Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot star in an awkward live-action attempt to modernize the 1937 animated classic.
3 min
Disney’s first “Snow White” isn’t perfect—the prince is badly underwritten and doesn’t even get a name—but it is, by turns, enchanting, scary and moving. Version 2.0, starring Rachel Zegler in the title role and Gal Gadot as her nefarious stepmother, has been in the works since 2016 and already feels like it’s from a bygone era. After fans seemed grumpy about the rumored storyline and the casting of Ms. Zegler, Disney became bashful about releasing it last March and ordered reshoots to make everyone happy. Unfortunately, the story is so dopey it made me sleepy.
Directed by Marc Webb (“The Amazing Spider-Man” with Andrew Garfield ), the remake is neither a clever reimagining (like “The Jungle Book” and “Pete’s Dragon,” both from 2016) nor a faithful retelling (like 2017’s “Beauty and the Beast”), but rather an ungainly attempt at modernization. The songs “I’m Wishing” and “Someday My Prince Will Come” have been cut; the big what-she-wants number near the outset is called “Waiting on a Wish.” Instead of longing for true love (=fairy tale), Snow White hopes to sharpen her leadership skills (=M.B.A. program). And she keeps talking about a more equitable distribution of wealth in the kingdom she is destined to rule after her mother, the queen, dies and her father, having made a questionable choice for his second spouse, goes missing.
Ms. Gadot, giving it her all, is serviceable as the wicked stepmother. But she doesn’t bring a lot of wit to the role, and the script, by Erin Cressida Wilson , does very little to help. Her hello-I’m-evil number, “All Is Fair,” is meant to be the film’s comic showstopper but it’s barely a showslower, a wan imitation of “Gaston” from “Beauty and the Beast” or “Poor Unfortunate Souls” from “The Little Mermaid.” The original songs, from the songwriting team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul (“La La Land”), also stack up poorly against the three tunes carried over from the original “Snow White,” each of which has been changed from a sweet bonbon into high-energy, low-impact cruise-ship entertainment. So unimaginative is the staging of the numbers that it suggests such straight-to-Disney+ features as 2019’s “Lady and the Tramp.”
After escaping a plot to kill her, Snow White becomes friends with a digital panoply of woodland animals and with the Seven Dwarfs, who instead of being played by actors are also digital creations. The warmth of the original animation is totally absent here; the tiny miners look like slightly creepy garden gnomes, except for Dopey, who looks like Alfred E. Neuman . As for the prince, there isn’t one; the love interest, Jonathan (a forgettable Andrew Burnap ), is a direct lift of the rogue-thief Flynn Rider , from 2010’s “Tangled,” plus some Robin Hood stylings. His sour, sarcastic tribute to the heroine, “Princess Problems,” is the worst Snow White number since the one with Rob Lowe at the 1989 Oscars.
Ms. Zegler isn’t the chief problem with the movie, but as in her debut role, Maria in Steven Spielberg’s remake of “West Side Story,” she has a tendency to seem bland and blank, leaving the emotional depths of her character unexplored even as she nearly dies twice. Gloss prevails over heart in nearly every scene, and plot beats feel contrived. She and Jonathan seem to have no interest in one another until, suddenly, they do; and when he and his band of thieves escape from a dungeon, they do so simply by yanking their iron chains out of the walls. Everything comes too easily and nothing generates much feeling. When interrogated by the evil queen, who wants to know what happened to her stepdaughter, Jonathan replies, “Snow who?” Which would be an understandable reaction to the movie. “Snow White” is the fairest of them all, in the sense that fair can mean mediocre.
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AI-powered travel agents are challenging online booking platforms, but Airbnb’s exclusive listings and direct customer relationships could give it an edge. Its next challenge: turning repeat guests into loyal customers through stronger rewards and innovation.
3 min
AI agents like Muse can already find you the cheapest hotel room in Paris. But they can’t locate a cheaper version of that Catskills cabin you’ve been eyeing, because it might only be available on Airbnb ABNB -1.43%decrease.
