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truly-hopeless · 2 years ago

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The Barbie Bug Bit Me HARD And I Can't Decide What to Write

So as I mentioned near the end of this post, I want to start writing for Barbie (well, I say "start," but I have one up already, albeit a short one inspired by a song from a musical that I'm not super fond of and may rewrite) to break the monotony of only either writing Death Note or my novel. I watched and loved several of the princess/fairy tale Barbie movies as a kid and still think fondly of them today; finding out that some of the movies share voice actors with Death Note (a brainrot that has lasted for four years now) was a neat bonus and has helped renew my interest in Barbie, as did the live action movie that came out this summer. So I have a lot of ideas for stories I'd like to tell using the characters, some recent while a couple others have been marinating for a couple of years now. But with the new limit I'm putting in place to make sure stories will actually get finished, I can only pick ONE of these ideas to write for now and I can't decide what I want to write. So I'm going to tell you, who is reading this, a little about the stories without giving too much away about the plots and then ask you to pick which one you'd most like to read out of the choices.

Threads and Seams: Retelling of the Princess and the Pauper, but in a Rashamon-stylr and with things diverging heavily from canon as early as chapter one when Preminger's attempt to expose Erika as an imposter and blame her and Julian for Anneliese's disappearance backfires HORRIBLY. Will also be a little dark.

Untitled Changeling!Erika AU: Another Princess and the Pauper retelling, except Erika is a fairy who starts to learn more about herself and grow into her powers as she impersonates Anneliese. A lighter fic than the previous idea, but there is a small amount of body-horror planned and some other fairies introduced as supporting characters can be tricky.

From Violet to Fly Trap: A young woman wakes up as Princess Luciana from the novel "The Island Princess," which diverges heavily from the Barbie Roberts movie she enjoyed as a child and ends on a sad note since the author died before she could finish it. With her knowledge of what will happen, Luciana is determined to make sure Ro gets the happy ending she deserves...even if she has to outvillain her mother in order to do it. I've been reading a lot of webcomics where someone is reborn into a novel that ends badly and/or as a character that will suffer A LOT and, upon realizing this, does what they can to avoid this fate and ends up changing the entire story. And since I also have an evil part of me that wants to write bad endings to light-hearted things and make myself and others cry, I thought, "Why not combine the two? Create an angsty mess for the protagonist to clean up?"

Barbie In Danganronpa: Pretty self-explanatory, Barbie and her friends are trapped in a school and are told that the only way to get out is for someone to get away with murder. This is one that I've been thinking of for several years now, jotting down character notes, going back and forth on who should live or die, and I have the prologue and two out of the "six" chapters (if you've ever played Danganronpa, you'll know that there are two parts to each chapter, and the fanfics I've seen also have each game chapter last for several story chapters) outlined. This will utilize characters from My Scene to fill out the cast and I also have several ideas for alternate endings. May or may not try to incorporate visual elements, if I can either learn to do it myself or commission someone to do it.

Missing Scenes: My Scene Existential Horror AU. My idea is that it starts out light, showing literal missing scenes about things we know likely happened off-screen (stuff that could act as stand-alone one-shots), but then gets dark once the real world changes to the work (dolls being replaced or discontinued, personalities being rewritten, even changing styles) start to impact the fictional characters, particularly Barbie's replacement Kennedy. May make this a script and try to see about making this an analog horror, but considering my struggles with Death Note: Legacy that might not happen.

