Rachel Zegler and the Fall of Disney

For the better part of the last century, Disney has been on a trajectory to own and control the majority of mainstream entertainment media. And with good reason. They’ve produced some of the most iconic pieces of filmmaking for the family in that same period. The artists and creatives they’ve sourced and brought together should be studied by all; up to a recent point, where they seemed to have lost touch with their original messaging and purpose.

            Three major dates since the year 2006 have defined the place Disney finds itself in today. The first was on January 24th, 2006, when they acquired Pixar. The second was on December 31st, 2009, when they got the rights to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The third and final was on October 30th, 2012, when George Lucas handed over the reins of Lucasfilm. In six years, Disney had become a borderline monopoly on mainstream entertainment media, owning everything from Mickey Mouse and Monsters Inc. to the Star Wars franchise and all of the Marvel superheroes. For reference, as the Marvel conquest was arguably the biggest addition to their empire, The Avengers (the first iteration) came out in 2012, so everything after that point was part of Disney’s control.

            What’s happened to these branches of Disney since these acquisitions? Have they turned these great series around from their already high standings to become a new piece of legacy media? Depends on who you ask. As mainstream politics has taken a stranglehold over the writers in Hollywood in general, Disney, for some reason, decided to take the lead. Left-leaning political messaging became the norm as the years progressed, ultimately alienating half of its viewer base. For the first few years, this seemed to go by without consequence. I have always maintained that there was no way this would be able to go on forever. Inviting politics into family media is never a good idea, especially when it becomes as radical as it has. What began as mildly progressive quickly developed into far-left, with shows like She-Hulk screaming toxic feminism, The Avengers films including forced diversity, and the amplified voices screaming for LGBTQ+ messaging. Let me be clear here: there is nothing wrong with any of these things, but what Disney failed to recognize is that most people don’t want radical versions of these in their escapist fantasies that were originally designed for the family, not a small subset of political activists. These political ruminations of writers are what created the horrible backlash against the Star Wars and Indiana Jones sequels under their care as well.

Some groups still stand behind Disney’s woke garbage to this day, but the masses are waking up, finally, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is definitive proof of this. Live-action reboots that nobody was asking for have been produced by everyone, not just Disney, for the better part of this generation. It’s like every major executive in the big studios has developed an intense phobia of greenlighting anything new or original.

Snow White went through multiple reshoots and redesigns, all to quell the rising tide of rumors of it not being up to snuff. The lowering expectations of quality coming from Disney, in general, were not helping the cause, but the final nail in the coffin was the ever-infamous Rachel Zegler. She is the representation of everything wrong with the present of the company, and why she is still being paraded around like a savior is beyond me. During the initial promotional material for the film, she was on the red carpet whining about how this iteration of Snow White would be nothing like the original. There’d be no “hero saving the damsel,” no “outdated politics,” and while she goes around yelling into microphones (all because Steven Spielberg gave her a shot in West Side Story), Gal Gadot stands awkwardly behind her, smiling through the blunders.

Politics would seal the fate of the film’s (lack of) success. In the rising tide of the 2020 presidential election, Zegler would post a series of Instagram and X posts that would further alienate the half of Disney’s audience not down with the left-leaning politics. In reaction to Trump’s re-election, she posted wishing anyone and everyone who voted for him to be wished ill will. Not saying Trump’s any good, but that’s a pretty crazy statement for a public figure to make. I can picture Bob Iger having a panic attack in his office after getting the news. She would also repeatedly engage in a beef with her Israeli co-star Gal Gadot over the Israel-Palestine conflict in Gaza. I am not touching the details of this one with a fifty-foot pole, but I will say that it’s not a good look to drag a highly complicated international conflict into the drama surrounding your adaption of a children’s animated story.

Ultimately, Rachel Zegler’s whiney and obscene personality has come to represent the present state of Disney. Overly politically charged, combative against criticism, and painfully unoriginal. So, where does this leave Disney? It is the most embarrassing major release in likely their entire existence. As of writing this, Snow White (2025) is resting at a 1.8/10 on IMDb. The critics are doing their best to outweigh it, but the Metacritic score is 50 even, and the discrepancy between the two is enough to explain itself.

            What is Disney’s fate? If this had been asked by shareholders and the leading executives in the past five years or so, there would’ve been a much greater chance of them turning this sinking ship around. I think their latest works and further their reception being so overwhelmingly negative is a sign that the times have sealed Disney’s fate. The name power behind much of their IP does offer them a way out if they can see through the nonsense they’ve been glued to, though, but it’ll take a lot of work and course-correcting. For starters, I’d begin by dumping Rachel Zegler and any related company. They’ve had their shot, and the results speak for themselves.