Image source: YouTube user Warner Bros.
“Barbie” is going to be the hottest movie of the summer. The full trailer was released on May 25 and has provided several instantly iconic moments from Barbie (Margot Robbie) garnering internet praise. “The Matrix” – Special Choice Between a high heel and a Birkenstock for Kane (Ryan Gosling) Vipul Mug Shot, All adding hype to the already much-anticipated film.
But the new trailer also includes some less noticeable Easter eggs, showing that the film’s creative team — including famed filmmaking duo Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach — paid attention to detail.
“Barbie” Easter Egg: Ruth and Barbara Handler
At the end of the film preview, Barbie meets an old woman who tells her, “Human beings get an ending. Ideas live forever.” As TikToker Kirby Johnson explained in a May 25 post, the old lady is Barbara Handler, who actually inspired the first Barbie when she was just a little girl. Barbara’s mother, Ruth Handler, invented the original Barbie doll in 1959, according to The New York Times, and named her creation after her daughter. Today, Barbara is 82 years old, but her feature in the “Barbie” trailer is a moving tribute to the doll’s origins.
@kirbyjohnson #barbiemovie #barbiemovie2023 #margotrobbie #ryangosling
♬ original sound – Kirby Johnson
“Barbie” Easter Egg: “The Wizard of Oz”
The second teaser for “Barbie”, released on April 10, also features some other pop culture references and symbols. Many fans quickly noticed that the clip was filled with references to “The Wizard of Oz”: movie posters of characters from the 1939 film often pop up in the background, and the film is even playing in the background one frame. At one point, Robbie is even seen wearing a checkered dress reminiscent of Dorothy’s classic blue frock.
Viewers have also speculated that the plot of “Barbie” may take some notes from “The Wizard of Oz.” We already know that the story involves Barbie (and Ken) leaving Barbie Land for the real world. If “Barbie” finds its protagonist eventually meeting up with the creator of Barbie Land — or perhaps the company’s CEO — it’s easy to see how her disillusionment with that figure might reflect Dorothy’s same dismay when she learned who really was. Who was the magician?
“Barbie” Easter Egg: “2001: A Space Odyssey”
The first teaser for “Barbie”, released on December 16, 2022, also directly references another classic film. That teaser parodies the opening of Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey”, instead of showing apes in front of a black monolith as the first frame of “2001”, the “Barbie” trailer shows Barbie walking out. He sees. Barren landscape as seen by young girls.
“2001: A Space Odyssey” is famously existential and allegorical, but it essentially tells a highly influential story about the origins of humanity and the extraterrestrial forces that lead humans to consciousness in the film. While Kubrick always resisted definitive analysis of his sci-fi epic, in 1972, he told Rolling Stone that “at the deepest psychological level the film’s plot embodies the search for God, and ultimately reveals that God’s What a little less than the scientific definition.”
While that doesn’t immediately align with what we know about “Barbie,” now celebrated for the fashion trend she inspired, Gerwig recently brought up religious themes in a May conversation with Vogue . “Ken was invented after Barbie to elevate Barbie’s status in our eyes and in the world,” Gerwig said. “This type of creation myth is the opposite of the creation myth of Genesis.”
Could “Barbie” possibly be an attempt to reflect or rewrite Kubrick’s reflections on the origins of humanity through a feminist lens? Or perhaps a combination of “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “The Matrix” proposing that we all carry pre-programmed ideas of how to live until we become conscious of them and leave them behind. Give Or maybe it’s a parody of all the movies with Barbie from where she started, just more content to be one of many Barbies. Anything is possible at this point!
Of course, we won’t really know what the highly acclaimed “Barbie” script has in store for us until the film premieres on July 21. Until then, fans will surely enjoy over-analyzing the trailers, dressing in barbiecore fashion, custom poster selfies, and banging all the cast members on the “Barbie” soundtrack to their heart’s content.
