#anti greta gerwig

[periprose]

maybe a controversial opinion, but I didn't really like Barbie. It's not because I didn't get what it was going for, it just felt very selling-a-message while being just shocking enough to keep people talking about it. I do like the stuff about barbie as an idea (feminist vs not, what it means to be a woman, gender roles, etc) but that doesn't really make it a good movie with a cohesive plot that I'm interested in watching again. it felt like I was getting preached at, and I'm sure tumblr adores analyzing everything about it but it just wasn't for me. The ending also just feels like they didn't know how to end it.

Side note, I think greta gerwig is a terrible director who's getting way too much acclaim for being contemporary and having strong feminist themes, when everything feels super on the nose. It doesn't feel like good directing to me, it never feels like I'm watching a movie I can truly get lost in. I also didn't like her version of little women because again the themes were so on the nose, nothing felt organic about it, and she added a lot of modern feminism to what should've been very tied to the historical context of the source material. It was very jarring. I also hated the ending and what she did to Jo- Jo is her own character and is not Louisa May Alcott, and just because you do a bunch of on-the-nose critique of the book in the movie, doesn't make it suddenly a good, thematically strong scene to watch.

I think she just benefits from actors giving great performances in her movies and that's why the ratings are always so high, because if an actor can sell it, if it's well shot, more people will like it. It could also just not be for me but idk.

And there are good ideas, again, I would just prefer if there was a stronger plot and more cohesion between ideas. Feels like everything was written for a bunch of people online to talk about how deep it was. I support that, I support the feminist takes, but where is the meat of the movie? Where are Barbie's sisters? Where is the feeling that I'm watching a story rather than a bunch of ideas?

I also have a million thoughts about how Greta made barbie x ken a somehow bad thing but I will save that for another post.

[ellisdelanceys]

Barbara Millicent Roberts would never create a matriarchy. Kenneth Sean Carson would never create a patriarchy. Barbie and Ken would never treat each other the way they did in that movie.

They love and respect each other, and they would only treat others with kindness, fairness, equality, and respect.

I blame Riverdale for this shit. (Aka, the Cynicalification of characters beloved by millions since childhood throughout multiple generations.)

[permanently-stressed]

every so often I get reminded that Narnia is getting a Greta Gerwig reboot and I'm like.

eughhhhhhhhhh

[darkcrowprincess]

(Don't like don't read. Post hate and I'll block you)

I hate now that Barbie is forever connected to that bad depressing 2023 movie. I want my barbie movies! My love stories. Friendship, and magic and girl power. Beautiful outfits and beautiful dolls. Where Ken isn't an asshole. Where Barbie world is great place for guys and girls! Where there's no dumb hate for enjoying dolls. Now everytime I look up Barbie that dumb movie is connected to it that makes fun of Barbie lovers and people who loves dolls and fashion in general. I'm all for feminism and being a feminist. I'm a 27 year old woman in 2024. But Barbie was my childhood as a lonely little girl. I loved dolls. And I feel like this movie constantly makes fun of that.

[littlewomenpodcast]

Greta Gerwig Kinda Seems To Hate Amy And Laurie Together

When the director/script writer and the leading male actor say that Laurie should be with someone else.....despite the canon.

That's pretty messed up..not to mention Laurie's character arc is missing from the film.

For anyone who does not know, Laurie and Amy love story can be found from several novels that Louisa May Alcott enjoyed reading. (Heir Redcliffe, Wilhelm Meister etc.)

[icedsodapop]

The other similarity between Barbenheimer I don't see media outlets covering:

Seriously, what was up with that smallpox joke in Barbie??

[joandfriedrich]

My apologies if you have answered this before but I was wondering what are your thoughts on the portrayal of Jo in Little Women (2019)? I like Saoirse Ronan as an actress and I think she did wonderful in the movie but the role she was playing didn’t feel like Jo March at all. It feels like a completely different person with the same name. Does that make sense? Like Jo in the 2019 version is a different person than the Jo in the books. And honestly I was kinda disappointed because the aesthetic and scenery are lovely but the writing was not little women at all.

No worries, I don't know if I've ever done a full detailed explanation of my feelings on Jo's character in the 2019 specifically, so this is a good excuse to talk about it. I completely understand what you mean, her portrayal did not feel in anyway the Jo March I came to know and love after all the years. Let's explore Jo's character assassination.

