Credit: Inside the MagicBarbie, the Greta Gerwig film based on the iconic Mattel doll, just crushed Batman at the box office. The pink-infused Margot Robbie movie has passed a billion dollars at the box office, thoroughly crushing Robert Pattinson in The Batman (2022), Warner Bros’ highest-grossing movie in years. And just like Batman before her, Hollywood is going to take all the wrong lessons from Barbie.
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, actor Randall Park opined that “just in general, this industry is taking the wrong lessons. For example, Barbie is this massive blockbuster, and the idea is: Make more movies about toys! No. Make more movies by and about women!”
He has a point. Since Barbie has proven that toy lines other than Transformers can profit at the box office, every product from Polly Pocket to Hot Wheels to Crayola is preparing to make a movie. And just like Tim Burton’s Batman (1989), Hollywood is going to get this all wrong.
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‘Barbie’ and ‘Batman’
When Batman became a huge blockbuster for Tim Burton, Michael Keaton, and Warner Bros, Hollywood realized that audiences were ready for a wave of superhero movies that would make the genre the dominant force in cinema for years to come.
Just kidding, Hollywood decided that what audiences wanted was 1930s pulp-inspired movies.
For the rest of the 1990s, theatergoers were invited to such Golden Age-inflected fare as Dick Tracy (1990), The Rocketeer (1991), The Shadow (1994), and The Phantom (1996).
With the exception of Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy (which was saddled with a then-huge production budget), all of those movies sank at the box office. Who would have thoughts kids didn’t want to see movies referencing rumors of Errol Flynn’s Nazi collaborations and Billy Zane fighting pirates?
There’s a simple reason: people went to go see Batman because it was a stylish, well-made superhero movie with a compelling lead in Michael Keaton and an all-time great villain in Jack Nicholason’s Joker, not because they cared about the IP of radio-era crimefighting.
It took years for Hollywood to right the ship and realize what superhero movies could become, and by then, Marvel Studios had seized the day, leaving Warner Bros trying to play hopeless catch-up with the DCEU Synderverse.
The same thing is about to happen with Barbie.
The ‘Barbie Effect’
As mentioned, every toy company in the world has dollar signs in its eyes and thinks it has the chance to make the next billion-dollar Barbie. But as Randall Park so eloquently put it, the movie was not successful just because it was based on a recognizable brand name.
If that was the case, Battleship (2012) would have been a huge franchise starter instead of the movie that scared Rihanna off acting. The Transformers series wouldn’t be facing diminishing returns with every new installment, and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) would have broken even at the box office.
Instead, like The Lego Movie (2014) before it, Barbie used an existing IP as a starting point to tell an emotionally compelling story that happened to use iconography that people would expect. Also, Ryan Gosling’s abs probably helped.
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However, none of that will matter to studios obsessed with latching onto the easiest conclusion and trying to replicate what they think are successful formulas.
Barbie will be just like Batman, encouraging licensing fees to lukewarm box office returns until some future Kevin Feige realizes what people actually wanted. Hollywood never gets it right the first time.
Do you think Hollywood can replicate the success of Barbie? Let us know in the comments below!