Duncan Lay: Peter Dinklage gives Disney a giant dwarf problem

Games Of Thrones star Peter Dinklage has called out Disney for its remake of Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs and he makes a good point, Duncan Lay writes.

One of the more memorable moments in Game Of Thrones was when Tyrion Lannister killed his own father as Tywin was hard at work on the dunny.

(I should clarify that’s not a poo joke. Tywin was going through reports when his son put a crossbow bolt through his addendums).

But Peter Dinklage, who became fantasy’s most recognisable dwarf as Tyrion, has topped that by what he’s done to Disney over its live action Snow White remake.

It began with Disney trumpeting that its live action remake of Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs would see Snow White played by its first Latino princess in Rachel Zegler.

But then Dinklage dropped the dragon among the pigeons by blasting the other half of the title.

Dinklage, who has achondroplasia and has spoken before about his struggle to deal with people’s reaction to his condition when he was younger, was savage.

Game Of Thrones star Peter Dinklage has called out Disney about its Snow White remake.

“You’re progressive in one way, but then you’re still making that f**king backwards story about seven dwarfs living in a cave together, what the f**k are you doing, man?” Dinklage told a podcast.

“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?”

Naturally Disney’s PR department immediately hit the large red cartoon button marked “PANIC”.

It promised to “consult with members of the dwarfism community” and “avoid reinforcing stereotypes”.

I loved that bit. What stereotypes do they want to avoid? That all dwarfs live in sharehouses and work in mining?

The crazy thing is, there was already a massive controversy over the 2012 film Snow White And The Huntsman that starred Chris Hemsworth. It used full-sized actors such as Ian McShane and Bob Hoskins as CGI dwarfs.

That sparked an angry protest march by dwarf actors and one of them, Danny Woodburn, compared — pretty accurately I would say — the move to “blackface”.

But it appears Disney missed that. Obviously it is going to now cast real dwarfs but I still fear it’s going to miss the point.

Peter Dinklage, pictured with Sophie Turner in GoT, has struggled to deal with people’s reaction to his physical condition all his life.

The original Seven Dwarfs were caricatures with labels like Grumpy, Bashful, Dopey and Sleepy — you even had one whose only character trait was sneezing! How demoralising would it be to study theatre for years, score a part in a major film and your only line is: “Ah-choo!”

Worse, those dwarfs were a bunch of hopeless losers who lived in filth, despite the fact they earned enough to buy an army of cleaners.

Even when Snow White turned up, she just used a bunch of unhygienic forest animals to cook and clean. I don’t want my bed made by a bunch of filthy pigeons and asking dwarfs to accept that is frankly not good enough.

So how is Disney going to change that?

Are its dwarfs going to be successful, well-adjusted and rounded characters? Are we going to see Snow White meet Sensitive, Caring, Thoughtful, Sporty, Kind, Fun and Witty?

Interesting but I fear it’ll leave the screenwriters with a few issues when it comes to dramatic development.

So I’d say Disney is on the hot seat. And, like Tywin Lannister, in serious danger of copping something spiky in its tender parts.

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The Witcher may have peaked too early

I imagine adapting a book into a film or TV series is like walking a tightrope – across a giant pit filled with ravenous sharks, while people hurl huge spiky balls at your head.

Oh, and the rope is on fire.

Still, people keep doing it.

If you make it to the other side, you have the Lord Of The Rings movies.

But most of the time the rope snaps along with the audience’s belief and then you have the likes of Eragon, the hideous adaptation of Christopher Paolini’s book, which made it perhaps two steps across.

Or you have Game Of Thrones, which tap-danced effortlessly across the rope for almost all the way, then took a nosedive into the pit and was torn apart once the end was in sight.

I was thinking of this while watching season two of The Witcher, the Henry Cavill-led adaptation of the books by Andrzej Sapkowski, with some stuff from the video games thrown in for good measure.

Henry Cavill as Geralt in season two of The Witcher. Picture: Netflix

To continue my metaphor, season two is still on the rope and even displayed some funky moves as the spiky balls rained down – but is starting to look a bit wobbly up there.

Get set for a spoiler-filled discussion!

Season two had a lot of good things, including some fantastic action with Cavill and some clever plot twists to keep book fans on their toes.

But it also had some head-scratching decisions that could lead to real problems in season three and beyond – if it makes it that far.

For a start, the season one decision to reveal that the wizard Vilgefortz (Mahesh Jadu), the “hero” of the battle of Sodden, was actually a traitor never got explored this season. Sure, there’s a tantalising hint. But if you’re going to move up a big reveal by two seasons, it probably deserves more than that.

Then there’s Yennefer (Anya Chalotra). Season two wasted her.

The idea of a man – Vilgefortz – taking the credit for what she did at Sodden wasn’t really explored.

It also took away her magic power and ruined her relationship with Ciri (Freya Allen).

Geralt and Ciri (Freya Allen) in The Witcher. Picture: Netflix

Worse, it had Geralt (Cavill) come in and save them both from the evil Nilfgaardians at the last moment. Yet they had travelled by magic and fast horse and he was travelling in a dwarf-filled wagon!

That made some of the bizarre high-speed travel in the last season of GoT seem logical.

Yet even that was dwarfed (so to speak) by the decision to reveal the biggest twist of the entire series at the end of season two.

In the books, we don’t find out until almost the end that Nilfgaard’s mysterious Emperor wants Ciri because he’s her father.

Ultimately, that is the decision that will make or break this show.

I hope it was done because there is a plan to have an even bigger twist come later.

But the way the show handled the Vilgefortz-is-a-secret-traitor season one reveal doesn’t give me a lot of confidence.

To go back to my original metaphor, there are a lot of giant spiky balls heading for season three and the sharks are not only circling below, they’ve got the napkins tied around their necks and the barbecue sauce ready.

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