Yes Barbie and Oppenheimer are big hits… but I think Barbenheimer had an even bigger effect than people think… even if people did not do the double feature… it kept both films in the news where everyone knew each were released that week except for those living under a rock and over shadow movies like Mission Impossible… it is one of the best unintentional promotions I have ever seen
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Disney (and others) at the Box Office - Current State of Affairs
- Thread starter Disney Analyst
- Start date
doctornick
Well-Known Member
I won’t speak for anyone else, but no that’s not what I want. In fact, I love diverse movies. I like the fact that Disney has in the past few decades branched out to non Europe/American cultures and ethnic groups (eg Aladdin, Mulan, Coco, Encanto, PatF, Moana, Raya, Turning Red, Soul etc). If I were in charge, I’d love to see them use traditional fables/fairy tales from non European cultures (Sub Saharan Africa, South Asia, SE Asia, Native American, etc) and adapt them - just like Walt did with European/American stories in his heyday. I think Mulan is a great model for that sort of thing and we should see more of it because it is right in Disney’s wheelhouse.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
Barbie was fun, but it most certainly wasn’t mindless. It was actually quite thought-provoking, and intentionally so.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
Have you seen the remake of The Little Mermaid to know whether it abandons the nostalgia? As a huge fan of the 1989 film, I found the new version a very satisfying tribute to it, right down to the Jodi Benson cameo. Could you cite specific ways in which this particular remake is any less nostalgic than its forerunners?
GimpYancIent
Well-Known Member
When any of the viewing public want nostalgia, it is very simple to view the original production for a fix. The remakes are not even a thought.
DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
I think the thing there is that I wouldn’t necessarily have seen Barbie as a winning IP for a non-children’s movie. If someone had said, before the movie was released “Let’s make a movie about Barbie dolls!”, it might have been a “huh?” moment for many people. So it’s hard to say what IP could potentially be movie fodder given a clever script. There are plenty of popular brands out there. Starbucks, Nike, Taylor Swift, Roblox, TikTok, Bratz, Hotwheels, etc. Could any of them be a movie? I wouldn’t have thought a plastic doll that preschoolers play with would make for a great movie, so who knows?
That said, I don’t think Barbie was primarily an IP movie (unlike Mario). This is the summer of Taylor Swift and the Barbie movie. Women wanted to get out post Covid and have a great time. I think in our “experience economy”, the winning move with Barbie was to turn it into an “experience”, with pop-ups and pink cocktails and fun outfits and so on.
it’s not that people don’t want political messages… people don’t want political messages that don’t fit in with their beliefs…look at S of F… a certain ideological sect on YouTube said they don’t want politics in their films and just want to be entertained, but now they are promoting that all over YouTube
The Little Mermaid is a top 5 film of the year so far domestically
DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
Yeah… I always say it’s been wild to see the shift from extreme patriotism (post 9-11) to the Wokeness years within my lifetime. Certainly politics featured in the backdrop of movies and tv during those years.
My take is - one can’t really avoid politics entirely because to do so would be to create movies totally removed from the current culture. The most innocuous movie makes some cultural assumptions. Even if they’re as agreed upon as “It’s good to be kind” (vs. the toughest person on the block.) or “Be yourself!” (vs. “serve the group”, which might be the message in a more collectivist culture). The problem, as I heard some analyst note on tv recently, is that it’s unclear if “the commons” have disappeared in our divided world. It was looking that way for awhile, although this summer makes me think the pendulum is swinging away from culture wars. We can at least agree on Mario and Barbie.
Jedijax719
Well-Known Member
Are they re-releasing the movie as a sing-a-long in the theaters? I wonder if Disney will force a way for it to hit $300 million domestic because $297-$298 million is certainly an odd look.
Barbie is based on an IP the same way the 90s Brady Bunch movies is based on the IP. It was necessary for the satire. Even Lego Movie and the original Toy Story was a hit because of this to some degree
Generation x lived seeing it ripped apart and the boomers were there enough for it.
With Barbie:
Gen Y was fine with it and Generation X was more than there for this.
doctornick
Well-Known Member
Specific to this, I was actually quite intrigued by Barbie - the advertising was fantastic, completely made me think it was a breezy “fish out of water” tale that just poked fun at the toy line and didn’t itself seriously. If I were one to see many movies in the theater (I’m not) I’d have been interested in going to see it. At the least, I was planning to catch it at home when it was available to see.
However, now that’s it out and I’ve seen from multiple sources how it has an overt feminist/anti-male messaging and pretty stops to have people monologue about that stuff, my interest has dramatically fallen and I’ll probably never watch it. Not really interested in being lectured to even if it is done well.
DisneyHead123
Well-Known Member
I think Gen Y was happy with all the Instagram-able moments, even if they grew up more on Bratz dolls.
doctornick
Well-Known Member
That is certainly true for some, even many, people. It’s not me though. I just want to be entertained and like movies to be escapism from the real world. It’s one of the reasons I love the MCU as it’s generally black and white good vs evil stuff with some humor tossed in. That’s what I crave in my movies. Admittedly others are different though most things that tend to entice me are those that do well in the box office because I think they tend to have broad appeal and don’t offend any particular groups.
LittleBuford
Well-Known Member
It isn’t anti-male in the least. Feminist, yes, but that isn’t the same thing.
At any rate, I hope you enjoy it if you ever do end up watching it.
Ghost93
Well-Known Member
I'm a male and can confirm that the movie is not anti-male. It's anti-patriarchy. The Barbie world is the opposite version of our world in which women have always been the ones in power instead of men.
The movie even ends by saying that one day the Kens in the Barbie world will have as much power as women have in the real world.
Vegas Disney Fan
Well-Known Member
There’s also a fine line between subtle and overbearing.
Using tv news as an example I can’t stand watching Fox or MSNBC because their bias is so in your face, but I can stomach CNN, that doesn’t mean CNN is perfectly neutral, they’re just subtle enough not to drive me crazy.
Disneys leaned a certain way for decades, they’ve never tried to hide that, it’s just less subtle now. Some will like that, others won’t.
As a straight male who saw the movie… it was more pro-female then anti-male… unless the men are insecure… oh yes and I loved Barbie… having Margot Robbie play her was a bonus
Sir_Cliff
Well-Known Member
But the remakes have made Disney a fortune, which shows that nostalgia is usually great business for them. A lot of talk on this thread has been geared toward profits being the most important consideration for Disney, and if that is the case then they will need further evidence that remaking their old films isn't one of their easiest routes to making money.
Even in the case of TLM, it's likely one of the few films they've made this year that will actually eke out a profit when all the different revenue streams are accounted for. When considering what they need to do differently to run a profitable studios in the future, I don't think TLM is going to be held up as evidence people are finished with the remakes.
doctornick
Well-Known Member
Fair enough. I haven’t seen it obviously so I don’t want to judge out of hand. My point is merely that the movie sounds preachy and I tend to avoid movies like that.