Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about The Matrix Resurrections and Top Gun: Maverick as milestones of the IP era. I called The Matrix Resurrections the end of the line for hyper-aware sequels…
“While The Matrix Resurrections is an extreme version of the wink-wink, nudge-nudge many IP films give viewers, it’s also the completely natural and utterly unnatural byproduct of our IP era… I walked out of The Matrix Resurrections wondering where IP could even go from here.”
…and I pointed to Top Gun: Maverick as an example of IP that went in the other direction, chasing sincerity instead of self-awareness.
“Top Gun: Maverick is a deeply uncynical film, one brimming with the optimism and sincerity of its predecessor. It’s uncynical not just in its politics, but in its filmmaking: it makes callback after callback to the original film unironically, lingers sentimentally over objects that have become iconic (jacket, motorcycle, etc.), and pushes the audience unrelentingly towards a state of heightened emotional nostalgia.”
In so many ways, both Resurrections and Top Gun had a finality to them, a sense that Hollywood had plundered the richness of these stories, leaving little to nothing for the future. These are stories that look backwards, not forwards. Endings, not beginnings. I posited that IP might not have any territory left to conquer.
It turns out, I was wrong. My error takes the very pink form of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, which leads IP into uncharted territory. I would never bet against Greta, but there’s a part of me that can’t believe Barbie is a good movie. (In fact, it’s great)! It’s wonderfully directed, thoughtful, and so much fun. And incredibly, the movie combines those antithetical IP anchors of self-awareness and sincerity, achieving what neither Resurrections nor Top Gun could: IP that feels fresh and surprising. Its mix of meta-criticism and Greta Gerwig’s earnestness is potent. And its greatest trick is not that it walks the tightrope with aplomb, but that at many points, it makes you forget that it’s walking a tightrope at all. The film is at its best when it feels free.
Unfortunately, Barbie is not free. Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie, and other cast and crew have been upfront about the fact that they had extensive discussions with Mattel executives to allow certain details to exist in the movie: naming Margot “stereotypical Barbie”, calling Barbie a fascist, and more. Conflict and compromise are part of the creative and commercial process of moviemaking, and unusually, it sounds like Barbie won far more battles than it lost. However, the very nature of these fights highlights that the goals of art making and brand protection are often divergent.
Any IP movie comes with a frame that we expect it to live within. This frame demands a commercial product, safe storylines, brand marketing, and all of the unsavory things we like to think of as separate from art. Even with a movie as creative and radical as Barbie, the success of the film ends up being measured relative to that frame. Can you believe they let them say that? How did they get away with this? Margot Robbie has told the press multiple times that she read the script and immediately said, “What a shame this will never get made”.
I risk sounding like Chicken Little, but all this leaves me asking again: where do we go from here? Barbie was a perfect storm of factors. Mattel should thank their lucky stars that Greta Gerwig not only exists but wanted to do this project. I’m not saying it was a fluke, but I worry that Barbie’s ultimate impact on the industry may be more negative than positive. Barbie’s success has more to do with the story’s thoughtfulness around what this IP means to us than the IP itself. That meaning - as well as the directorial hands to extract and form it coherently - simply does not exist with every Mattel toy. And yet, Mattel (and other companies) no doubt feels bolstered by Barbie’s success and assume that success justifies all subsequent attempts to replicate it. There are, in fact, 45 Mattel film projects already in the pipeline.
Many people point to The Dark Knight as a turning point in movies. I bring it up not just because I have Nolan on the brain, but also because The Dark Knight is now often understood as a pyrrhic victory— it’s a masterpiece, but the endless mediocrity it spawned in its wake may have outweighed whatever good it did in the first place. Every single grim superhero movie straining towards auteurship (Joker, The Batman, etc.) owes a debt to Nolan. A particularly rabid strain of fan culture (Snyder Cut) has its roots in the fan response to The Dark Knight’s Best Picture Oscar snub. The Academy Awards expanded the Best Picture nominees to 10 movies the following year.
Will Barbie be the next Dark Knight? Will we see dozens of movies about commercial products trying to be self-aware and “hip” with none of Barbie’s charm or depth? I think the answer depends on whether we continue to insist on IP not only as a commercial structure but as a genre unto itself. IP is developing storytelling hallmarks - callbacks, lampshading, multi-movie worldbuilding, etc. - just as a genre would, but we’d do well to remember that IP is fundamentally different. I believe genres are bottomless sources of inspiration. They can and do evolve (noir to neo-noir, American western to Spaghetti), maintaining some of their iconic properties, discarding others, and introducing still more. IP, on the other hand, is not inherently generative. To be harsh, it’s parasitic, casting about for material to leverage for its success. First, we built franchises (Indy, Fast & Furious). Then, we realized we could turn comic books into franchises of their own. When that well began running dry, we turned to products (toys, corporate stories - Air, Flamin’ Hot). What will we turn to next?
A movie like Barbie doesn’t alleviate my IP concerns so much as it accelerates them. The fundamental short-sightedness that has guided Hollywood’s transformation into an IP machine has created an unsustainable model. IP casts about for our attachments to buy our attention. Whether it’s a pre-existing story or a product we feel nostalgic for, IP exploits those connections as a shortcut— why build a foundation when one already exists? This isn’t inherently a problem, except for the scale at which this exploitation is taking place.
Our emotional attachments are a renewable resource, but it takes time to build the kind of genuine connection and widespread cultural foundation that something like Barbie has. Will people care about Hot Wheels in the same way? What about Boglins? The problem with a Hollywood centered around IP, any kind of IP, is that the use of our biggest nostalgia points has far outstripped the pace at which we form those connections. Studios’ obsession with mining our existing feelings to score big hits not only runs our emotions dry, it also cannibalizes the space in the market that might have been used to develop original, new attachments that could themselves become IP. This imbalance turns our own feelings into a finite resource.
And while the exploitation of that finite resource continues to dominate this industry, Hollywood will keep giving us movies that are navel-gazing in their essence. Movies that look only at our past to understand what can make money in the present. Movies that insist on making our childhood joys into acceptable fare for adults. Barbie is such a wonderful, joyous film. I hope we learn the valuable lesson it imparts on its main character: it’s time for movies themselves to make meaning and not merely exist as the thing that gets made.
Culture Crumbs
Greta Gerwig’s Letterboxd interview highlighting the movies that inspired Barbie
The revelation that several Orange is the New Black stars were barely paid, despite being critical to a massive hit show
Saoirse Ronan is likely engaged (per a cryptic engagement IG post from her husband)!
For those in NYC, the IFC is doing an erotic movies series of 21 films, including classics like Showgirls and Body Heat
This hilarious take that Nolan made Oppenheimer as commentary on his own filmmaking legacy
That’s all for this week! Thanks, and go check out Barbenheimer in theaters if you haven’t already!