Novocaine and Black Bag continuing their runs. As a special bonus, our concession offerings now include wine, beer, and more.

Long before the era of sequels and spinoffs, myths and fairy tales demanded new ways to be told. Nobody in Hollywood history understood this better than Walt Disney. With Snow White back on the big screen, it’s worth considering Disney’s impact on the tradition of bringing old stories to young audiences, and how it reverberates today.

Over the course of a historic career that reshaped the entertainment industry, the groundbreaking animator-turned-studio mogul rejuvenated well-trod tales ranging from Pinocchio to Robin Hood. These achievements followed the most significant turning point in Disney’s career, 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first-ever animated feature film.

The live-action musical Snow White, the new release from the studio Disney founded, transforms that same vision into a live-action spectacle with 21st century wizardry. Given his penchant for technical achievements, Disney would likely approve of that feat.

By the time he launched into production on Snow White, Disney’s own legacy was secured, as he had already gifted the world with Mickey Mouse nearly a decade earlier in the short film Steamboat Willie. Rather than resting on his laurels, Disney pressed his team to push past the boundaries of the animated medium.

Snow White provided a reasonable template for this goal: As a teenager, Disney marveled at an earlier film adaptation, a silent 1916 version that ran just over an hour. The material was simple enough for Disney to impose his own vision onto it while starting from a base of familiarity.

In the era of computer-generated graphics, it’s easy to forget how much pure labor was involved in the animation process, as scores of artists drew frame after frame by hand. With Snow White pushing that tireless production team to create a longer product than ever before, the movie’s budget ballooned to roughly six times its original $250,000 (from around $5.5 million to $33 million in today’s dollars). The resulting commercial success, which was rereleased in theaters many times in subsequent years, immediately established the dominance of the feature-length animation industry.

While the Disney brand may seem ubiquitous now, the artist behind the logo brought a disruptive, experimental energy to the young film industry. Disney fought to reinvent the medium of motion pictures with a blend of creativity and technological innovation that set the bar for the entire animation field. In Robert Sklar’s wonderful book Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of the Movies, the critic makes the case that Disney had more in common with the likes of early cinema magician Georges Méliès (A Trip to the Moon, 1902) and other seminal film creatives than any traditional film producer.

“Disney and his fellow animators were heirs to Méliès, trick photography, Charlie Chaplin's pre-World War I comedy shorts and the tradition of magical metamorphoses in the movies,” Sklar writes. “They could draw worlds different from any experienced world, lead audiences into uncharted realms as far as imagination or daring could carry them. Blank pages gave them a chance to reinvent the world.”

Such world-building efforts remain at the core of Hollywood ambition, from the universes of Star Wars to those of Marvel, both of which were ingested by Disney long ago. Disney’s work has endured as a powerful force in entertainment by telling and retelling some of the most popular stories of all time.

When Disney first found success with Mickey Mouse and his Silly Symphony cartoons, one highbrow critic suggested that he tackle a different, more adult-themed target. “His ‘Odyssey’ can be, I am sure, a far, far greater thing than even his epic of the three little pigs,” wrote essayist James Thurber for The Nation in 1934. “Let’s all write to him about it, or to Roosevelt.”

Thurber’s aim was off, but he had the right idea about The Odyssey sitting alongside Disney’s most famous adaptations as an attractive target for mainstream storytellers. In recent weeks, the Inernet has been ablaze with behind-the-scenes images from a new production of The Odyssey directed by Christopher Nolan, the current standard-bearer for big-screen epics.

On the heels of his global success with Oppenheimer (which the Playhouse brought back to IMAX earlier this month), it’s no surprise that Nolan has decided to take a swing on another monolithic literary work that some might consider too daunting for any uncompromising artist to take on. Such bold swings are exactly what makes these stories worthy of fresh revisions, as new generations get the chance to discover their appeal.

In his 1934 essay, Thurber envisioned the Disney version of the famous Cyclops battle in The Odyssey, in part because he wanted his young child to experience it. “That would be that scene as I should like my daughter to know it first,” he wrote.

Revisiting that line as I introduce my own young daughter to the appeal of moving images, I wonder what Thurber would make of the far more sophisticated special effects that followed his death in 1961. For as much as I hope to expose her to the appeal of contemporary movies, I have found plenty for her to appreciate from decades past, including the screen hero she fondly calls “my buddy, Charlie Chaplin.”

Despite all the potential of certain classics, some legends don’t need a reboot.