During a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Snow White star Rachel Zegler chatted about the upcoming live-action Disney Princess feature film. Zegler described how her scenes with the Seven Dwarfs were essentially shot three different times to get the layers needed to composite the scenes with her performance and, added later, the CG characterization of the Dwarfs.
“You basically do three different versions of every scene,” she explained. “You do one with humans in the space so you’re having an emotional connection with somebody and then you do it with puppets, in our case for Dopey and Grumpy and these iconic characters.”
Wait a minute stop… the Dwarfs could have been puppets instead of the CG characters, a method which has a proven track record of ruining iconic Disney sidekicks? We still shudder while thinking of the dead-eyed Flounder, Sebastian, Lumiere, and Cogsworth.
It gets even more intriguing, as Zegler described them: “They were full, like, I say Julie Taymor-esque because if you’ve seen The Lion King on Broadway, anything that Julie Taymor has done, it’s that kind of puppetry where they’re like attached to the feet of the puppeteer and then moved around with their hands for all of those iconic characters.”
So, we could have had a happy medium between live-actor performers and handmade puppet creations by artists instead of problematic casting or ugly CG. It could have been a Labyrinth Jim Henson-esque Muppet fairytale adaptation? That would have been so much better than what it appears we are getting and a fun throwback to the sort of fantasy films of the Henson era that still are timeless. Screw it, they could have even made them the Muppets and it would have been much more exciting.
Instead our triple threat girl had to put triple the amount of work into the scene. Zegler continued, “And then you do what’s called a clean pass, where it’s essentially me doing ‘Whistle While You Work’ to nobody, dancing and singing. The thing you have to do with props—because essentially they need to turn the prop into a CG prop and put it into the CG character’s hand—[is] you just drop it on the floor. And so that cut of the movie I hope comes out someday, or it’s just me dropping things.”
Or, you know, just release the puppet cut. Check out the clip below to take a look at Zegler during the shoot dancing in her choreographed shots and, yes, dropping things like a broom. One thing is for sure: put Zegler in a movie with the Muppets, we need it!
Snow White opens this Friday.
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