As I type this, the Barbie movie is about to start playing in theaters, which prompted my thoughts. Here’s the thing: I know I’m not the target demographic. It’s not made for me, and I’m fine with that. I’m under no delusion where every movie must appeal to every demographic, but most especially mine in particular. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy movies which were, ‘not meant for me.’ I love movies in general, and even when watching movies in genres that aren’t my favorite (westerns, “chick flicks,” slashers, etc.), I can still find redeeming qualities about them. I can still admire the camera work, the editing, or the acting, even when the movie isn’t great. But the thing that makes any movie great is a good, compelling story with character growth. For instance, I quite enjoyed Nottinghill, While You Were Sleeping, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The Tudors series, which might surprise people.
So having prefaced with all of that, I hope Barbie is a good movie. I’m actually somewhat thrilled that something NOT for me is coming out because there has been so much low-quality superhero stuff lately. I hope it’s got good writing and direction. But mostly, I hope that it is made for the fans of Barbie, just like how Nintendo/Illumination made The Super Mario Bros. Movie for the fans like me. If Barbie turns out to be made for the fans, but is also something that I can enjoy, then even better. I’m envisioning something like Mean Girls, which I quite liked because I think Tina Fey is an excellent comedic writer, or something like Legally Blonde, even though (again) I’m not in the target demographic.
When adapting an existing Intellectual property/brand for the big screen, the producers have one of several directions they can choose. [Note: None of this takes into account the amount of studio meddling that can occur that can (and often does) ruin films (like the Hobbit Trilogy or Transformers), but that’s a topic for a different day. Let’s just assume that the writer/director is able to make their vision of how the film should be with minimal studio interference.]
1. Do it straight. Make it exactly like the source material with little to no changes. Example: The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023). The source material is intended for kids as young as 5 all the way through adults, and the movie was made so that a 5-year-old would be completely fine with what is presented on screen.
2. Make it as faithfully as possible with certain scene deletions because of runtime constraints and minimal changes so that it’s more believable. Examples: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
3. Make it fit within our world, i.e., no actual fantastical elements present and “realistic” explanations for powers/magic or the need for costumes. Example: The Dark Knight Trilogy, Captain America’s shield ricocheting instead of somehow magically returning, X-Men’s black leather outfits instead of yellow spandex or Magneto’s helmet designed to keep telepaths out. Mysterio's powers are explained as advanced Stark hologram tech combined with drones. The 1993 Super Mario Brothers film had the characters wear lift boots to explain their jumping abilities, though this is an instance of a terrible adaptation.
4. Make it evolve from the original into something deeper and take them to a logical progression. Examples: Scooby-Doo started exactly how a typical episode would end, but then time jumped with some character development off screen. Cobra Kai starts off 30 years later with the characters we knew from the Karate Kid movies and how their lives turned out. Both instances flesh out the characters and make them more 3-dimensional.
5. Make a parody of it, a comedy out of it, or just make it super self-aware/meta. Examples: Toy Story doesn’t fit here because it wasn’t adapting anything that already existed, but The Lego Movie does. It is very self-aware/meta in that we jump to the “real world” and see that the movie we have been watching was in the imagination of a kid this whole time. The Brady Bunch was a fun comedy that all could enjoy but was very self-referential about the TV series with lots of callbacks and references for those who remember the original show. But it was also very meta in that their world/house was stuck in the 70’s while everyone else moved on and so the Brady’s were the weird people in the neighborhood with the, “aw, shucks,” kind of charm to contrast the nihilism and cynicism of everyone else. And both 21 Jump Street and Starsky & Hutch turned serious 70's era TV police dramas into buddy cop comedy movies, with only the title of the film tying it to the original IP. Scream was fairly meta for horror movies, but the first one still worked pretty well.
6. “Disney-fy” it, where they take the characters and main overall plot, but add colorful side-characters, add in musical elements, and potentially turn all of the characters into animals. Examples: Robin Hood, The Little Mermaid, Mary Poppins, Beauty and the Beast, Mulan, Willy Wonka (1971), and the list could go on. From what I understand, the original novel of Mary Poppins was more like how the movie of Nanny McPhee turned out. I can totally sympathize with Pamela Travers for not wanting Mary Poppins to be “Disneyfied” and filled with silly cartoons and songs just for the sake of making a Disney movie to Walt’s liking. Obviously the Robin Hood movie made with foxes, bears, and roosters takes only the positive, romanticized elements of the story and turns it into a fun adventure meant for kids. Same for Ariel’s animal sidekicks like Flounder, Sebastian, and Scuttle.
