Barbie (film)
Barbie[a] is a 2023 fantasy comedy film directed by Greta Gerwig from a screenplay she wrote with Noah Baumbach. Based on the eponymous fashion dolls by Mattel, it is the first live-action Barbie film after numerous animated films and specials. It stars Margot Robbie as the title character and Ryan Gosling as Ken, and follows them on a journey of self-discovery through both Barbieland and the real world following an existential crisis. It is also a commentary regarding patriarchy and the effects of feminism. The supporting cast includes America Ferrera, Michael Cera, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, and Will Ferrell.
This article is about the 2023 live-action film. For the animated Barbie films, see List of Barbie films.Barbie
- Greta Gerwig
- Noah Baumbach
- Margot Robbie
- Ryan Gosling
- America Ferrera
- Kate McKinnon
- Issa Rae
- Rhea Perlman
- Will Ferrell
Nick Houy
- Heyday Films
- LuckyChap Entertainment
- NB/GG Pictures
- Mattel Films
- July 9, 2023 (Shrine Auditorium)
- July 21, 2023 (United States and United Kingdom)
114 minutes[1]
English
A live-action Barbie film was announced in September 2009 by Universal Pictures with Laurence Mark producing. Development began in April 2014, when Sony Pictures acquired the film rights. Following multiple writer and director changes and the casting of Amy Schumer and later Anne Hathaway as Barbie, the rights were transferred to Warner Bros. Pictures in October 2018. Robbie was cast in 2019, after Gal Gadot turned down the role due to scheduling conflicts, and Gerwig was announced as director and co-writer with Baumbach in 2020. The rest of the cast was announced in early 2022. Principal photography occurred primarily at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden, England, and at the Venice Beach Skatepark in Los Angeles from March to July 2022.
Barbie premiered at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on July 9, 2023, and was released in the United States on July 21. Its concurrent release with Universal Pictures' Oppenheimer was the catalyst of the "Barbenheimer" phenomenon, encouraging audiences to see both films as a double feature. The film grossed $1.446 billion and achieved several milestones, including the highest-grossing film of 2023 and the 14th highest-grossing film of all time. Named one of the top 10 films of 2023 by the National Board of Review and the American Film Institute, it received critical acclaim and other accolades, including eight Academy Award nominations (among them Best Picture), winning Best Original Song for "What Was I Made For?"; the song also won Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song while Barbie was awarded Golden Globe Award for Cinematic and Box Office Achievement.
Plot[edit]
Barbie ("Stereotypical Barbie") and fellow dolls reside in Barbieland, a matriarchal society populated by different versions of Barbies, Kens, and a group of discontinued models who are treated like outcasts due to their unconventional traits. While the Kens spend their days playing at the beach, considering it their profession, the Barbies hold prestigious jobs in law, science, politics, and so on. Ken ("Beach Ken") is only happy when he is with Barbie, and seeks a closer relationship with her, but she rebuffs him in favor of other activities and female friendships.
One evening at a dance party, Barbie is suddenly stricken with worries about mortality. Overnight, she develops bad breath, cellulite, and flat feet, disrupting her usual routines and the classic perfection of the Barbies. Weird Barbie, a disfigured doll, tells Barbie to find the child playing with her in the real world to cure her afflictions. Barbie decides to follow the advice and travel to the real world, with Ken joining Barbie by stowing away in her convertible.
After arriving in Venice Beach, Barbie punches a man after he gropes her. Barbie and Ken are briefly arrested. Alarmed by the dolls' presence in the real world, the CEO of Mattel orders their recapture. Barbie tracks down her owner, a teenage girl named Sasha, who criticizes Barbie for encouraging unrealistic beauty standards. Distraught, Barbie discovers that Gloria, a Mattel employee and Sasha's mother, inadvertently caused Barbie's existential crisis after Gloria began playing with Sasha's old Barbies. Mattel attempts to put Barbie in a toy box for remanufacturing, but she escapes with Gloria and Sasha's help, and the three travel to Barbieland with Mattel executives in pursuit.
