Barbie: Why I care, the nature of adaptations, and the future of them

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. It doesn't shy away from what it always has been - a plumber from Brooklyn with extraordinary jump height in a fantasy world fighting a giant turtle who is a simp for Peach. 

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 in Spider-Man: Far from Home. 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. It skirted the line between adaptation and parody, 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 goes for Ariel’s animal sidekicks like Flounder, Sebastian, and Scuttle in The Little Mermaid who weren't present in Hans Christian Anderson's original novel.

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 that the movie is shit). 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. 

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 [ the 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.

First!

There was a joke/meme in early internet forums where the first person to leave a comment usually just left, "First!" to leave a record that they were the person to pull up the article the soonest after its publication. Ultimately, it’s just human psychology, but we put a great deal of emphasis on being first. First person to win a race, sure - that’s obvious, but what I’m talking about is something like first person to discover penicillin, first President of the US, first person to do a 900 on a skateboard in competition, etc. What’s funny and/or interesting to me is when further distinctions and qualifiers are added so that there can be more firsts, especially when the motivation behind the qualifiers are easily discerned.

The best example of this is how in school I learned who some of the American “firsts” in space were, including Alan Shepherd, John Glenn, and Sally Ride. But names I never learned were Laika, Yuri Gagarin, and Valentina Tereshkova - Russians who did it before the Americans. That’s when I realized that the qualifiers were there to make me feel better as an American, since we weren’t actually the first. However, that distinction is never made with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin - they’re never listed as the first Americans on the moon, but as the first humans on the moon.

What brought up this shower thought? It’s been a bunch of things in recent pop culture history. It seems like everyone in politics and Hollywood (which, let’s face it, are almost the same thing these days) is racing to become the first at something. Since she wasn’t the first dwarf portrayed on screen, or even the first female dwarf as she claimed (that credit goes to some actresses in the Hobbit movies), Sophia Nomvete had to correct her statement to be the first female dwarf of color to be shown on screen. They’re just tripping over themselves to be the first at something, and each time the “accomplishments” get more and more insignificant with each qualifier, and they all seem to be centered around some identity characteristic - the first black person of Caribbean descent to host the New Year’s Eve countdown on NBC, the first Latino to dance the box step in the Ed Sullivan Theatre in the month of February, etc.

Instead of being just some interesting footnote in history that is destined to become the answer to a Jeopardy! or Trivial Pursuit question, they all but break their arms patting themselves on the back about this momentous occasion, thinking they’re basically the same as Jackie Robinson when it comes to breaking down barriers. Once I noticed this, it dawned on me that it was akin to the stupid stats that bored sports commentators bring up during a lull in the game, such as the fact that this team has never lost when playing on Halloween while wearing purple uniforms when there’s a full moon. So many qualifiers means that they’re reaching to make a big deal out of essentially nothing. In a world where justice "frontiers" are increasingly rare, everyone is clamoring over recognition of being the first to stand against vanishingly small incidents of "oppression," in other words. 

But to really answer the question about what brought this on, it was Jennifer Lawrence’s statement about being the first female lead of an action movie (as if Aliens, Terminator 2, Red Sonja, Kill Bill, Charlie’s Angels, Underworld, Resident Evil, and Tomb Raider didn’t exist).

But putting politics and Hollywood aside, it did actually cause me to think about primacy when it comes to certain things in video games and other pop culture. The thing I realized after contemplating this is that sometimes being the first isn’t the best but it lingers because it makes an indelible mark on the human mind. It's called having a Primacy Bias.

There really are “original absolutists” who will argue till they’re blue in the face that no matter what, it’s better just because it came first. The Adam West Batman theme has been a staple in pop culture ever since it was on TV, but the upbeat, surf rock song pales in comparison to Danny Elfman’s far superior theme used in the Michael Keaton movies and the Animated Series. But solely due to being the first official Batman theme, the music from the 60’s has stuck around, even more so than the music used in the Nolan-directed movies. Basically the same argument can be made for the original animated Spider-Man theme ( . . . “does whatever a spider can” . . ) as being the default theme despite (again) the existence of a much better Elfman theme.

There were previous Superman themes from various radio and television productions, but John Williams’ composition for the 1978 Christopher Reeve movie was so perfect that it should have been the de facto theme for all things Superman going forward (and was for the Brandon Routh movie), but it has been replaced by inferior themes in animated series and the Snyder-directed movies. Not sure how much of it was ego and how much was copyright as far as reasons to not use those themes, but clips of Henry Cavill flying to John Williams’ music are much more inspiring.

Other examples of the first one not necessarily being the best are Terminator 2, Portal 2, Street Fighter 2, The Dark Knight, The Empire Strikes Back, Aliens, the aforementioned Danny Elfman Batman theme and John Williams Superman theme, John Ottman’s X2 theme (and while we’re at it, X2 as a movie), Spider-Man 2, and Mega Man 2.

I honestly think that if the Twilight Princess Hyrule Field music (which is iconic in its own right) had been the music for the original Legend of Zelda, that’s what would be called the “Zelda Theme” and have little musical references to it in future games. While I love the original theme song, I think future musical themes were objectively better (both in terms of composition and because of improved audio technology) but the original has stuck around just because it’s the original. The same can be said for the first Super Mario Bros. music and the Phoenix Wright music - the original ones are the ones that are thought of as THE theme for their respective franchises.

Something similar happens to movies/games that are changed or updated - a debate over original or “new and improved” inevitably ensues. I kinda hate when changes are made to something and I like the new one better, because it makes me wish they had just done it right the first time so there wouldn’t be a debate over original vs. improved versions. A great example of this is the Gerudo symbol in the Zelda series. It was first introduced in Ocarina of Time along with other symbols for the various tribes like Deku, Zora, and Goron. But what made it more prominent was its inclusion on all of the various floor switches that Link presses to open doors or whatever. The original symbol had a crescent moon and a 4-pointed star. However, because of its similarity to the Turkish Flag it was changed to avoid drawing the ire of the Islam nation (along with the Fire Temple music). I like the new symbol just as much as the original, but it bugs me that it wasn’t made right the first time. I did like the original Fire Temple music better, however, and the updated version that uses a re-worked version of the Shadow Temple music is inferior.

Another example is the Special Edition of Star Wars: A New Hope. There were at least 15 major changes, and quite a few other minor tweaks made to the movie. Most of them are ones I agree with, but a few I would leave out (Han shot first, in other words). But I have the choice of watching the original theatrical version, or the one that has enhanced visuals and sound but includes Greedo’s badly aimed shot. Many people prefer the original theatrical cut of the film and consider it to be the superior product despite its flaws/limitations just because it was first/original.

Even Tolkien went back and revised the story originally told in the Hobbit about how Bilbo acquired the ring so it would work better for the Lord of the Rings, and basically just made the original story (where he won the ring fair and square) the one that Bilbo told people in order to hide the truth and make his claim on the ring stronger. It just also happens that a publisher made the corrections to the manuscript and the Hobbit has been published with the updated story ever since, and only the first couple of printings had the original tale.

Ultimately, being a fan of something means that we’ll get into pointless internet debates over which version of something is better, can an elevator lift Thor’s hammer, etc. But I weary of the weight given to something just for being the first (sometimes also called the Anchoring cognitive bias) over all of the other characteristics that would otherwise make comparisons easy and straight-forward.