Survival Guide For The Vegetarian Vampire (title may change): My Scene Romantic Horror Comedy AU. River has hit rock bottom. He's struggling to find work as a musician, his girlfriend has dumped him, and he can no longer go outside during the daytime without his skin breaking out into horrible boils and he can't feel full no matter how many veggies he eats. Thankfully, his roommate and long-time friend Chelsea is there to help him out, but will she continue to stick around when they both find out just how much he needs her? Crack idea I had at work that grew legs along with a not-crack ship attached (the diary entries said that long before River and Barbie got together, Chelsea had a crush on River before he let her down gently and she realized they were better as friends; I feel it'd be ironic if the tables were turned in adulthood, but Chelsea is 1. not ready for a new relationship [I'm not fond of positively portraying adultery/infidelity, so she and Hudson will have been apart for a few years, though I haven't figured out the specifics such as if it's because of a break up or death] and 2. unsure if River actually likes her now or is just on rebound or only interested in her blood or both).

So which of these should I focus on first?

#fanfiction #writing #barbie #barbie as the princess and the pauper #barbie as the island princess #my scene #alternate universes #horror #romance #drama #comedy #fantasy #thriller #tumblr polls

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night-unfurls-its-splendour · 2 years ago

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The Real connecting thread between Barbie and Oppenheimer isn't existential crises or the released date.

It's Connor Swindells and Jefferson Hall

Jefferson Hall, who plays Haakon Chevalier in Oppenheimer, was Mr. Robert Martin in ITV's 2009 adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma

Connor Swindells plays Aaron Dinkens in Barbie, and he also played Mr. Robert Martin in Autmn de Wilde's 2019 adaptation of Emma.

#jane austen emma #oppenheimer 2023 #barbie 2023 #connor swindells #jefferson hall

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thefvrious · 2 years ago

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since meeting gloria, things have changed exponentially for the doll. she's got a taste of what real life is, what it means to exist for a real reason other than someone's satisfaction, as someone's plaything — the idea that being played with too hard would wind up leaving you weird and ostracized. she's happier here, now, she thinks, with gloria. and sasha. they're her people.

if barbie can't do anything else, she wants to be the positive force in the lives of these young women. gloria, sasha — they need her as much as she needs them, she knows, and she wants more than anything to be good for them, to them, to give them what they deserve, to help them actualize the sorts of fantasies that barbies just don't think about because everything for women is perfect there as a way to disguise how fucked up it still is out here.

barbie sits and listens, canting her head to the side as all the weight spills and spills out of gloria. the blonde's brow furrows and she feels only a little better with the warm, soft weight of gloria's hand on top of hers. "you have nothing to be sorry for. i'm here to listen to you. always. i just wish i knew better, wish i could help you better." she sighs, squeezes gloria's hand, leans in to kiss her cheek just gentle. "you're the reason i'm here, you know? so you're definitely doing something right." whatever that means.

continued from ( x ) // gloria vasquez & barbie roberts

𝗜𝗧'𝗦 𝗡𝗢𝗧 𝗟𝗜𝗞𝗘 𝗕𝗘𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗦𝗢 𝗦𝗘𝗟𝗙 𝗗𝗘𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗖𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗜𝗦 𝗢𝗨𝗧 𝗢𝗙 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗡𝗢𝗥𝗠. it's not unlike her to take angsty teenage fury to heart, letting those biting words swim and swirl around her mind until they eventually settle themselves onto the tip top of the mountain of shortcomings she's all too aware of. it's almost impossible to tear her away from the pit of wallowing, for her to reach up and trust that she'll be pulled up and out. and yet, here she is, barbie, a bombshell of a person, as lovely inside as the stunner she is on the out, offering up her hand. how can she sit there, all frowns and frustrated tears prickling away when there's a bright light in front of her? there's warmth in those baby blues, warmth that 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙬𝙨 𝙖𝙬𝙖𝙮 the iciness of the aftermath of a spat.