Meanwhile, Ken learns about patriarchy and feels respected for the first time. He returns to Barbieland before Barbie does and persuades the other Kens to take over. The Kens indoctrinate the Barbies into submissive roles, such as agreeable girlfriends, housewives, and maids. Barbie arrives and attempts to convince the Barbies to be independent again. When her attempts fail, she becomes depressed. Gloria expresses her frustration with the conflicting standards women are forced to follow in the real world. Gloria's speech restores Barbie's confidence.
With the assistance of Sasha, Weird Barbie, Allan, and the discontinued dolls, Gloria uses her knowledge from the real world to deprogram the Barbies from their indoctrination. The Barbies then manipulate the Kens into fighting among themselves, which distracts them from enshrining male superiority into Barbieland's constitution, allowing the Barbies to regain power. Having now experienced systemic oppression for themselves, the Barbies resolve to rectify the faults of their previous society, emphasizing better treatment of the Kens and all outcasts.
Barbie and Ken apologize to each other, acknowledging their past mistakes. When Ken bemoans his lack of purpose without Barbie, she encourages him to find an autonomous identity. Barbie, who remains unsure of her own identity, meets with the spirit of Ruth Handler, Mattel co-founder and creator of the Barbie doll, who explains that Barbie's story has no set ending and her ever-evolving history surpasses her roots.
After sharing goodbyes with the Barbies, Kens, and Mattel executives, Barbie decides to become human and return to the real world. Sometime later, Gloria, her husband, and Sasha take Barbie, now going by the name "Barbara Handler", to her first gynecologist appointment.
Production[edit]
Development[edit]
The idea of a live-action Barbie film was in development at Cannon Films in the mid-1980s.[38] Renewed development on a film based on the Barbie toy line began in September 2009, when it was announced that Mattel had signed a partnership with Universal Pictures and producer Laurence Mark, but nothing came to fruition.[39] In April 2014, Mattel teamed with Sony Pictures to produce the film, which would have Jenny Bicks writing the screenplay and Laurie MacDonald and Walter F. Parkes producing through their Parkes+MacDonald Image Nation banner. Filming was anticipated to begin by the end of the year.[40] In March 2015, Diablo Cody was brought onto the project to rewrite the screenplay, and Amy Pascal joined the producing team.[41] Sony ordered further rewrites by Lindsey Beer, Bert V. Royal and Hillary Winston, who submitted separate drafts.[42]
In December 2016, Amy Schumer entered negotiations for the title role with Winston's screenplay. She helped rewrite the script with her sister, Kim Caramele.[43] In March 2017, she exited negotiations, initially saying it was due to scheduling conflicts with the planned June 2017 filming; she revealed in 2023 that she left due to creative differences with the film's producers.[44][45] That July, Anne Hathaway was considered for the title role; Sony hired Olivia Milch to rewrite the screenplay and approached Alethea Jones to direct as a means of interesting Hathaway in signing.[46] Jones was attached to direct by March 2018.[47]
In August 2018, Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz hired film executive Robbie Brenner, who was later appointed head of Mattel Films.[48][49] Sony's option on the project expired in October 2018, and film rights were transferred to Warner Bros. Pictures, causing Hathaway, Jones, Macdonald, Parkes and Pascal to leave the project. Margot Robbie entered early talks for the role, and Patty Jenkins was briefly considered as director.[50] Kreiz was determined to cast Robbie after meeting with her; both he and Brenner felt that Robbie's appearance resembled that of a conventional Barbie doll and were impressed by her ideas. Initial meetings occurred at the Polo Lounge located in The Beverly Hills Hotel.[51][49] Brenner eventually partnered with Robbie's production company, LuckyChap Entertainment, and Robbie's husband Tom Ackerley and Josey McNamara were enlisted as producers.[48][49] Robbie's casting was confirmed in July 2019.[10]
