Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie

is also an obvious dumb pun

to beach their own?

itt people who've never been involved in a beach off

Beach/Off is my second favorite Nic Cage movie.

The vibe reminds me a lot of the '90s Brady Bunch (and other '90s post-mod reboots of beloved pop-culture properties).

Big ol' feature. Still convinced this is going to be a musical.

https://www.vogue.com/article/margot-robbie-barbie-summer-cover-2023-interview

Uh, yes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBk4NYhWNMM

HELL YES IN GRETA WE TRUST GIVE IT TO ME

― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby)

barbie driving singing along to the indigo girls >>>>>>>>>>

I'm in

I don’t really want to see this, but I love gerwig enough that I probably will anyway

^^^ where I am basically

That cotton candy color scheme, if it pervades the entire film, would be extremely painful to sit through.

That god The Real World in this movie is simply technicolor, not universal fluorescence.

Can't wait for the discourse on this one tbh

I don’t really want to see this, but I love gerwig enough that I probably will anyway

― k3vin k., Thursday, May 25, 2023 7:33 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

for real

It's easy to see how the premise of the film and the constraints of completing its narrative in two hours would require that its version of The Real World become a series of hugely simplified billboards you can see coming from a long way off. Much harder to see how Gerwig can avoid duplicating the Disney feature-length cartoon formula, but from a slightly side-angle view.

But Disney-formula films are usually very satisfactory pieces of storytelling, so this one could also be a pretty entertaining two hours, too. Makes no sense to anticipate some kind of intellectual and emotional masterpiece.

Yeah, I dunno, I like Gerwig a lot, and I'm sure that this movie will feature a few surprises, but isn't it kind of a familiar conceit? Lego Movie, Toy Story, Cool World, etc. Bad sign that Will Ferrell is holding drumsticks, because that means they will have him play drums (again), which is kind of a lazy gag. Also, advertising this as a movie for people who love Barbie seems like a self-limitation. I thought it was going to add something like "or even if you don't!"

Uh...the trailer specifically indicates it's also for people who don't!

Some soundtrack details

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/barbie-soundtrack-announced-dua-lipa-lizzo-more-1234741923/

I thought it was going to add something like "or even if you don't!"

it did

oops ned said that already

Josh you really need to start asking yourself if you were mostly looking at the screen or mostly not looking at the screen before posting these criticisms. Even for trailers apparently!

Ha, I think I was looking at lots of things at once, my bad. I must have gotten extra distracted at just the wrong spot. I was right that Will Ferrell had drumsticks, though, right? Or did I make that up?

I hardly ever watch movies and I never had a Barbie but between the trailer and Margot Robbie's Vogue interview I am actually looking forward to this!

i was very much that child who preferred Lego to Barbies, but I'm excited for this. it's basically The Matrix - just gimme the pink pill!

feel like every hollywood movie now is just doing this thing where it takes an old/established property and writes a meta script around it that treats the existence of the property itself as a monument, detached semi-ironic pop culture tributes that are all too scared to ask audiences to at least engage their nostalgia with a shred of sincerity. i guess that's smart as there's clearly an audience for one and not the other.

but this does look cute and i'd like to see it, amazed it managed to somehow not cast chris pratt as ken

I've only seen Gosling in Blade Runner and Drive, so watching his Ken character in the trailer is guffaw funny to me.

feel like every hollywood movie now is just doing this thing where it takes an old/established property and writes a meta script around it that treats the existence of the property itself as a monument, detached semi-ironic pop culture tributes that are all too scared to ask audiences to at least engage their nostalgia with a shred of sincerity. i guess that's smart as there's clearly an audience for one and not the other.

I'm probably missing something, but how would that (engage their nostalgia with a shred of sincerity) look different from the trailer I just watched?

I think the obvious comparison is probably The Lego Movie - Ferrell is basically replaying President Business for a start (except President Business isn't the actual head of The Lego Group) - but Lego is universally loved in a way that Barbie isn't.

(I also think there's no way Chris Pratt would've been in this film without it becoming The Ken Movie With Barbie)

feel like every hollywood movie now is just doing this thing where it takes an old/established property and writes a meta script around it that treats the existence of the property itself as a monument, detached semi-ironic pop culture tributes that are all too scared to ask audiences to at least engage their nostalgia with a shred of sincerity.

idk i think the lego movie did manage to do both? meta-commentary with detached semi-ironic pop culture tributes, but also sincerely celebrating lego? but lego is both beloved & enough of a blank slate to have been able to thread that needle

so far this is just shaping up to be pretty similar to the lego movie in tone, which is such an obvious move (though not really a bad one - i think you can only expect so much from a barbie movie even if gerwig was given a lot of freedom with it), which makes me wonder how it will actually try to subvert expectations?

i can't imagine pratt working as ken at all. the wrong sort of normal, not camp

don’t really want to see this, but I love gerwig enough that I probably will anyway

― k3vin k., Thursday, May 25, 2023 2:33 PM

Did anyone else see Toy Story 3?

i wonder if it can actually manage to thread the needle of making a feminist barbie movie? is it just going to fall flat in the end there because well, it's barbie. some did describe the lego movie as anti-capitalist but i'd only agree with that in a a pretty vague sense.

i wonder what 5 year olds are going to think of it

I have a suspicion there is more to it than the trailers have let on, but they can't show that stuff because it would ruin the surprise (which has got to be more than "Lego Movie" redux, given all the chatter about the brilliant script, not that "Lego Movie" was at all bad). "Threading the needle" is kind of what seems to be going on, since the trailers have been big and bright and loud, with lots of yelling and stuff, which, clever gags aside, seems pretty standard, but in this case may be some weird misdirection.