heart's full at the blondes words and for gloria, it's enough to get a small smile out of her, 𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗳𝘂𝗹. one day she might be able to see things through a happier lens, with more kindness for herself than she ever allows, ❝ i just... it's so hard. it's like everyone knows their lines and what to do and where to go and how to solve everything. and i'm.. here, tossed out onto the state with no script. and every choice i make is wrong and i'm ruining the whole play. and sometimes i just want to throw in the towel, call him, y'know, brian, and ask him how the hell he does this. but i can't because then i'm basically admitting i'm the worst. and that's not going to happen. ❞ finally, a breath, awareness hitting her like a truck, the momentum of her rant stopped ( 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳, 𝘪𝘯 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘩𝘰𝘯��𝘴𝘵𝘺. 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘩𝘦'𝘥 𝘦𝘯𝘥 ) there's a hand reached up, gently landing on barbies own, ❝ i am.. so sorry about that. but um, thank you. thanks, really. i kind of get lost in the doom and gloom so it's nice to have a reminder it's not all bad. ❞

ft. @thefvrious

#barbie roberts ~ thread #barbie x gloria #chmerical

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newromantisc · 1 year ago

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personagens participando do ask game, por ordem de preferência: anna marie lebeau (rogue), freya, warren worthington iii, jayce talis, norville rogers (shaggy), kuai liang, sarah fortune (miss fortune), lexa kom trikru, victor van dort, natasha romanoff, barbara roberts (barbie), elijah mikaelson.

fique à vontade para transformar as asks que mandei em thread, precisa nem perguntar.

comente 🧵 na ask que você quer que seja transformada em thread.

vou enviar ask pra todos os links que achar pela dash, mas deixe um like aqui pra ter prioridade.

#˛ ⠀ ⠀ ⋆ ⠀ ⠀ 𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐬.

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percentstardust · 2 years ago

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@deafandstoned

"My merchandise and dolls are for everyone. My motto is "Be Who You Want to Be." for a reason." Barbie has always seen her dolls for girls and boys who wanted to play with them. Her clothing line and everything in between were no different. Of course, there are masculine themed things primarily for those who prefer that given her little partnership, and relationship, with Ken. Though, Ken himself is secure in his masculinity, which makes him a figure to look up to alongside her. The two of them were quite the pair

"You should not feel ashamed about anything."

#deafandstoned #& threads ( barbie roberts )#verse; life is your creation ( main )#barbie knows some parents suck but she's still going to reassure them anyways

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kevinsreviewcatalogue · 2 years ago

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Barbenheimer Double Feature Reviews: Oppenheimer (2023) and Barbie (2023)

NOW I AM BECOME BARBIE GIRL, DESTROYER OF BARBIE WORLD

MELTING PLASTIC, IT'S FANTASTIC

FALLOUT IN THE AIR, DESTRUCTION EVERYWHERE

ANNIHILATION, END OF ALL CREATION

...ahem. Anyway...

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Oppenheimer (2023)

Rated R for some sexuality, nudity and language

Score: 5 out of 5

Christopher Nolan is a very talented filmmaker who I have very mixed feelings about, and one who I think has been considerably overrated by film geeks of my generation who fixate on his successes and ignore his failures. On one hand, his Batman trilogy still holds up and has left a lasting mark on the character beyond just film, ensuring that his legacy in geek culture would be an enduring one even if he never made another movie. Inception, meanwhile, was a brilliant sci-fi thriller, and Dunkirk is one of the best war movies of the last ten years. What's more, his loving embrace of practical effects and old-fashioned storytelling is one that Hollywood could use more of in a time when it seems that bloated, CGI-fueled, franchise-baiting monstrosities are leading it down a road to ruin. On the other hand, his and Zack Snyder's attempts to apply The Dark Knight's deconstructionist approach to Superman with Man of Steel produced a movie that I didn't really like then and which has held up only worse with the hindsight of ten years of the DC Extended Universe, his sci-fi epic Interstellar was beautiful to look at but had a plot that went straight up its own ass and betrayed its pretensions towards "hard" science fiction, and while I did not see Tenet, his actions and public statements concerning the release of that film theatrically even during a pandemic struck me as pretentious to the point of callousness. What's more, he's popularized a rather annoying trend in sound mixing of trying to make audio more "realistic" that, in practice, means that dialogue often gets drowned out by ambient noise, especially during action scenes where there's a lot of loud noises going on in the background.

