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Everyone Is Mad About the New 'Snow White' Ad—But the Trailer Is Much Worse

In under two minutes, the trailer for the family film starring Chloe Grace Moretz is packed with home invasion, voyeurism, and fat-shaming.
Screenshot via Trailer

Chloe Grace Moretz says that she is "appalled and angry" because of the way that Locus Films has been advertising Red Shoes & the 7 Dwarfs, the upcoming, animated Snow White parody that she stars in.

According to the production company's website, Red Shoes is about seven handsome princes who have been mutated into "green dwarfs," and can only become hot men again by kissing "the most beautiful princess in all the land." The film's central conflict, it seems, is that Snow White is not actually as thin as she appears.

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An advertisement for the film has attracted widespread ire after debuting at Cannes; it pictures two forms of Snow White side by side. On the left, she is tall and thin, wearing those red shoes I guess she always wears, and on the right she is barefoot, shorter, and plump. "What if Snow White was no longer beautiful and the 7 dwarfs not so short?" the poster ponders.

Moretz has claimed that the issue was with the film's marketing, writing on Twitter that neither she nor her team had approved the campaign. But her critics are skeptical that's where the problem lies, noting that the trailer for Red Shoes is even worse than the poster. It begins with four bro-type dwarf entities being apparently teleported through a glowing portal into the private residence of Snow White—a single woman living alone. When they see a gorgeous portrait of Red Shoes hanging on the wall, one bro-dwarf announces, "I think we're in the right place."

My first thought was of the Manson Family, who used to "creepy crawl" through people's homes at night, and also of serial killing male psychopath Ted Bundy, who used to watch women and break into their homes.

As the home invaders tumble about the delicate cottage room, Snow White herself comes home. Startled, they scuttle under a coffee table and watch her undress. From this point, the dwarfs hornily appraise the impossible, dainty red-heeled feet of the slender woman whose house they have illegally entered. The woman throws off her cloak, then looks sexually down at her thin bare shoulder, as her hand pulls the zipper down her dress. The dwarfs become very happy then; one nudges the other as if he is delighted with this apparently nonconsensual voyeur experience.

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As Snow White undresses, the dwarfs begin to act more strange. Her dress falls to the floor, and one dwarf pulls at his face like dough, then nearly leaps out from the shadows, pushing his head closer toward her so he can better see her impending nudity. However, to the horror of the dwarfs, when she removes her titular red shoes, she suddenly, magically, becomes fatter.

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Sujin Hwang, a producer for the film, said in a statementthat he is "grateful" that the troubling tone of Red Shoes has been brought to public attention. "Locus Corporation wishes to apologize regarding the first elements of our marketing campaign (in the form of a Cannes billboard and a trailer) which we realize has had the opposite effect from that which was intended."

Hwang claims that Locus is canceling their poorly-received ad campaign, insisting that the weird nightmare of Red Shoes and the 7 Dwarfs is meant to be "a family comedy" that asks viewers to "challenge social prejudices related to standards of physical beauty in society by emphasizing the importance of inner beauty."

To be fair, there's really no way to know how nuanced the full production really is. In a later tweet defending the film, Moretz wrote, "The actual story is powerful for young women."