“The future of moviegoing now seems increasingly tenuous, and studios have leaned on pre-awareness as a means of drawing people to theatres,” AlexBarasch writes. “A nostalgia play like ‘Hot Wheels’ is seen as a safer bet than an original concept.”
Although Barber was pleased with the “Barbie” partnership, he was clear-eyed about its implications. “Is it athing that our great creative actors and filmmakers live in a world where you can only take giant swings around consumer content and mass-produced products?” he said. “I don’t know. But it is the business. So, if that’s what people will consume, then let’s make it more interesting, more complicated.
More important, in the intervening years, the opportunities available to ambitious directors have narrowed further. The notion of a starry, C.G.I. “Bambi” reboot has gone from a joke on the HBO Max industry satire “The Other Two” to an actual movie that Sarah Polley is making in the wake of her Oscar-winning film “Women Talking.” During the pandemic, multiplexes collapsed.
Barbie was far from universally beloved. Some mothers found her anatomically impossible figure inappropriately sexual; others objected to her perfectly coiffed blond hair. Feminists argued that these qualities reinforced gendered stereotypes and unforgiving beauty standards. In the seventies, “I am not a Barbie doll” became a refrain of women’s-rights protesters. Other people came to see Barbie as a tool for empowerment—a proto-girl-boss.
Though Dickson was excited to work with Gerwig, he was also nervous about damaging the brand. He went to London, where the film was largely shot, a half-dozen times, spending days on set and engaging in lengthy discussions about the highs and lows of the doll’s history. Once, he flew in to hear dialogue from the script which worried him. Robbie told me that the conversation around the exchange—in which her character is lambasted for hurting girls’ self-esteem—was “about six hours long.
The toys were a hit, as was a syndicated cartoon series. Mattel responded by rushing new characters to market, but supply soon outstripped demand, and in 1987 a live-action adaptation, starring Dolph Lundgren, flopped. Kids moved on. But Masters of the Universe had been, briefly, a billion-dollar business.
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