That said, while I believe that Nolan is ultimately human, I can also acknowledge that there's a reason why he's considered one of the best filmmakers working today. When he hits, he typically sends it out of the park. And Oppenheimer is Nolan at his best. He takes a three-hour historical biopic, one whose only real scene of spectacle is the Trinity test, and makes it feel like a three-hour epic. It has a sprawling, all-star cast and takes place over multiple time periods, often jumping back and forth between them as it needs to, but keeps its focus on a number of important threads in its subject's life in a manner that keeps it cohesive. The entire cast does amazing work, above all else longtime Nolan collaborator Cillian Murphy as the title character, a man who slowly and then all at once starts to realize what his groundbreaking scientific work has unleashed on the world. This was not the sort of movie that had me checking my watch even with its great length; no, I was gripped the whole way through, all the way to its tragic conclusion as J. Robert Oppenheimer looks back on his life and tribulations and wonders if he will go down in history as the man who destroyed the world. It is a grim film, and knowing just the barest amount about the subject matter going in, there's a reason why my double feature of this film and Barbie had me watching this one first. But it is a worthwhile one, and one that I think will go down in history as a modern classic and one of Nolan's best.

Much of the film is told in flashbacks from the year 1954, as Oppenheimer is undergoing a security hearing to determine whether or not his Q clearance should be revoked due to suspicion that security leaks at Los Alamos National Laboratory under his watch may have enabled the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to take great strides forward on its own atomic weapons project. We start in the interwar period as Oppenheimer establishes himself as one of the world's leading nuclear physicists, continue through his establishment of the Los Alamos laboratory, the Manhattan Project, and the first and only wartime use of nuclear weapons, and conclude in the postwar years as he grows increasingly concerned about the destructive potential of the atomic bomb and especially the hydrogen bomb, becoming a leading voice in favor of arms control instead of an arms race. Through it all, his left-wing sympathies, owing to him being both a Jewish man watching the rise of fascism and a scientist whose profession strongly values the free flow of information, bring him first a measure of soft distrust during the war and then a more hard-edged suspicion afterwards as East/West wartime collaboration breaks down into the Cold War, especially given his interaction throughout his life with people and organizations (including his brother Frank, his wife Katherine, his mistress Jean Tatlock, and the Berkeley professor Haakon Chevalier) who were at one point or another connected to the Communist Party of the United States.

The film starts and ends with Cillian Murphy, who plays Oppenheimer at various points over the span of more than twenty years and is captivating in all of them. In his early scenes, between his hair and his performance, he evokes the feeling of a young "rock star" intellectual with his sights set on a bright mission to change the world, bringing with it the requisite ego. Being tapped to run the Manhattan Project forces him to clean himself up, literally and figuratively, adopting a more traditional haircut and dress while ending his overt dalliances with the various communists around him; while he remains with his wife after she explains to him that she lost faith in communism after her fiancé ran off to fight for the Spanish Republicans and died there (in real life, it was more complicated, but it's implied anyway that she's not being wholly honest here), he pulls back from Chevalier when he tries to get him to spill some nuclear secrets to pass along to the Soviets. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki leaves him haunted after he finds out just how much damage his weapon did, best conveyed in a scene where Nolan's sound mixing is actually used well as the congratulatory speech Oppenheimer is giving to his fellow workers at Los Alamos is drowned out by his own internal panic. Before the Trinity test, the possibility is raised on more than one occasion that the atomic bomb might ignite Earth's atmosphere and destroy the world; while that obviously didn't literally happen, the film ends with Oppenheimer wondering whether or not he might have done so metaphorically.

