The movie is set in Barbie Land, a utopia where each Barbie has an impressive job. “And then when I saw the script, I was like, ‘They’re never going to let us do this. “We worked hard to give them their space and let them come up with what the movie was going to be, uninterrupted, without people pushing an agenda on them-not Mattel, not Warner Bros., not us,” says Robbie, 32, whose company Luck圜hap produced the film. Cloistered in their home in New York, the duo didn’t receive the typical studio notes as they drafted. After they participated in a Barbie boot camp put on by Mattel, which began with a history lesson on Barbie inventor Ruth Handler and involved a tour of Barbie’s most fabulous (and regrettable) fashions, the pandemic struck. Gerwig and her partner, the filmmaker Noah Baumbach, wrote the script under unusual circumstances.
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Kids were drinking, and I was playing with dolls.” Gerwig’s mom wasn’t a fan of Barbie for feminist reasons: “She went through the ’60s and was like, ‘What did we do all this for?’” But playing with Barbies proved to be a training ground for Gerwig’s job as a professional storyteller. “I played with dolls too long,” says the 39-year-old director. How did a filmmaker who is best known for thoughtful movies about women’s inner lives come to write and direct a movie about a toy who has no inner life, and is (mostly) defined by her looks? It’s simple: Gerwig loves dolls. “You can already taste the sweetness and you sort of go with the spice.” She calls it a “surprising spicy margarita.” By the time you realize the salted rim has cayenne mixed in, it’s too late.
“This movie is a goddamn miracle,” she says. Whatever audiences ultimately think of Barbie, Gerwig still can’t seem to believe she got away with making this version. (Though, as a Mattel executive reminds me, Barbiecore “didn’t just happen.”) Other moments suggest a snowball effect: Kim Kardashian recently threw her daughter a Barbie-themed birthday party, and celebs are stepping out in hot pink designer minidresses. Mattel has engineered some of the hype by launching Malibu Barbie cafés and announcing partnerships with Bloomingdale’s, Crocs, and Hot Topic. Anything associated with the film-a rare blockbuster catering directly to women-has been breathlessly received, from paparazzi photos of Robbie and co-star Ryan Gosling (as Ken) skating down Venice Beach in fluorescent spandex last summer to a teaser that cleverly parodies 2001: A Space Odyssey. If projections of a $55 million opening weekend prove out, it will be thanks to Barbie mania. Barbie’s move to Hollywood is the brainchild of Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz, who came into the job five years ago with a vision to leverage the company’s intellectual property into a cinematic universe based on Mattel toys.īarbie will be the proof of concept when it hits theaters on July 21, but first it has to go up against Tom Cruise (Mission: Impossible) and Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer) in the busiest summer movie season in years. After a period of declining sales, a recently reinvigorated Barbie is ready for her big-screen debut. Not just for Robbie and Gerwig, neither of whom has ever produced a movie on this scale, but also for Mattel. It’s also the most anticipated movie of the summer- if not the year-which means a lot is riding on Barbie. If you are wondering whether Barbie is a satire of a toy company’s capitalist ambitions, a searing indictment of the current fraught state of gender relations, a heartwarming if occasionally clichéd tribute to girl power, or a musical spectacle filled with earworms from Nicki Minaj and Dua Lipa, the answer is yes. But like Barbie, the movie’s existence is an exercise in contradictions. Maybe the movie would be an idiosyncratic, subversive, even feminist take on the doll, not just a commercial for Mattel. When it was announced in 2021 that Greta Gerwig, who directed the Oscar-nominated coming-of-age stories Lady Bird and Little Women, would helm Barbie, fans were confused, surprised, and delighted.
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