When I first heard of the project, I was so excited because for a long while Saoirse Ronan was my first choice to play Jo. I have seen her in many movies from "Atonement", "The Lovely Bones", "Brooklyn", and I agree, I believe she is an amazing actress, and I was excited to see what she would do for Jo. On a technical standpoint, she did act very well in the film, but whether or not I felt she deserved an Oscar nom for the part is something different. I personally think she didn't deserve it, not because she's a bad actor, but I don't think what she gave for the character felt worthy of it, you know what I mean? If anything, I think Lupita Nyong'o deserved it much more for her parts in "Us" than Saoirse did for this film.

So where does the problem lie? The writing. I would like to have it on record, I am not one of those people that say that every book adaption must be 100% exact from page to screen, I am open for leeway, creative choices, and cuts, but what I felt was done wrong here was simplifying and changing characters to the point they felt like hollow versions of their flawed but beautiful book counterparts.

Jo is one of the most complex characters in the novel, as her arch starts as a 15 year old girl who is all tomboy and rebel to an independent but loving woman she becomes. We see her reject ideas of marriage because of the social pressures she feels to marry well and how marriage at the time was a loss of freedom for women, to understanding that being a woman isn't contained to one specific box, that she is able to be independent while also having a husband who supports her dreams. She has a temper, it isn't something she gets over as quickly as she has a moment of crisis, she learns how to handle it, like Marmee did. She has internal misogyny that colors her viewpoint of the world, especially women, to understanding that women are as different as each March sister is, and that doesn't lessen their worth as women. Are these lessons we find in the 2019 film? No, it isn't.

Gerwig wrote Jo as if she was trying to appeal to the masses, giving her contradictions that go against her growth and character. Seeing her yell at Friedrich, throwing a tantrum worthy of a kindergartner, and acting selfish throughout her adulthood when it's the time she is the lest selfish is so wrong for her. Jo as a child was not kind, I think we as a society need to stop demonizing a 12 year old Amy for getting fed up when her 15 year old sister continually picked on her for so long that she snapped and did something she came to regret. These are kids, they are meant to be flawed, even annoying, and yet, so many people try to raise child Jo up as if she is the symbol of feminism when she was anything but. And Gerwig followed suit.

Throughout the movie, Jo acted so childish and it was portrayed as liberating, that her maturing means a sacrifice of her true self, that it leaves her sad and alone, and I feel like this is the opposite of real life. I am about to be 30 in a week, and as I have reflected in my life, I have never felt more like my true self in my whole life. It's because I had trials and tribulations to challenge me, question how I see the world, what do I want, where do I wish to go? These are questions we all go through as we get older, and it doesn't mean that we grow older and sadder, it means we change and become more self aware, closer to who we may truly be than anything else. And never forget, there is still so much life ahead, we have so much to learn, plenty of time to become who we ought to be. As David Bowie said "Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been."

Jo by the end of the film gains no character arch, she remains practically the same, having issues with change, relying on the familiar rather than ready to explore the unknown, going back on her feelings on Laurie to the point of writing a letter to accept him, which NEVER happened in the book, as she stayed firm on her resolve that she didn't love him romantically. The lack of an arch for Jo means we don't see her grow up, she stays this perpetual 15 year old girl who is selfish, can't take criticism (which book Jo gladly did as an adult), is pressured by her sisters to chase after a man she didn't even seem that interested in (if you go with the one ending), or ends up sad and alone with her book which is what she didn't want to do as she proclaimed she was lonely (if you follow the other ending). Her story is unsatisfying, as it paints her this tragic figure that never got what she wanted in life, despite that not being the case.

She gets to open a school that helps underprivileged kids to get an education, she gets to become an author in the following books, marries a man who loves her not only as a wife but as an equal, has children she loves dearly, and by the end feels she has had a fulfilled life that she wouldn't have traded for anything in the world. Gerwig didn't seem to understand that Jo could be all these things and decided to stick with what she wanted the character to be, but knew she had to satisfy the divided fanbase, hence the confusing ending and character that is Jo March.

Gerwig tried to add in elements of the real life Alcott, thinking that the idealized version of Jo and she were exactly one in the same, but it's not true, as Alcott did long to have a family of her own, had been in love with Henry David Thoreau, and wrote the character of Friedrich Bhaer as the expy of him to be with the expy of her. If Gerwig truly wanted to respect the wishes and vision of Alcott, she didn't need to look further than the wonderful novel she wrote over one hundred years ago.

In the end, the Jo we see in the 2019 film is nothing more than a hollow shadow of a great literary character that was destroyed by someone who, like the people she pandered to, never quite understood Jo in the first place, and therefore didn't deserve her.