This is not a movie that glamorizes Oppenheimer. On one hand, it spotlights how he was not only one of the greatest minds America had at the time, but also somebody with a strong moral code, from how his politics were motivated by a genuine desire to do right by the world to how he helped recruit numerous European Jewish physicists into the Manhattan Project by recognizing how Adolf Hitler's antisemitism was causing him to cut off his nose to spite his face. On the other hand, by the time he realized what he unleashed and put aside his dispassionate pursuit of science for its own sake in favor of activism, the cat was already out of the bag, and what's more, his idealism, paired with his womanizing, blinded him to the threat of spies seeking to steal his research and use it to empower the Soviets, ultimately destroying his hope that the postwar era would see global cooperation for the betterment of all instead of the competition for power and glory that it ultimately became. He may be the main character of this film, but by the end, even he wouldn't tell you that he was any sort of hero.

The story here is big, and Nolan wades right into it and makes it feel big. At times, the number of supporting characters, famous faces in both the historical figures and in the all-star cast playing them, was almost too many to keep track of, but Nolan keeps it focused on the big ones, specifically how they all interact with J. Robert at various points in his life. In a unique touch, the "present-day" scenes in 1954 are shot in black-and-white, and the flashbacks in color, a choice meant to show that the security hearings are purely fact-based while the flashbacks are colored by Oppenheimer's memories of the events but which I think also served to highlight how, by the time the Cold War was in full swing, his youthful idealism had long since withered in the harsh light of how things actually played out.

And more importantly, even though this was a very "talky" movie, it felt as propulsive as any of Nolan's other films. Ludwig Göransson's score lent a sense of urgency and impending dread to the proceedings, knowing that it was telling the story of the inventor of the most fearsome and deadly weapon ever conceived and always seeming to be driving the film forward. Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema crafted a visual style that feels naturalistic in true Nolan fashion without necessarily going grim and gritty, whether it's the musty old libraries and classrooms that have a hint of dark academia to them or the vistas of Los Alamos, New Mexico that feel consciously designed to evoke Westerns, a comparison that Kitty herself makes when she first sees the town, highlighting the irony of how that older, simpler age of American history was about to be brought to an end through a project carried out in the kind of scenic Western vista that John Ford himself might have shot a movie. It was a long movie, but it was not a bloated one in the slightest. After all, how can you be when you're telling the story of a man who, for better or worse, changed the world?

The Bottom Line

Oppenheimer is another film that proves that, when Christopher Nolan is on the ball, he knows how to make a masterpiece. Whether you're a movie buff or into history or science, this will probably stand the test of time as a classic, and a definitive treatment of the life and work of J. Robert Oppenheimer.

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I was told that the preferential viewing order for this would be to screen Oppenheimer first and then Barbie, so that's exactly what I did.

Barbie (2023)

Rated PG-13 for suggestive references and brief language

Score: 4 out of 5

As a toy, a character, and a pop culture icon, Barbie is a figure with a lot of baggage. On one hand, when she first debuted in 1959 on store shelves that were otherwise lined with dolls of babies and young children, she was a game-changer, one who turned dolls from a fantasy of motherhood to a fantasy of being all grown up. She was the original ideal of the modern, liberated woman: beautiful, glamorous, and, as time went on, capable of working every career under the sun, while also having a handsome (boyfriend? Best friend? It's varied over the years) named Ken. On the other hand, having Barbie, a very '50s/'60s idea of a modern, liberated woman (even one who was herself designed by a woman, Ruth Handler), as an ideal to live up to has done a number on the self-image of generations of young girls, especially when it came to standards of physical beauty, and her aspirational marketing often ran head-first into a world where women and girls often found themselves treated as second-class citizens compared to men and boys.

