I’ll be blunt. I didn’t think the Barbie movie would be a big success. I imagined it would be this decade’s Jem and the Holograms. None of the trailers seemed exciting. The movie seemed to be like Snakes on a Plane as in it was more exciting to discuss online than it was actually to see.
Comic Stacy Cay commented on her Twitter (or X) feed that she compared the fandom to Rick and Morty and that’s the most accurate thing I’ve heard. Yes, prior to its opening, there was this cockiness among people talking about it like it was the greatest thing ever. Then, it became a big success blowing away the competition from The Flash and Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning – Part One. And even the much anticipated Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny looks to be a box-office bomb after grossing over $369 million, that’s more than a third of a billion dollars.
Imagine 10 years ago saying that a movie that grosses a third of a billion is a box-office bomb. It could be that much of Barbie‘s success is from people going to see it to see how much they’ll have it. People aren’t smart as Charlie Sheen once told a heckler “I’ve already got your money, dude!” People buy stuff like Bud Light and Gillette razors just to destroy them online. But I think it proves something that Hollywood executives still haven’t been able to wrap their heads around – not every movie needs to be made for teenage white boy demographics.
We had pretty much reached peak awareness by the time Covid-19 hit in the winter of 2020 that not everything needed to be a blockbuster. And that seemed that was all that was being released. Some movies were delayed due to the pandemic. I think it was good for Paramount to delay Top Gun: Maverick but I wish Kong vs. Godzilla didn’t air on HBO Max. I saw that movie at a drive-in in the spring of 2021. It was nice to see a movie in a theater for a change, even if the Tulsa lights made a lot of it hard to see.
But ever since a playwright named Tyler Perry started turning his Christian-based plays about eccentric African-American people in the south into movies about 20 years ago, it was obvious there was a market out there for certain movies. And around this same time, the Kendrick Brothers of Albany, Ga., began to produce their faith-based movies, which have worse acting than porno movies, but are popular because people are foolish to watch anything with a Christian message.
The failure of the first batch of Left Behind movies in the earlyt 2000s to appeal to Christian viewers could’ve ruined the market once and for all. But when the remake premiered in 2014, it actually made over $27 million against a $16 million budget despite being hailed as one of the most worst movies of the year. Even Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas, produced on only $500,000, made almost six times that amount. His 2008 movie Fireproof, made by the Kendricks, was also produced on $500,000 but made almost $34 million, which is very impressive.
That same year, The Dark Knight made over $1 billion. I went to go see it on my 30th birthday at a movie theater nearby. Some teenagers, who I assumed were a couple, were there in front of me at the ticket line. There were on their way to see Disaster Movie and since the boy was making the girl buy her own ticket, I’d be surprised if they were still together much longer. But even that god-awful movie weas able to made a nice return against its budget.
Disaster Movie and The Dark Knight are movies make for white teenage/college-level males. And while they’re different in quality, their audience is still the same. And that’s what Hollywood has been doing for decades since the 1980s. Speaking of Indiana Jones, I saw a video on YouTube where the box office for Raiders of the Lost Ark was still in theaters in 1983. This was before the evolution of the home-video market where it was still cheaper to go see a movie than purchase a VCR and the outrageously expensive VHS cassette tapes. Even Blockbuster Video wouldn’t be started until the the latter part of 1985.
Quentin Tarantino wrote in his book Cinema Speculation that movies would often play for years in movie theaters, traveling around regional areas and on double-bills and lower quality theaters. Most of the producers of slasher horror movies arranged deals with these independent theaters. I don’t think you’d be able to find a dollar theater anywhere anymore. I remember they started to fizzle out in the 1990s. That was when movies still took at least six months before they went to video. Now, it’s about three months.
Barbie made over $1 billion in just about three weeks. It’s the first time a movie directed by a woman has achieved this level of success. I don’t care for Greta Gerwig, mainly because she was part of the Mumblecore movement of the 2000s. Even filmmakers like her and co-writer Noah Baumbach would criticize the use of the phrase “Mumblecore,” but I always viewed it as a fanfiction of the indie era of the 1990s. Also Gerwig was in the atrociously awful Baghead which is one of the worst times I’ve spent an hour and a half of my life.
