Hear Me Out: The success of ‘Barbie’ is a flash in the pan for the future of toy movies
It wasn’t so long ago that superhero movies were all the rage, with Marvel and DC dominating the box office throughout the 2010s and beyond, but now it seems that there’s a new trend in town. The success of Greta Gerwig’s new Barbie movie has demonstrated that life in plastic is fantastic fodder for contemporary Hollywood, with popular children’s toys and video game characters becoming the new big thing.
Marching to box office supremacy, Barbie opened with an impressive domestic figure of $155m, beating out Illumination Entertainment’s Super Mario Bros Movie and its $146m total back in April. No doubt, Hollywood studios have sat up and taken notice, with such toys as Hot Wheels, Rock’ Em Sock’ Em Robots and even the Magic 8-Ball receiving film adaptations in the coming years.
Still, we don’t think any of these aforementioned movies will come close to the success of Barbie, with Ruth Handler’s doll, owned by Mattel, being one of the most iconic toys of all time, holding considerable socio-political meaning. Teaching young girls that they could be anything they wanted to be, thanks to the endless variations of the doll, including astrophysicist Barbie, surgeon Barbie and even Air Force pilot Barbie, the brand had a sizeable role in the progression of gender equality throughout the late 20th century.
Songs were made about the doll, artists used her iconic beige plastic shape in their pieces, and the brand itself became synonymous with everything from consumerism to the idealism of the American dream. Similarly, matching the eclectic nature of the toy’s makeup, the movie brought together audiences from each corner of contemporary society, attracting young audiences through the allure of the doll, pop-culture conscious viewers eager to see stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling on the big screen, and even arthouse lovers who needed to see the latest offering from Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach.
Barbie is the perfect storm to conjure box-office magic, even being released at a time when B-movie cinema is thriving, where audiences are lapping up the semi-ironic melodrama and the chance to participate in their favourite pieces of new media. Helped by the viral ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon, which saw Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer being released on the very same day, fans have been creating memes about Barbie, engaging with the marketing months before the films release, all before donning pink and marching to their local multiplex to become gleeful participants in the craze.
Gerwig’s film offers something that modern media has been severely lacking in recent years, creating the sense of an essential communal viewing experience, inviting fans to engage wholeheartedly with the material, creating an organic word-of-mouth phenomenon that has no doubt been helped along by the historical significance of the adapted property.
Can the minds behind the forthcoming Magic 8-Ball movie honestly pretend that their product carries the same amount of social significance? Indeed, even if it starred Leonardo DiCaprio and was directed by Steven Spielberg, we doubt it would predict ‘box office dynamite’ even for itself. It would even be a struggle for Hot Wheels, which has made over four billion match-box toy cars over the years, to match this success, with the film lacking the iconic central figure able to push the movie to financial supremacy.
Few toys, if any at all, will be able to match this success; after all, few can even match Barbie’s social and cultural popularity. Of those that can compete, Lego has already launched a highly successful film franchise back in 2014, and G.I. Joe has already tried and failed, releasing three movies that were each as unoriginal as the last.
For Mattel and Warner Bros, Barbie has been phenomenally successful, but let’s not pretend Hot Wheels, Magic 8-Ball, and the Rock’ Em Sock’ Em Robots can match its success. This is merely a magnificent pink flash in the pan for the future of toy movies.