As such, the announcement of a movie based on Barbie, officially licensed by Mattel, was inevitably going to have to tackle all of this head-on: what Barbie was originally conceived as versus what she had come to represent. And when it was announced that Greta Gerwig, a young filmmaker known for naturalistic, relationship-focused dramas who came up through the "mumblecore" scene in indie cinema, would be directing and co-writing the film with her longtime partner (both creative and romantic) Noah Baumbach, I thought I'd figured out exactly what kind of movie I was going to get just from the trailers: a stinging satire of Barbie's complicated relationship with womanhood and girlhood, wrapped in over-the-top girly aesthetics. That is more or less the film that they delivered, but not in the directions I was expecting. Make no mistake, Barbie is an avowedly, unapologetically feminist film, and one that I'm not surprised has already inspired plenty of unbridled, predictable rage from a certain class of commentator. But it's one that surprised me, and one where really getting into the meat and potatoes of its message would require giving away some of the best moments of the movie.

So, to keep this brief, I had a blast with Barbie. It is undoubtedly a very snarky parody of the doll line, its commercialization, and how people have reacted to it over the years, but it is also an affectionate one made by somebody who clearly spent much of her childhood playing with Barbie dolls and suggests here that they played a big role in making her who she is today. It couldn't have had better casting, not just in its sprawling all-star cast but also in its leads, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, who not only perfectly look the part of the iconic characters they play but take them to some very interesting and even daring places over the course of the film. It's a visual treat, especially in how it imagines the neon-pink world that Barbie and Ken live in, and its jokes were not only hilarious but also hit very close to home, like the most biting Saturday Night Live parodies of Barbie done on a blockbuster budget. Even if you're the most rugged, bearded manly man who thinks he's above this kind of movie, I guarantee, you'll laugh your ass off watching it.

The film starts in Barbieland, where all the Barbies and Kens live. It's presented to us as a utopian matriarchy where all the Barbies are successful women living their best lives and running everything, and the Kens are eye candy who are happy to live for their girlfriends. Robbie and Gosling's characters are the classic, stereotypical Barbie and Ken we all think of when we hear the names "Barbie and Ken", the beautiful blonde bombshell and her hunky-yet-chaste romantic partner whose life revolves around two things, Barbie and the beach. It's established early on that the Barbies know they live in a fantasy world connected to a toy line in the "real world", and that their purpose is to serve as an aspirational ideal to young girls so that they can become better women when they grow up. Which makes the thoughts of death that Barbie has one day rather unfortunate, especially as they mark the beginning of a breakdown of her perfect life. Turning to "Weird Barbie", a wise older Barbie who lives alone and is connected to a real-world Barbie doll whose owner badly mistreated her, for help, Barbie sets out on a mission to the real world to find the little girl she's connected to, with Ken coming along for the ride.

The film doesn't linger for very long on the mechanics of how all of this operates beyond "it's magic", and frankly, it doesn't need to, dropping enough hints that most viewers could probably figure it out on their own. The Mattel corporation is fully involved, but while Will Ferrell's vaguely villainous CEO has shown up in the marketing for this, he and the company as a whole are chiefly two things: the butt of many of the film's jokes, and more importantly, red herrings. The actual villain is telegraphed pretty early once Barbie and Ken enter the real world, and their identity is rather important to the film's central themes, but I will hold off on spoiling it because it's just such a fun moment that I don't wanna give away. Rest assured, though, this is not a film that rests on its laurels and just throws a torrent of classic Barbie iconography at you to distract from a threadbare story.

And it all starts with the casting. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken may just be the most perfect casting I can imagine, two actors who both embody the kind of mid-century Hollywood beauty standards that Barbie and Ken were based on and are also two of the most gifted actors of their generation (side note: Gosling's been around for so long that I was surprised to see that he's only eight-and-a-half years older than Robbie), meaning that they don't just look the part, they fill it with personas that I imagine will color how people view the dolls for a very long time. Robbie grabbed me from the moment we get an early dance sequence set to a Dua Lipa disco banger in which, after voicing her thoughts about death, she's tries to go back to putting on a happy-go-lucky party girl face -- but every so often, for just a split second, we see the look of worry creep in. Her comic timing, one of her strongest yet most underappeciated assets, is also on full display here, setting up some of the most hilarious scenes in the film. Throughout, Robbie delivers the kind of performance that would vanquish any doubts as to whether or not she's just a flash in the pan, running the full gamut of emotions as she has to learn about the real world and all its messy stuff. She would've easily walked away as the film's MVP if it weren't for Gosling, who matches her beat-for-beat as Ken learning about his own place in the world and what it really means to be a man. He gets a pair of great musical numbers that both land incredibly well even if he doesn't have the best pipes, and does an amazing job making Ken not just a partner to Barbie, but a mirror to her in some key ways.