In her capacity as a producer, Robbie pitched Barbie to Warner Bros. herself. During the green-light meeting, she compared the film to Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park (1993) and also jokingly suggested that it would gross over $1 billion.[52] Later on, she approached Greta Gerwig—whose previous films, particularly Little Women (2019), Robbie enjoyed—to screenwrite. Gerwig was in post-production for another film, and took the assignment on the condition that her partner, Noah Baumbach, also write the script.[53][54] Gerwig would sign on to also direct the film in July 2021.[55] Robbie said the film aimed at subverting expectations and giving audiences "the thing you didn't know you wanted".[56] In August 2023, Variety revealed that she would earn "roughly $50 million in salary and box office bonuses" as star and producer.[57]
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
Barbie grossed $636.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $809.4 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $1.446 billion.[6][7] This was described by Warner Bros. as "reaching a Barbillion."[231]
It was described as a "record-breaking" box office success during its opening weekend,[232][233][234] and set the record for any film that was not a sequel, remake, or superhero property.[235] Barbie became the highest-grossing live-action comedy film of all time, smashing the domestic record formerly held by Home Alone (1990) and the worldwide record formerly held by The Hangover Part II (2011) simultaneously.[236] It has also become Gerwig's highest-grossing film, overtaking its predecessor Little Women (2019).[237] The film crossed the $1 billion mark worldwide on August 6, 2023, making it the first film by a solo female director to do so.[238] This was also the fastest Warner Bros. film to reach $1 billion, beating Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011).[239][240] In late August, Barbie surpassed that same film again, becoming Warner Bros.'s highest-grossing film, not adjusted for inflation.[241] By September 2, the film surpassed $1.365 billion at the global box office, replacing The Super Mario Bros. Movie as the highest-grossing film of the year.[242][243] Additionally, it became the highest-grossing film by a solo female director, surpassing the previous record held by Jia Ling for Hi, Mom (2021).[244]
Themes and analysis[edit]
Philosophy[edit]
Barbie has been characterized as exploring themes of existentialism.[318][319][320] Lucy Ford of GQ wrote that the film "ruminates on the very idea of what makes us human, the idea of 'the other', whether there's truly such a thing as autonomy or if we're all simply pawns to be picked up and disposed of when we are no longer useful." Ford observed that, in the film, Barbie and Ken go on "opposite but equal" journeys of self-discovery, after venturing out into the Real World and learning that it is an oppressive patriarchal society as opposed to the matriarchal utopia that is Barbieland, and get "caught in the crosshairs of being both sentient and someone else's idea, battling with free will and the omnipresent predetermined rules about where to go and how to act."[319] In Clark University, Professor of Philosophy Wiebke Deimling compared a scene in the film, in which Barbie has to make a choice between going back to her perfect life in Barbieland or learning the truth about her existence in the Real World, to the experience machine, a thought experiment by American philosopher Robert Nozick. Diemling also observed that gender in Barbieland is performative, noting how the Kens behave before and after a patriarchy is established.[321] Alissa Wilkinson of Vox compared Barbieland to the biblical Garden of Eden, with Barbie and Ken as inverted parallels of Adam and Eve. She saw Barbie and Ken's first impression "that they're suddenly self-conscious and aware of being looked at" in the Real World as the film's version of the Fall.[322] Chinese film critic Li Jingfei (李竞菲) compared Barbie's sudden awareness of death to the moment when Siddhārtha Gautama left the palace of his birth and first learned of suffering and death, which eventually led to his enlightenment.[306]
Feminism[edit]
Katie Pickles of The Conversation said that Barbie shows how the matriarchy can be "as bad" as the patriarchy, with the Kens being the objectified and excluded sex in Barbieland. Pickles further comments that the true heroes were outcasts such as Weird Barbie and Allan, who deprogrammed the Barbies from tolerating the status quo. She believes that this aligns with Gerwig's conception of feminism, where "everyone stands in the sunshine."[323][324]
