Disney’s new Snow White remake starts today. But is it suitable for the whole family to see in the cinema? Here you will find everything you need to know about the age rating and potentially scary scenes for children.
The fantasy adventure Snow White is another film in the growing list of Disney’s live-action remakes of its animated classics. This time, the very first full-length Disney cartoon, 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, has been remade. 88 years later, the question arises: who is the movie suitable for when it opens in theaters on March 20, 2025?
The first reactions praised Snow White as the “best remake in years” and our 8kstreaming opinion of the film is also extremely positive. So the only thing standing in the way of a family visit to the cinema is the age rating of the story in which a king’s daughter (Rachel Zegler) rebels against her evil stepmother (Gal Gadot).
The German Voluntary Self-Regulation of the Movie Industry has given Snow White an FSK 0 rating, meaning it is suitable for all ages. However, it is not entirely true that there are no scary scenes.
The story of Snow White is simple and easy to understand, even without prior knowledge of the earlier Disney film or the Grimm fairy tale. When it comes to the question of suitability, each parent is of course best placed to judge their own child and their fears, which is why some potentially frightening scenes are examined in more detail here (spoiler alert).
SnowWhite2025:Potentiallydifficulttopicsfortheveryyoung
Parental loss is of course nothing new in Disney films, and this time too it is an important theme in the context of growing up. However, the Disney remake Snow White by Marc Webb does not show the active death of the mother or father, but rather conveys the loss on a more general level of absence or disappearance.
The all-too-grisly facets of the fairy tale are toned down: instead of the (animal) heart the queen demands as proof from the hunter, there is now an apple in the box that is brought back, for example. However, the evil queen, also in her transformation as an old witch, could certainly give sensitive minds something to worry about. And Snow White, briefly dead, which is staged in a sad way.
Teasing that resembles bullying, when, for example, the smallest dwarf, Dopey, is laughed at for being tongue-tied, as well as arguments among the dwarfs, are quickly settled.
There are few moments of fear and fright: As in the cartoon, Snow White stumbles through a very threatening forest in which the trees appear like monsters as she flees to the seven dwarfs. When the princess is frightened by glowing eyes in the dark, they are quickly revealed as a deer. There is also a skeleton of bones in the dungeon.
There is little violence. One main character is hit by an arrow, which becomes dramatic for a moment, but can then be healed. Words are usually preferred to weapons. Only the end of the evil queen could be perceived as borderline inappropriate for children under the age of six by some – even though her demise is staged in an abstract way, like a breaking mirror, and she passes away as a defeated opponent. (The scene is roughly comparable to Voldemort’s demise in the first Harry Potter movie.)