Among the characters in the real world, meanwhile, it's America Ferrera and Ariana Greenblatt as the mother Gloria and her teenage daughter Sasha who both give this film its human soul and rest at the heart of its message. We meet Sasha first, and she's representative of young people who see Barbie as a symbol of the older generations' broken promises to girls and young women, the unattainable ideal that they could never live up to and which was all too often used to belittle them. Gloria, meanwhile, is a mom approaching middle age and working an unglamorous office job who sees Barbie quite differently, as the figure who showed her that she didn't have to choose between a career and a family, and remains attached to the ideal of Barbie even if she knows her life isn't perfect. Together, Gloria and Sasha are the ones who force Barbie to confront what she symbolizes, especially as her own life increasingly flies off the rails and she needs to figure out who she really is if she wants to... well, again, spoilers.

It was perhaps to be expected that Greta Gerwig made this a character-focused film above all else given her background, but the real surprises came in the production design. The trailers already showed off Barbieland quite vividly, and the film spends a surprising amount of time there to show it off even further, a landscape saturated in bright pink and primary colors that would feel like it came out of a Y2K-throwback hyperpop music video if it were played for even the slightest bit of irony. The other assorted Barbies and Kens (and forgotten oddities in the Barbie back catalogue like Midge, Skipper, and Allan) are played by a who's who of actors, musicians, models, and other celebrities who feel like they all signed onto this film just to have the opportunity to say that they were in the Barbie movie, and each of them felt like they were having a blast hanging out on set, the exact kind of non-stop-party energy that Barbieland needed. Speaking of hyperpop, the soundtrack too is absolutely stuffed with top-notch quality, a murderer's row of pop and R&B superstars, cult favorites, and up-and-comers that I think is likely to inspire a lot of musicians in its own right, especially with how it often plays in the context of the movie itself.

If I had one real problem with the film, it's that the bits with Mattel often felt superficial and extraneous, especially compared to the deeper commentary of the film's main satirical thrust. Will Ferrell was funny as he often is, but he felt like he was only in this to act like an oblivious jerk, he and his corporate minions barely figuring into the plot except to serve as an obstacle. There are ways I think this movie could've approached the Mattel subplot better, and which it seemed to be leaning into, presenting them not as a soulless corporate behemoth but as a company whose leadership seems to genuinely think they're doing right by the world in general and girls in particular, but is critically failing them and leaving many of them bitter like Sasha. It's a subplot that could've been fleshed out a bit more with maybe five or ten minutes of extra scenes; I'd love to see what the deleted scenes look like when this hits home video.

The Bottom Line

Barbie wasn't just a wonderful palate cleanser after the gloom of Oppenheimer, it's a legitimately great movie in its own right, as both a big, high-concept comedy of a sort we don't normally get these days and a cutting yet affectionate satire of its main subject. If anybody tells you this movie's "only" for women and girls, don't listen to them. Go see it anyway.

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denimbex1986 · 2 years ago

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'July is witnessing an influx of big budget releases. From Bollywood’s Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani to Hollywood’s Mission Impossible: The Dead Reckoning Part One, Barbie and Oppenheimer, cinephiles are spoilt for choice.

You’ve probably heard of the massive box office clash between Barbie and Oppenheimer, but have you heard of Barbenheimer?

