The only minor complaint i have is when they showed an obscure barbie thing and the character in the movie had to say out loud: "that was a real thing."
Or when the director had to put in her commentary saying that the barbie actor was a bad example because how pretty she is. It felt so unnecessary, if it was so bad, cut it out.
I knew nothing about the movie when i watched it and even i knew or highly assumed that everything in the movie is a real barbie thing, so i didn't see the point of one of the main character pointing it out. It just felt off to me. Kinda like: don't blame us, the movie makers, it was a real thing. And i nean that specifically, not the part where they freeze framed the clothes and accessories and named them.
Like i found the barbie living in the tree house hilarious, but thanks for letting me know that it's a real thing that you could buy, and thank god that lady knew everything and anything about barbies to tell us.
Maybe it would be funnier if the Mattel guys were barbie nerds who would point out stuff like that. Idk, it didn't make the movie bad or worse, it just feels dumbed down, for no reason.
It was fun though a bit too preachy towards the end. I’d consider myself a feminist but it was getting a bit annoying at parts and a bit dated relative to contemporary views of gender studies.
The performances and production was top. Loved the Mattel representation, Will Ferrel was stealing every scene. Overall I enjoyed it though it’s quite forgettable.
I thought the pacing of things was fine and didn’t really feel like too many scenes overstayed their welcome. The 2001 opener I thought was pretty great. A few things did stick out a bit for me, though.
The fantastical version of reality. A spelled-out theme of the movie is how hard it is being a woman, which Mom-lady really lays out for the Barbies. It makes some sense because the Barbies clearly don’t know what real is like. The trouble is they say it instead of showing it. We don’t see Mom-lady having any particular problems specific to her being a woman in the movie’s world. The audience is supposed to nod along approvingly because she’s saying things that many real women feel, but she’s also from some surreal version of Earth where people in gaudy cowboy outfits can wander into a school and talk to the kids and steal library books and they don’t get tackled by security. We really needed some scenes with some biting misogyny to give that speech some impact.
Pitting the Kens against each other seemed convoluted. Ultimately the solution to the crisis is… voter suppression? Really?
The old film montage near the end seemed really gratuitous.
Most women who wear heels all the time do have feet problems.
I liked that the movie made some more subtle observations besides the main themes that were very in your face. When Ken was commenting about how much attention he got and that there was not no hint of violence, and Barbie responded that she did.
It was also nice that she didn’t have makeup at the end but she’s perhaps not a great example of an average person (which was pointed out for humor).
But do we see the mom with High Heel? I dont recall, but it would indeed enrich the joke instead of just pointing at it
You are right the suble violence against women theme was well done in that scene. And it work. Too bad they went a less subtle road later on. May be that the crux of my critics, they didnt trust the audience. And felt the need to spell everything out
Ryan’s performance was worth the price of admission alone. I reccomend the film on that.
From a story POV, as seen by me, I saw Barbieland as a deliberate mirror to the real world, but the gender roles are flipped, everything then stems from that perspective. I never owned a Barbie so my perspective is biased to seeing the world as a metaphor, maybe it just is that way.
For starters, I think Ken is the protagonist of this film, as he is the one that goes through the journey of character growth. Where Barbie and the Barbie’s are pushing to go back to the status quo, ken and the kens are pushing to go forward (misguided as they may be). I joked when I got home that Barbie is the antagonist of her own movie. If you see Ken as the protagonist, his character growth is facing gender equality in himself and the world he finds himself in, Barbie is the narrative enemy to that. The otherway doesn’t exist however, Babrie’s existential character growth of who she is in the world is never hindered by anyone narratively except herself.
For social commentary, just as the world’s are a mirror I saw the social causes too as a mirror. The message is not good. Ken is shallow and wants change for petty reasons, both criticisms leveled at feminism. The solution the film presents to gender inequality is, “don’t push change might happen over time”, the ken’s might even get a judge one day. There is a joke that the right always critises social messages for going too far, and the left will always say it doesn’t go far enough… So I don’t say Barbie celebrates conservatives for being a limiting factor on social change, but the film does celebrate conservatives for limiting social change… This relies on me seeing Ken’s cause as the alagory to feminism, being that I saw the world as a mirror, it was natural to me.
I didn’t see the point in the CEO’s except to present corporate executives in a more sympathetic light. Allen was wasted potential, he seemed meta aware that could have been fun to explore, he was funny though.
I should say, I was willing to meet Barbie wherever it wanted to go. If it wanted to be a fun romp of “the Barbiemobile is broken, hijinks ensue in fixing it” I would have turned my brain off and went for the ride. If the film wanted to purely examine Barbie’s place in the world, but with jokes, I would have met it there and viewed it through that lens instead. The film instead has the real world social commentary of “patriarchy bad” but with jokes, so viewed it through that lens. Jokes where ok, the message was meh, Ryan was phenomenal, go see it
Totally agree on Ryan Gosling’s performance although I saw both Ken and Barbie as the protagonists when I watched it. Where they both acted as mirrors of each other until the end when they meet in the middle.