Or, who knows, maybe it's just a marketing rope-a-dope and it will be just like "The Lego Movie". This is Hollywood, after all.

Yeah Barbie is capitalism pink in tooth and claw but nonetheless I want to see it

The trailer came across a bit like Barbie (The Malibu Stacy years)

Sorry I meant Lisa Lionheart

True, and the movie's going to have to work pretty hard to top this dubbed moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiCu2mgoCP4

sweating now that the barbie movie might not end capitalism fuck lads what will we do in that hellosh scenario

buy more shit?

"Threading the needle" is kind of what seems to be going on

oh yeah it's definitely trying that, i just wonder if it's even possible for it to succeed there, given that it's barbie. according to interviews it's going for barbie entering the real world as an allegory for girls encountering gendered pressures as they grow up, which does come through in the trailer

even if it just ends up as a live action lego movie with some feminist commentary, that's probably a pretty good outcome for what a barbie movie could be, but it feels like they're hyping it up to be more than that? which is a fairly absurd proposition to begin with, it feels a little silly to even entertain it - it seems like it'll be fun either way

Ugh, I just realized that this movie is going to get conscripted into the culture wars, isn't it? I know it wouldn't take much these days for semi-organized assholes to target movie theaters for "grooming" and issue threats unless the "Barbie" movie is pulled. I mean, weren't people making a stink about M&Ms for a minute or something?

and… let’s not even start with one of the chief criticisms of gerwig’s work - that her brand of feminism is white/cis/straight

Ugh, I just realized that this movie is going to get conscripted into the culture wars, isn't it?

What movie that isn't yet another comic book action/sci-fi gun porn wargame rehash doesn't these days?

Barbie has been rebranded as a feminist symbol for pretty much the entirety of my adult life. Whether she actually IS a feminist symbol is something I agree is debatable but it seems very odd to me to wonder if this is going to try to be a feminist Barbie movie given then past 35+ years of Barbie marketing; it would be much weirder if it wasn’t!

Before Barbie wasn’t it mainly baby dolls for little girls? I may have already drunk the barbie kool-aid, but I thought there was something progressive about it right off the bat. And the different body types and whatnot that they come in now are also great, as far as selling plastic to kids goes.

i'm not wondering if it'll try (it very obviously is), i'm wondering if it will succeed, or if it's even possible for it to truly succeed at that goal given barbie's messy relationship to feminism?

i don't think barbie is a feminist symbol or that she's really tried to be? there's been an effort to make her more diverse and feminist-friendly (although in a fairly shallow girlboss sort of way) for sure, but is she really seen as a feminist symbol by anyone? i don't think many people would really say she's the worst thing ever these days, but i also don't think many would argue that she's the most progressive there is wrt gender? the broader issue is just how heavily gendered children's toys are, of course

I'm not expecting Barbie to be any kind of statement movie by Gerwig, just like The Lego Movie wasn't one by Lord & Miller. We know they're capable of more, but here they're just elevating mainstream properties.

idk i think the lego movie did manage to do both? meta-commentary with detached semi-ironic pop culture tributes, but also sincerely celebrating lego? but lego is both beloved & enough of a blank slate to have been able to thread that needle

so far this is just shaping up to be pretty similar to the lego movie in tone, which is such an obvious move (though not really a bad one - i think you can only expect so much from a barbie movie even if gerwig was given a lot of freedom with it), which makes me wonder how it will actually try to subvert expectations?

i can't imagine pratt working as ken at all. the wrong sort of normal, not camp

― ufo, Friday, May 26, 2023 8:40 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i haven't seen lego movie so i can't really compare (i haven't seen most movies, my opinions can be ignored) but i don't necessarily think that the script itself offering a 'sincere' celebration of the property is on the opposite end of what i'm talking about. that's part of "treating it like a monument." the most obvious offender i can think of is this horrible trailer for the recent ghostbusters reboot that had the kids from stranger things sifting through a Planet Hollywood prop display curated to increasingly tickle the nostalgia center of nerd brains until they explode. the celebration is certainly there but it's sort of presented through a hall of mirrors, right? and that approach to the property had to be (at least in part) a reaction to the culture war surrounding the previous all-female reboot - a movie i'd argue actually did engage the property with sincerity simply by casting comedians and striving to hit (a modernized version of) the same tone as the originals, rather than building it around third-person property worship.

no comparison there really to the barbie movie, but i'm not sure there is really a way to create a barbie movie on the opposite end of the pole aside from the ones they've been making for years, marketed towards children (though i'm sure some of them include a lot of adult-facing meta humor in their own right, because everything does)

i don't mean to turn this into a crappy culture thinkpiece, would really just prefer if hollywood wasn't built around leveraging established IPs but whatever!!

sweating now that the barbie movie might not end capitalism fuck lads what will we do in that hellosh scenario

― Ár an broc a mhic (darraghmac), Friday, 26 May 2023 bookmarkflaglink

You joke but by Barbie thinking thoughts about "dying" it will lead to much harm. This stuff is powerful.

i’m encouraged by how thoughtful and pretentious (good) gerwig’s comments in that interview are

Robbie reveals the biggest reason this movie was made:

"The word {Barbie} itself is more globally recognized than practically everything else other than Coca-Cola."