It’s a rapidly growing pop culture internet phenomenon where instead of pitting the two films against each other in online debates, people have turned it into a double feature, discussing the best order to watch the two films on the same day.

So far, there is a clear order, as dictated by internet culture led by several discussion threads — first watch Oppenheimer, a serious and intense story, and then Barbie, a light-hearted film to neutralise the heaviness of the former. But the debate around the ‘correctness’ rages on!

If only the world could agree on things this easily every day!

Barbie tells the story of the world famous eponymous doll who is expelled from Barbie Land and enters the real world with Ken on a journey of self-discovery. The fantasy comedy film is expected to be light, funny, frivolous and all-things-pink.

On the other hand, Oppenheimer is a biographical drama that chronicles the story behind the world’s first atom bomb and its creator Robert J Oppenheimer who invented it during World War 2.

Completely contrasting themes, right?

That’s what led to a memefest on social media with users comparing the two films, different in their genres and tonality. Over months, this has emerged into one united online phenomenon — Barbenheimer, where people are no longer pitting these vastly different films against each other and instead preparing themselves to watch both films on the same day in the best order possible.

What could be a Barbie Vs Oppenheimer fan war has instead brought fans of both worlds together, who will now end up watching a film other than the genre they prefer. In the end, it is a victory for cinema.

This meme culture has driven thousands of people to book their tickets in advance to not miss out on the Barbenheimer craze. It’s a moment in history where two distinctly different films with an equally strong starcast have received an equal amount of love from fans.

After years of watching franchises take over theatres, the Barbenheimer meme culture comes as a breath of fresh air for movie lovers. It gives them an opportunity to take a break from the Marvel-fication of cinema with fans feeling pressured to keep up with every series or movie release in order to stay updated with their favourite cinematic universe. It’s a constant and tiring pursuit of content that aims to serve itself more than its fans.

Oppenheimer is the first script Christopher Nolan wrote in first person to tell the story from Robert J Oppenheimer’s perspective. Despite its serious and dark tone, people are excited to see Nolan back in action with a stellar star cast of Cillian Murphy (who plays the titular role), Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek and Kenneth Branagh.

The marketing campaign for Oppenheimer has been fairly simple — regular press interviews with Cillian Murphy and a few with Robert Downey Jr. The biggest splash was perhaps a picture of John Krasinski with the film’s cast that started trending on social media.

However, Barbie’s theme and marketing strategy is in sharp contrast with Oppenheimer.

As compared to Oppenheimer’s minimalistic campaign, Barbie went all out. Microsoft and Xbox collaborated for a pink Dreamhouse style gaming console, Hot Wheels launched a pink Corvette Stingray and AirBnB created a life-size pink mansion to celebrate the movie. For promotional tours, Margot Robbie wore several outfits inspired by old and new Barbie dolls.

Mattel clearly went all out to reclaim the colour pink and crown Barbie as its sole queen.

They took something as simple and frivolous as a kids’ doll and turned it into a point of curiosity. Hence, despite having a ton of promotional material, we still don’t know what Barbie is actually about.

All we know is that it stars Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Will Ferell, Kate McKinnon and is directed by Greta Gerwig — the same person who directed Little Women. That’s enough to tell us Barbie won’t be a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy. It’ll probably address something deeper, given Gerwig’s talent.

Memes usually follow a film, driving curiosity AFTER its release. In the case of Barbenheimer, it’s driving people to theatres in hordes, a beautiful sight to behold after ages and a reminder of the power of internet culture in controlling the film economy.

I don’t know about you, but I’m definitely a Barbenheimer girl!'

#Barbie #Oppenheimer #Barbenheimer #Cillian Murphy #Margot Robbie #Greta Gerwig #Little Women #Ryan Gosling #Will Ferrell #Kate McKinnon #Robert Downey Jr.#Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 #Matt Damon #Casey Affleck #Emily Blunt #Florence Pugh #Rami Malek #Kenneth Branagh #John Krasinski

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