Personally, I don’t think she’s a good actress. Her supporting roles in movies like Jackie and No Strings Attached seem to be her only range as an actress in bigger bdget movies. I didn’t see Ladybird and I refuse to because I don’t think Saoirse Ronan is a good actress either. But that just goes to prove that movies like Ladybird aren’t for me. And it’s ok. I’m not going to freak out because a movie was made that wasn’t for my appeal. The world doesn’t revolve around me. Books and movies are of varying genres and they don’t always appeal to everyone.
I’ll probably see Barbie when it comes on DVD or starts streaming. People like Bill Maher who has turned into the same right-wing, sexist old coot he used to rail against years ago, criticized the movie for its “end the partiarchy” message. And most audience reviews are by men, who are either review-bombing or watched it just to hate it. In movies like Sully, Clint Eastwood reduced Sully Sullenberger’s wife, Lorraine (Laura Linney), to just a few scenes where she is talking to Sully (Tom Hanks) on the phone.
And for the most part, a lot of women characters have been reduced to similar roles. Remember the criticism that Anna Paquin, an Oscar winner, didn’t have too many lines in The Irishman? Speaking of Jimmy Hoffa, in the 1992 movie Hoffa, penned by David Mamet, a man whose works can be considered misognyistic, only gave Jo Hoffa (Natalia Nogulich) about six or seven lines. I mean, Mamet objected to sharing a writing credit with Hilary Henkin for Wag the Dog.
But yet when the tables are turned, people get mad. People went after the 2016 Ghostbuster remake for making the titular characters played by women (Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones). I loved the original Ghostbusters and even the sequel. I actually felt the movie had potential and when I sat through the first 30 minutes, I was interested, but soon it became tired and boring. I felt McKinnon and Jones did what they could to keep the movie alive but I felt it was an unneccesary remake.
But in a world where we can have Transformer movies as well as LEGO movies, why can’t we have a Barbie movie? Better yet, why doesn’t Hollywood look at Jem and try to redo that the way it should’ve been done. I’ll be blunt, I don’t think we need another Little Women movie as Gerwig did one a few years ago and there was also one in the mid-1990s. And movies made by women don’t have to follow certain guidelines.
I’m actually glad to see more women directors are being taken seriously as filmmakers of horror movies and thrillers. Even though it divided a lot of people, Jennifer Kent did a great job with The Babadook. And Mary Harron along with co-writer Guinevere Turner kept American Psycho from becoming the psychopathic bloodbath that Oliver Stone would’ve turned the movie into. And Mary Lambert’s Pet Sematary is one of the most underrated horror movies ever.
Earlier this year, Disney released the live-action version of The Little Mermaid which had been controversial for some time for the casting of Halle Bailey as Ariel. And it was mainly because Bailey is black. And similar to Barbie, it’s received a lot of review bombs. But it’s a movie not made for everyone. I’d love to live in a world where the biggest problems for people are a ovie about a doll and the skin color of a fairy tale character. It just proves that a lot of people are more racist and/or misogynistic than they’d want to admit about themselves.
TRIGGER WARNING!! The following references movies with sexual assaults.
If people are upset about how Barbie might have an “anti-man” stance, think about all the times women have watched movies where a woman character is sexually assaulted even though it wasn’t relevant to the plot. I mean, there’s a lot to choose from. There’s Coal Miner’s Daughter where Loretta Lynn more or less gets raped on her wedding night. Then, there is Billy Jack where a woman is tied down to ground and raped. Both of those movies received PG ratings.
Comedies like National Lampoon’s Animal House and Revenge of the Nerd used sexual assault of women as comedy device. The Japanimation classic Akira has the character of Kaori sexually assaulted, beaten and then killed for no other reason but just because the filmmakers can. And even Christian conservative golden boy Chuck Norris’ movie, Forced Vengeance, had a main character be raped and killed by a goon.
Yet, you don’t hear much about those movies. If Barbie is preaching an end to the patriarchy as people say, then maybe they need to listen a little closer.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 