[queenladonna]

Greta Gerwig, your crimes against Barbie, Ken, and Karbie can not stand. 😤

[doverstar]

the "I just. I just feel like women-" speech in Little Women 2019 and the "it is literally impossible to be a woman" speech in Barbie 2023 activate my gag reflex so fast. tell me you're a bad one-trick-pony writer who loves to whine without telling me you're a bad one-trick-pony writer who loves to whine

[hitchell-mope]

It’s time for a Narnia rant.

The only real, actual, problem with Susan is that a lot of very loud, very literature blind people keep thinking there’s a problem with Susan.

I mean think about it. She was expelled from virtual paradise twice. First time she had to go through puberty again and second time she had to leave FOREVER. Is it any wonder that she decided to think of Narnia as childish fiddle-faddle and chose to put her faith in worldly stuff like nylons, makeup, parties and dates?

Because that’s what it boils down to. Faith. No more. No less. You can’t separate the religious inspiration from the work no matter how hard you may try.

The books didn’t condemn Susan for “growing up too quickly” or “being a girl”. It lamented that she no longer believed in this magical place.

It wasn’t sexism in either direction. It was simply a lack of faith to protect her from hurt.

And all I get when I hear people say “Susan should’ve been with her family at the end” is that they wanted her to die in the same horrific accident her parents and siblings died in.

To me it just seems like those echo chambers I keep hearing about. Mutated Chinese whispers where everyone keeps rabbiting on about their interpretation which is highly incorrect but everyone likes it better than the truth so they repeat it ad nauseum until the ones who actually do care about the truth are seen as the enemies.

Which is why I’m fucking TERRIFIED of what films Gerwig chooses to direct. Because dollars to donuts she’ll “interpret” it her way just like with little women and Barbie and slap her own politics on it with no care for what the text actually means.

The films did Susan justice. She stabbed a Telmarine soldier in his dick with one of her arrows, shot another one with the same arrow and called it a day. They even gave her a nice little romance with Caspian which was rather cute if I do say so myself.

TL;DR: Susan Pevensie, and Narnia for that matter, doesn’t need to be stepped in 21st century tv feminism to be interesting. All they really need is an mostly decent understanding of the text and the, quite frankly, tragic backstory behind it.

[tavarillasgalen]

I know people are obsessed with Greta gerwig, but I'm like, plz keep her away from Narnia. She ruined barbie, she ruined little women, lady bird was not good, the last thing Narnia needs is forced preachy speeches about womanhood that are meant to be #relatable when they just come off as stiff and awkward.

The way I was so stoked about the Narnia remakes until I found out she's the director 😭

[ellisdelanceys]

Seeing any scene from Barbie (2023) like:

"He would not fucking say that!"

"She would not fucking say that!"

"He wouldn't fucking do that!"

"He would not fucking wear that!"

[thatscarletflycatcher]

It's very unfortunate that right now there's so much buzz about both T*ylor Swift and Gret* Gerw*g, because I loathe and despise everything they represent and I wish both a very "fade into obscurity, you never deserved the spotlight because you are shitty and toxic af".

[darkcrowprincess]

The losers club favorite barbie movies:

Eddie: Barbie as Rapunzel. Because he can relate to Rapunzel's feelings of being trapped and a prisoner by their parent. Plus dragons are cool

Mike: Barbie in the twelve dancing princesses. Mike has a soft spot for tthe theme of family and strength. Makes him think of the losers.

Richie: Barbie and the diamond castle. Because of how gay the movie it is. Richie has day dreams of running away with Eddie and having a life of their own. With maybe a couple of dogs.

Ben: Barbie in the Nutcracker. Ben is a romantic.

Beverley: Barbie and the three musketeers. She loves the outfits, the swords, and the music.

Stan: Barbie in princess and the pauper. I kind of like to headcanon that Stan has a soft spot for musicals. Plus he loves the song if you love me for me.

Bill: Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus. Mostly because of the arc between the siblings. Plus flying horses.

(Don't like don't read. Post hate and I'll block you)

[outlawssweetheart]

If you like Barbie (2023) beyond the aesthetic, we can NOT be friends.

[rogue205]

Only because of the live-action, people are trying to tote this as “the time of Barbie”?

Sure, we’ll just forget that she’s a plastic doll who can now be whatever profession you want her to be and who made her first appearance a whopping 64 years ago. She also already has several computer-animated shows and movies with the first coming out in 2001(according to sources). Not to mention comic and coloring books as well.

But sure, Gerwig created something new and original alright.