Movie Review SSJ

Yesterday I read a story about Margot Robbie, who is the star of Barbie as well as a producer, revealing in a press interview that when she first pitched Barbie to Warner Bros. executives, she bragged about it.

She said, Universal Pictures has the dinosaurs and Steven Spielberg, and you at Warner Bros. can have Barbie and Greta Gerwig. “I told them this piece would make a billion dollars, and maybe I’m exaggerating a little bit, but we’ve got a movie to make, okay!”

And while at first, many may have thought this was a load of hooey, today it seems that it may actually come true. Because, in less than a week, Barbie has already surpassed $200 million at the North American box office and $500 million worldwide. As it stands now, this year’s global box office blockbuster of the year may well be Barbie.

And the claim of raking in a billion dollars is really not nonsense!

Anyway, if you have to pay attention to the recent Hollywood news, really are sentences are inseparable from the “Barbie”, but also all the way to watch this film, breaking all kinds of box office records, slowly become this year’s box office favorite.

Also because “Barbie” this film is too hot, recently basically all kinds of media are the director of the film Greg Gerwig’s interview. So I’ve synthesized the interviews from vogue, elle, wmagazine, nytimes, and a few other media outlets to talk about some fun issues, and I’ll bring you along for the ride.

1. the director’s earliest memory of Barbie

The director said: when I was a little girl, Barbie was kind of like forbidden fruit for me, because my mom disliked Barbie. But I still got a lot of Barbie dolls from the girls in the neighborhood, except that they were all incomplete, some of their hair was cut off, some of their shoes were lost, and the clothes they were wearing didn’t match.

2.The reporter mentions that she loved Barbie dolls as a child, but clearly remembers a phase of rejecting them because I wanted to be “cool” and “likable”. The same goes for the color pink. Was re-embracing these “girly” elements part of the director’s starting point for the film?

One of the things we were thinking about when we were designing the sets and costumes, the director says, was not to devalue little girls who like shiny, sparkly things. When eight-year-old girls play dress-up, they wear everything.

And when I was a little girl, I loved Lisa Frank, and I thought her work was the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.

And then when you grow up, you say, “No, I have adult tastes, I don’t need sparkly dolphins.” But there’s still someone inside you who loves glitter dolphins, you just have to let them out to play for a while.

3.Speaking of Barbie, Greta Gerwig actually had no intention of directing the movie in the first place.

Initially she just wrote the script with Noah Baumbach, and as the script was completed, it became clearer and clearer that she wanted to direct the movie. At the same time, she emphasized that if the financiers didn’t want to produce her version of the story, then she would have rejected the story as well. However, Margot Robbie, who was the producer and star of the movie, was the first one to come forward and support her, and the project was able to move forward.

4.The beginning of the story is also very interesting.

The very first idea of the entire film is when Barbie realizes this whole death thing. “Well, the story really starts when Barbie starts having uncontrollable thoughts about death.” So, Greta has also been imagining how the executives will react when she tells them this.

What does Barbie do when that line makes her jump out of that perfectly closed world? Her character tries to get the movie back to normal, but there’s no way. The good thing is, when the movie is first shown to the audience, when that line is uttered — “Have you ever thought about death?”

Instead, it elicited a round of laughter. Finally, all those who had been holding their breath for a year and a half breathed a sigh of relief.

5. the reporter felt that Greg Gerwig’s works always have similar emotions, even “Barbie” would remind people of the director’s previous “Little Women”.

Greta agrees with this statement she said: Yes.

In some ways, all the movies I’ve written, created and directed have been in communication with each other. When I’m in the middle of it, it’s almost a mystery. When I step back, I think, “Oh, you’re still interested in female topics. That’s what you’re fascinated by.”

That ambivalent pain, which never quite bridges the gap between adulthood and childhood, is present in this movie as well. It’s still a certain overflowing sense of joy, yet at the same time: “I’ll never be able to go back there again.”

6. Although this movie has set off a lot of discussion on the topic of gender, including various controversies. But in fact, the director herself wanted the movie to subvert gender stereotypes.
   She said that Barbie is “a real plastic person, she doesn’t change. If you throw her away, she doesn’t disintegrate. If I can give this character some humanity, some brokenness, that in itself is meaningful.”

Also, “In the double mirror image of this movie, Margot Robbie is also the perfect person we expect her to be. What does that mean, that she can be broken and vulnerable? Can we do the same?”

“Even though it’s about Barbie, it’s actually very personal. As personal as anything else I’ve ever done that originated with the creator.”

7.Of course, the production of Barbie did have its share of difficulties.

Mattel executives reportedly flew to the London set to try to convince Greta to remove the scene where Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), a teenage girl from the real world, claims that Barbie is sexist and fascist.

Greta also admitted to the rumor. She says: They never really agreed with me, like “We love it!” Something like that.

They just tentatively said, “Okay. I see you’re going to do it, so go ahead and try it, and we’ll see what happens.”

But that was enough, and I’m sure that once the scene was put in, they would have embraced it instead of being against it. Or rather, I wanted it to exist more than any other will to remove it.

8. About that very classic monologue in the movie

The director said, “I always wanted Amerika Ferreira to play this role and luckily she said yes. During the long preparation process, we reinforced her personality, talked about her experiences and her own life.

After three takes, I cried. Then I looked around and everyone was crying, even the men. It occurred to me that the issues she explored in that monologue exist not only for women, but for everyone.

9.Everyone is afraid that they will make a mistake and everything will fall apart, and it wasn’t until the moment of that monologue that I realized the significance of hers.

Did you expect conservative critics to slam the movie as an “attempt at awakening”, with the intention of burning their Barbie dolls? But Greta says she didn’t either.

Her hope for the movie, she says, is that it invites everyone to join the party and let go of the things that don’t serve us as women or men. I hope that in all the passion that they see or participate in, it will give them some relief.

10. Margot Robbie describing the encounter with Greta Gerwig was also very funny.

She said, “Oh, she’s the queen of the independent film world and I’m just a model for Colgate toothpaste. She would have been so boring to talk to, but I was really serious about the movie and wanted to show it!”
But as soon as we sat down, I thought, “Oh, she’s so smart, but doesn’t make anyone around her feel stupid. She’s funny and charming and gracious.”

11.As a director, Greta Gerwig likes to create a sense of security on set.

She says, “It’s like everyone is in the same shared dream world.”

There was also a Barbie-themed slumber party before filming, where the cast of at least twelve Barbie dolls got together with Amelica Ferreira; Ken briefly ran in to play parlor games.

Greta also encouraged the cast to bring their families to the set. At one point, Ryan Gosling was talking to the director’s mom. “She came right in. He couldn’t help but say, ‘Your mom is fantastic!'”

These practices also brought the entire cast closer together.

12. on the matter of whether there will be a sequel to Barbie.

Greta also gave her answer: At the moment, this is all I have. At the end of every movie, I feel like I don’t have any more new ideas, that everything I wanted to do is already done. Personally, I have absolutely no ideas.