Along with how the adaptation is made, there is also the choice of what age group/demographic to target it towards. Do you take something that was popular at one time in the 7-10 year old crowd in the mid 80’s and make it more realistic for the same group of people who are now in their early 20’s (rated PG-13 or R), or do you keep it the same so that the current group of 7-10 year olds will like it but it will seem too childish for the original fans who are now adults? The 1990 TMNT movie was definitely intended to be seen by the 13-15 year-old demographic, as they had been around 9-years-old when the cartoon was on TV, whereas the sequels were made for younger audiences. Additionally, how much fan service do you throw in? (not the gratuitous cleavage shots kind of thing, but small references to other characters/places in the universe, such as the list of known mutants in X2 that appears briefly or background elements like the Disk-Kun store in Super Mario Bros. – aka, “member berries”)
Do you make it geared towards the die-hard fans who want a faithful adaptation and are already familiar with the world, its characters, and need no explanation and risk low box-office returns? Do you make it more accessible with “normies” in mind but still passable for the original fans, hoping that this movie will attract new fans to the original source materials? Or do you make it just another generic comedy/action movie that happens to feature characters/settings whose names resemble something from an already-established IP in the hopes of making a large box office return, but pissing off the original fan base in the process (like the JarJar Abrahms Star Trek movies)?
There is a 7th option, though – and that’s to buy the rights to an existing IP and use it to promote some kind of political/social message and count on the installed fan base to make it a commercial success. Or take something that was originally male-led and gender/race-swap many or most of the characters, and stuff it full of “strong, female characters.” This is what Ghostbusters 2016, Star Wars 7-9, Indy 5, Netflix/Kevin Smith’s He-Man, Terminator: Dark Fate, Little Mermaid (2023), and The Rangs of Power did, and it sacrificed the die-hard fans for an influx of normies. Instead of making an original IP to spread whatever message, they know that nobody will go see their movie so by grafting the message onto something else, they essential pay for an inbuilt, guaranteed audience (at least until word-of-mouth gets around). Clearly I’m not a fan of this kind of adaptation and have no qualms in saying so. The shorthand way of saying this is, “injecting woke-ness” into something that already exists.
Having said all that, I’m in the Orson Scott Card camp of rather having something not be adapted for the silver screen at all than be made badly (which is why it took 30 years to get Ender’s Game made). So I hope that Barbie fans are not disappointed. But what I hope for most is that it doesn’t do the following things:
1. Turn into a preachy, Social Justice™, man-hating platform so that the producers can get, “The Message” out to everyone by purchasing an IP with an already-existing fanbase.
2. Turn into a parody of itself instead of celebrating the legacy of a beloved toy for the past 60-odd years, or turn into something Barbie was never intended to be, like inserting her into a Rambo or Terminator movie roll.
3. Aimed at mid-40’s moms instead of 7-year-old girls with adult jokes/references.
4. Force Barbie fans and girls to learn what it's been like for Star Wars fans for the last decade (meaning that they get to see what it's like to have their beloved franchise ruined).
While I can see that making it more of a comedy that pokes fun at dolls and such would make it have broader appeal so that boyfriends don’t feel “dragged” to the theaters by their girlfriends, I would rather it stay true to its origins and be made for the fans. I hope it’s something that little girls and their moms can bond over. But we’ll see what happens.
And what I want for the future of the current culture war is that the Barbie movie is the second of a bunch of well-adapted films mostly targeted towards the fans who already enjoy/purchase their merchandise (obviously, SMB was the first one), and that Hollywood stops trying to inject politics and wokeness into the things we enjoy. I want He-Man and G.I. Joe movies meant for boys, and Barbie movies meant for girls, in other words.
While I can see that making it more of a comedy that pokes fun at dolls and such would make it have broader appeal so that boyfriends don’t feel “dragged” to the theaters by their girlfriends, I would rather it stay true to its origins and be made for the fans. I hope it’s something that little girls and their moms can bond over. But we’ll see what happens.
And what I want for the future of the current culture war is that the Barbie movie is the second of a bunch of well-adapted films mostly targeted towards the fans who already enjoy/purchase their merchandise (obviously, SMB was the first one), and that Hollywood stops trying to inject politics and wokeness into the things we enjoy. I want He-Man and G.I. Joe movies meant for boys, and Barbie movies meant for girls, in other words.
Star Wars, Marvel, Transformers, G.I. Joe, etc. are boys' brands, but Disney bought them to get more boys to buy their stuff (obviously the Princesses thing has been and continues to be a girls' brand). But instead of just keeping them [boys' brands] the way that they were (you know, the way that made them popular in the first place), Disney is trying to also turn them into another girls' brand. Sports (in general) is also facing a similar problem.
I want them to stop trying to turn male properties into androgynous or female properties (though I can’t think of examples that go the other way, really). As much as I don’t like, and have never liked Barney the Dinosaur, I don’t want to see a raunchy teen comedy with him, nor a serious K-9 unit crime noir drama called Blues Clues just because the kids who grew up with those things are now adults. I’ll even take more of something like X-Men, which was accessible enough that even my dad liked it. Just no more of the crap that Lucasfilm/Disney has been making recently.