Jack Butler of National Review rejected the perception of the film as a "shallow, man-hating, and repulsive screed" and argued that the film is instead a "post-feminist satire of what feminists imagine a perfect world looking like and of what they imagine male dominance is like", noted that in the Real World, "Ken is rebuffed in all of his attempts to join the male hierarchy that purportedly dominates the world. He must return to Barbie land to institute it; what he institutes there is so shallow that it collapses almost as quickly as it is set up. Meanwhile, though Robbie's Barbie restores female dominance in Barbieland, she chooses not to stay there, electing instead to become fully human."[325]
Ross Douthat writing in The New York Times argued that the film "is a movie with a feminist default, but also [has] complicated and sometimes muddled feelings about what the sexual revolution has done and where feminism ought to go." Douthat comments that the female-centric nature of Barbieland is dystopian, where men are nothing more than "arm-candy", and where pregnant women and children are marginalized. He describes the film as "against the resilient patriarchy, but wary of the girlboss alternative. It wants womanhood and motherhood, but it doesn't want the Kens back in charge, and it doesn't really know what purpose men should serve."[326]
Many journalists coupled Barbie with the Eras Tour by Taylor Swift for the concurrent representation of recontextualized mainstream femininity.[327][328][329] Michelle Goldberg of The New York Times described the launch of the film and the tour, their rave public reception, and the associated critical discourses as the biggest cultural phenomena of 2023 summer, explaining that "beneath their slick, exuberant pop surfaces, [both the film and the tour] tell female coming-of-age stories marked by existential crises and bitter confrontations with sexism."[330] Ben Sisario considered both the works as critiques of patriarchy,[331] while Talia Lakritz of Business Insider said both of them "reclaim girlhood without rescinding power."[332] Similarly, Chris Willman stated that both use patriarchy as a subject of irony "while being utterly friendly to and welcoming of men as much as anybody", eventually becoming a billion-dollar-earning phenomenon.[333]
Masculinity[edit]
In the Los Angeles Times, Jean Guerrero presented a subtext to the film's feminist exterior, in which "a world that disregards men and their feelings is an inverted form of patriarchy and also cruel", and added: "The film is a rare product of mainstream culture that invites men to reimagine masculinity for their own sake. It acknowledges the identity crisis and loss of hope, economic promise and life purpose among American men. These struggles are often ignored by progressives, but conveniently and poisonously exploited by right-wing manfluencers from Andrew Tate to Josh Hawley [...] The film's reception has focused on its messages of women's empowerment, but what makes it a radical story is that it also invites women to reimagine feminism so that it doesn't ignore male struggles."[334]
Nicholas Balaisis contended in Psychology Today that Barbie provides a "relatively nuanced portrayal of masculinity" in two cases that resonated with issues and concerns frequent in clinical psychology and therapy: In the first case, which concerns the "over-valuation of a woman's gaze and attention on male sense of self-esteem, and even an existential sense of identity", Ken turns to patriarchal expression and masculine dominance "over other men, women or objects" because he does not receive the "sense of attractiveness, worth, and general self-value" he wants from Barbie's gaze and attention. In the second case, which concerns "the relationship to shame or existential solitude and the conversion to sex-as-soothing", when Barbie approaches Ken in the third act of the film for consolation, he interprets it as a sexual advance and tries to kiss her, which Dr. Balaisis likened to "the same way that shame can quickly morph into resentment and anger, here we see loneliness and existential angst being converted into a sexual plea — for sex to solve and resolve these bad feelings."[335]
Megan Garber of The Atlantic found that Ken and his journey of self-discovery "mimics adolescence", writing: "Like any teenager, Ken is figuring out who he is, and trying the world's possibilities on for size. But his immaturity is not contained, and this is its problem. His adolescent approach to the world, instead, inflicts itself on everyone else." Garber concluded that Ken embodies a "core idea" in the film "that patriarchy is a profound form of immaturity."[336] Eliana Dockterman of Time noted that Ken's radicalization resembles the men's rights movement, particularly in his "feelings of emasculation", male fragility and evangelization of the patriarchy.[337]
