Warning: SPOILERS for Disney’s live-action Snow White remake.An off-hand remark by Peter Dinklage sparked a huge Snow White controversy, but Disney does partly address the issue with a surprising casting choice. There have been a number of controversies regarding Snow White’s cast, but one of the earliest has always regarded the seven dwarfs. It’s understandable (and frankly preferable) for a live-action remake to take some liberties, but the Snow White remake’s changes from the original 1937 film haven’t generally been received with open arms. The dwarfs unfortunately factor into a number of those changes.

This may be at least one reason Snow White’s joined the ever-growing list of movies that have been review-bombed on IMDb. One generally hopes that people who negatively review a movie have at least seen it first, but there’s no way for IMDb to require proof of that. Additionally, many of Snow White’s harshest critics have openly stated they’re waiting until it’s available for digital piracy so they can watch it illegally. But Peter Dinklage beat them all to the punch by managing to review the movie harshly, not only without seeing it, but before it was even made.

Why Peter Dinklage Criticized The Snow White Remake & How Disney Responded

They Reacted Drastically To What Sounded Like A Sarcastic Joke

Peter Dinklage made huge waves back in 2022 (for those who’ve forgotten how long Disney had to get this movie right) when he went on the podcast WTF with Marc Maron and openly criticized Disney for including the seven dwarfs in their Snow White remake. The Snow White dwarf controversy took off immediately, with Disney initially responding they’d be replacing the dwarfs with seven magical creatures before ultimately pivoting back to using CGI dwarfs instead of real actors. But this is a bit of an overreaction when considering Dinklage’s actual tone:

Take a step back and look at what you’re doing there. It makes no sense to me. You’re progressive in one way but then you’re still making that ҒUCҜing backwards story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together, what the ҒUCҜ are you doing, man? Have I done nothing to advance the cause from my soapbox? I guess I’m not loud enough. I don’t know which studio that is, but they were so proud of it. All love and respect to the actress and all the people who thought they were doing the right thing. But I’m just like, what are you doing?

It sounds confrontational because of how long he spends hammering it in, but actually listening to the podcast suggests that Dinklage was being facetious. He already approaches podcasts dripping with sarcasm, but he tips his hand in this one because there’s virtually no way that a major Hollywood actor didn’t know which studio was responsible for Snow White. Had he seen the movie, Dinklage probably would have been more offended that it cuts out the dwarfs’ role in dispatching Gal Gadot’s Evil Queen. Instead, Dinklage gets blamed for Disney not using dwarf actors. Although they did use one.

Quigg Gives Snow White A New Dwarf Character With Accurate Representation Casting

The Movie Essentially Differentiates Between 2 Kinds Of Dwarf

While Martin Klebba was the first actor confirmed to play one of the seven dwarfs, he’s actually not the dwarf actor mentioned above. Thanks to the use of CGI, his stature really bears no relevance to the movie. But one of Jonathan’s seven bandits in Snow White, Quigg, is also played by dwarf actor George Appleby, who interestingly enough shared screentime with Dinklage in Game of Thrones. Quigg is the only non-CGI dwarf in Snow White, which establishes the interesting reality that fantasy dwarfs and people with dwarfism are entirely different concepts in the world of the movie.

Quigg also addresses Dinklage’s real problem with fantasy dwarf characters, which he didn’t even mention on Marc Maron’s podcast. For instance, he was only willing to rock a beard in Prince Caspian provided they didn’t also make him wear pointy shoes. Snow White doesn’t focus much on Quigg’s footwear, but Quigg is undeniably the most important dwarf in the movie. He saves Snow’s life toward the end and plays a pivotal role in Snow White’s romantic storyline. Unfortunately, this only serves to highlight how much better Disney could have treated Snow White’s dwarf characters.

Quigg Proves Disney’s Snow White Could’ve Done A Better Job With The Seven Dwarfs

This Many Easily Solvable Controversies Can’t Be Unintentional

Disney’s Snow White remake almost goes out of its way to give Quigg his life-saving moment while eliminating the seven dwarfs’ role in eliminating the Evil Queen. They’re dwindled down to nothing more than non-essential roommate characters. And the fact that Disney put the Tangled remake on hold suggests that the studio is well aware of how poorly received most of the movie’s decisions have been. It’s great to think they can learn from their live-action misfires, but the problem is that it seems like this issue was avoidable from the start.

If Disney was willing to hire one dwarf actor to play Grumpy and another to play Quigg, why could they not find five more? They managed to avoid an unnecessary grammatical debate simply by changing the “Heigh-Ho” lyrics, but they couldn’t avoid this one by casting from the rather large pool of available dwarf actors who would’ve loved to be in Snow White? Hornswoggle’s not nearly as enтιтled to that role as he’s loudly proclaimed in the wake of Dinklage’s controversy, but Disney definitely wasn’t lacking for other potential talent they could have recruited.