Almost like a Man (B+K) vs Self (B+K) conflict as opposed to a Man (B) vs Man (K) style conflict.
Because the human being is habitual and prefers something that is always familiar to him. So the same things will be produced with the same actors, Tom Hanks will be forced to make films up to 90 years and if he dies he will be simulated by the IA until the end of time.
It’s always been lowest common denominator content that’s made the most money. I always ask people about movie preferences and an ever increasing common theme “Life is already tough, I don’t want a serious movie, I just want mindless entertainment.” Sequels provide that, you know the characters, you know the stakes, sprinkle in jokes and you have a mindless money maker.
Look, I don't want to give the impression that I'm a film snob with my head up my ass or anything. I enjoy a good comic book movie, a mindless action film, all sorts of stuff. Hell, depending on what day you ask, I'd say Rogue One is the best Star Wars film (on the other days, it's Empire). Unpopular opinion - I think 2001 is overrated. It might be art, but I don't find it entertaining. And I agree with M500 - I loved San Andreas. It knew what it was, I could switch my brain off for a couple of hours and quietly snark at it with a friend. Good times.
I just don't want that to be all there is. And the more films like this fail to make hundreds of billions of dollars, the less the lawyers in charge of the studios are going to risk on them in the future. That's the tragedy for me.
Shawshank Redemption was a book. The Godfather was a book. Lord of the Rings, Forrest Gump, Fight Club, Goodfellas, Silence of the Lambs… That’s just from the first 25 of IMDB’S top 250.
The Thing is a remake. The Fly was a remake. Scarface, The Departed, The Mummy… all remakes.
The problem isn’t remakes or adaptations, the problem is they’re shit remakes and adaptations. Nobody cares that The Batman was the 75th adaptation of Batman, because it was good.
It’s a different medium entirely. Not to mention the book version is normally quite different.
Plus I never said my opinion or presented anything as fact. Just said I’ve never heard this idea. It probably strikes me as odd because perhaps the majority of movies ever made are based on books.
You’re not wrong that many of our favs are remakes, but OP does have a point that disproportionately more big box office movies are reboots or sequels than 30 years ago.
Is that actually true or is everyone in this conversation just forgetting about the new IP’s being released?
Perhaps it’s a matter of where the marketing budgets are going rather than just what’s been produced? Or how remakes and sequels tend to stay in memory longer than a flash-in-the-pan one-off IP? It allows the owners of that IP to invest in more than just movies: all sorts of media and merchandise that keeps the IP in the minds of consumers for longer.
Heck, the two big summer blockbusters this year were Barbie and Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was definitely original. Does Barbie count? I actually haven’t seen it and I’m not that interested, but i don’t think it’s the same cannon as the direct-to-vhs movies my sister had back in the 90’s.
Shawshank Redemption was a book. The Godfather was a book. Lord of the Rings, Forrest Gump, Fight Club, Goodfellas, Silence of the Lambs… That’s just from the first 25 of IMDB’S top 250.
From the top 10, only Pulp Fiction is original and not a sequel. If you go to the top 20, you can add Inception, The Matrix and Se7en. That’s 4 out of 20 (or 1 out of 10). There’s a lot more original material beyond the top 25 though, but your point that every great movie is a “ripoff” very much stands.
Cody Johnson put it very well when he talked about how movie executives saw that Barbie was a smart and funny movie with a good message and decided that meant they needed to make more movies about Mattel toys.
Executives don’t even like movies very much. They just want to make money and they do whatever they think will make money, not make good movies.
I don't think they ran out of ideas. The thing that i hate about modern movies or the industry behind it is that they make a movie, let's take op's movie for example, which cost 80million to make, everything included. It made 100million dollars and is considered a failure. Any normal ass company is glad to pay their workers and make some money. Just imagine joe's plumber shop working for 9 month on a project that cost him 80k in labour and materials and he makes 100k, which means 20 k profits and he's like: oh no, what a shitshow, i didn't even make half a million.
I get your point, but 20k USD profit for a 9 month project could be an absolute shit show. Businesses need enough to cover costs during the bad times as well as the good, so 20% profit wouldn't cover for very long if projects dried up the next year.
Nah it's not that they ran out of ideas. It's that the market has changed and there's no room for risky mid-budget or high budget movies. Back in the day they could make a substantial chunk off of home video sales rather than just the theatrical release. Now streaming is not nearly as lucrative and they have to compete with a ton more forms of media. So when you're dropping hundreds of millions to make a movie you have to be damn sure it's gonna draw people to the theaters. So you take fewer risks and make things as wide as possible to appeal to everyone worldwide.
There was a really good 1 hour long YouTube video posted recently that broke it down
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