Snow White is terrible, and frankly so is Cinderella which ever version they went after. And of course fairy tales are suitable for children, that’s who they were written for. One of the big lessons of fairy tales is that life is rough. I’m not saying they should show all of the details, I’m saying they should burn half the story. They did the same thing with Alice in Wonderland. They take everything that’s interesting in the story, decide it’s too mean or whatever, and make saccharine crap out o the story. What you’d get if they actually RESPECTED the story is good versions that are truthful and interesting, but of course that would keep the original alive, and Disney doesn’t want that. The real reason they sanitize them is for ownership, Disney wants the real versions of the stories to seem foreign and odd, they want you to think exclusively of the Disney version, and pass it on to your kids, because that passes your money, and eventually your kids’ money, to them. There’s a reason why Travers hated the Mary Poppins movie, but of course Disney being Disney they even found a way to sanitize that hatred (Saving Mr Banks has her learning to love the movie, she didn’t).
Disney is actually kind of frightening when you think about they way they take over intellectual property and culture.
Let’s see, Cinderella has to deal with living with her wicked stepfamily and being abused by them, she ultimately manages to get to the ball via her fairy godmother after her stepfamily forces her to do an overabundance of chores specifically to prevent her to go to the ball, eventually, the prince tries to find her, she ultimately has the shoe fit in her foot, after her stepsisters failed, and she gets a happily ever after. That’s similar enough to the original tale.
As far as Snow White, again, was treated as a slave by her stepmother who is jealous of her beauty, attempts to have her killed, and then after the huntsman shirks his duty, decides to deal with her personally via disguising herself, and ultimately succeeds, and her prince saves her. Yeah, similar enough to the original tale, barring that the prince just kisses her rather than wakes her up due to tripping while taking her as a trophy.
Sleeping Beauty, the princess still gets cursed by a miffed fairy, and ends up in a coma when poisoned by a spinning wheel, and she still gets awakened by her prince. Similar enough. Probably the only thing different is that the prince not only doesn’t rape her, but actually DOES have a bit of a history with her (oh, and obviously it doesn’t last 100 years fortunately, which was something the main villain Maleficent ironically mentioned).
And if you are so much of a purist that you won’t tolerate any changes to the tale, even when the overall point remains the same, why don’t you voice complaints to, say, the Brothers Grimm for ruining Perrault, or even voice complaints to Beauville for ruining the tale as told by Villeneuve. No story’s going to be 100% the same, after all.
And when the content of those fairy tales are stuff that’s closer to a PG-13 or R-rated movie, no, they AREN’T for kids (and yes, that ESPECIALLY goes towards the Grimm version of Sleeping Beauty where the only reason she woke up is because the prince raped her and she entered labor, and rape is NEVER family friendly material). Besides, what makes you think Disney DOESN’T include those bits in their films? Last I checked, Maleficent isn’t exactly a family friendly character, nor was the evil queen either. And The Little Mermaid by Disney actually has a faustian element to the story that wasn’t present at all originally, AND the villain gets a kind of death that’s very rarely done with Disney Villains, which is a very graphic one. And in fact, Ursula, the main villain, was the source of all nightmares for many 1990s kids.
Besides, if I were to go by your logic, I might as well show my hypothetical three year old X-Men or The Dark Knight, despite it OBVIOUSLY not being geared for their age bracket, simply to show that life is rough, or even Batman: The Killing Joke or The Matrix Trilogy (which are even LESS appropriate than those two because they’re rated R) even if it means having to pay for psychiatry bills for the resulting nightmares as a result. Do you see how much of a problem that is? Besides, it’s not just Disney that does those things, as even Hanna Barbara cartoons and Golden Films have done similar things to their stories. Heck, Warner Bros. did the same thing to the Harry Potter films, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy by Peter Jackson did similar stuff as well.
That’s not to say I want things to be significantly different from the source material, because if they were significantly different, right down to the overall message, what’s the point in even adapting it. So long as the core message remains the same, they can change things within reason. And quite frankly, if we were talking Beauty and the Beast, I’d agree that they definitely changed far too much from the original tale, several of the changes weren’t even necessary.
Bambi and Pinnochio were pretty disturbing on their own no? The Little Mermaid and BATB (1991) are saved by the songs. The death of brilliant lyricist Howard Ashman shortly thereafter was a huge loss.