Investors should pay attention to that distinction. When Meta Platforms META 3.38%increase launched its Muse agent last month, travel stocks including Booking Holdings BKNG -1.19%decrease, Expedia and Airbnb all fell sharply.
Airbnb, though, has a real chance to emerge as a winner from the upheaval. The catch: Its stock already reflects above-industry growth. To justify its valuation, Airbnb will need to turn repeat customers into loyal ones.
Online travel companies make much of their money by simplifying search and collecting fees on bookings. AI agents threaten that model.
But not all travel marketplaces are equally exposed. Booking and Expedia largely sell hotel rooms that travelers can also book directly or through competing sites. If an agent can find the same room elsewhere, it has little reason to favor either Booking or Expedia.
Booking and Expedia also sell sponsored listings that steer travelers toward particular properties. Wells Fargo estimates those will account for about 8% of Expedia’s revenue and a much higher percentage of profit next year.
Airbnb has more ways to adapt. More than half its listings are available only on its platform, and more than 90% of its traffic comes directly to its app or website.
The customer relationship doesn’t end after booking, either. Bernstein analyst Richard Clarke notes that 90% of Airbnb guests go on to message their hosts about arrival times, keys or local taxes, giving Airbnb a connection to both sides of the transaction.
How the companies have responded to the possible agentic future is telling.
Expedia quickly signed on as a Muse partner. Airbnb hasn’t, and Chief Executive Brian Chesky says AI chatbots have so far been a boon, sending customers to Airbnb’s website.
Chatbots might work for buying paper towels, he quipped at a Skift conference last month, but people enjoy planning trips. He argued that browsing dozens of homes isn’t something a text-based chatbot is well suited for.
Still, the AI jitters arrived just as Airbnb was persuading investors it deserved its pricey multiple. For years after its 2020 initial public offering, the stock—which trades around 25 to 30 times forward earnings—went nowhere. Investors saw a mature operator trading at a growth premium.
This year, Airbnb growth seems to be accelerating. The stock jumped in August after the company raised its full-year revenue-growth guidance with its second-quarter results. Wells Fargo analyst Ken Gawrelski credits a run of product improvements under a revamped leadership team.
Among the changes: letting guests reserve now and pay later, adding hotels, and a redesigned home page and app. Investors were also betting on what comes next, including thousands more hotels, car rentals and, eventually, advertising.
The irony is that some of those growth drivers push Airbnb closer to the kind of business Booking and Expedia run—the kind of business AI agents could threaten. Even if AI agents capture a large share of travel planning and booking, Airbnb would capture the demand. But it and others would slowly lose control over how customers find and choose properties.
That would undermine the advertising opportunity investors are counting on. The bigger point for Airbnb and other marketplaces is that losing control of customer acquisition could mean surrendering some of their pricing power and margins.
To bulletproof itself, Airbnb might look to another e-commerce giant that has so far kept AI agents at arm’s length: Amazon.
Like Amazon, Airbnb has a loyal customer base and hard-to-match supply. But it has nothing like Prime membership to make customers think twice before taking their business elsewhere.
That is where loyalty comes in. Business travelers stick with Hilton or Marriott because enough nights earn them perks. Leisure travelers rarely accumulate stays with one chain. Airbnb has millions of listings and plenty of repeat customers, but no broad rewards program. It has begun experimenting with credits on hotel stays, but it should make loyalty a priority, not just a promotion.
Airbnb also plans to launch its own AI agent next year. But travelers using an agent might still want it to search Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking and hotel websites alike, rather than limit itself to one company’s inventory.
Eventually, Airbnb might have to strike deals with agent makers, using its unique homes as leverage to negotiate favorable terms, says Gawrelski. Such deals, along with rewards for loyal guests, could over the long term eat into the company’s roughly 13% take rate, he adds. But if they bring in enough additional bookings, the trade-off could be worthwhile.
History offers a reason not to panic. The shift from desktop to mobile unsettled investors in Alphabet and Amazon, but both emerged as major beneficiaries. Companies with valuable assets can come out of a platform shift stronger, if they adapt quickly enough.
Airbnb has homes the bots can’t easily replace. Now it needs to give guests a reason to insist on booking them there.
