Many movies have come along since Covid-19 paused the world in 2020, all of which have helped to get the industry back on its feet following serious moments of financial instability. First, Christopher Nolan attempted to rouse audiences with Tenet, then Marvel did a good job getting bums on cinema seats with Spider-Man: No Way Home, but nothing had given the industry more fuel than ‘Barbenheimer’ the 2023 phenomenon that saw Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Nolan’s Oppenheimer go head-to-head.
Enjoying a symbiotic relationship where their simultaneous release helped both parties, it was Barbie that came out on top, financially at least, making over $1.4billion at the box office. Starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, the film became a cultural phenomenon, filling seemingly every corner of pop culture in the summer of 2023, with the marketing team doing much of the heavy lifting.
A wild, fish-out-of-water adventure, the film tells the story of Barbie, a young woman living in a fantastic plastic world of hot pink and blissful ignorance. When her mind is corrupted with peculiar thoughts, however, and the world around her seems to falter, she is forced to cross the boundaries of reality and visit 21st-century America to get to the bottom of her changing life, bringing friend and follower Ken along for the ride.
As well as a financial hit, the film was a success with the critics too, largely thanks to the fact that Gerwig was in the driving seat, an indie filmmaker who had already shined with such movies as Ladybird and Little Women. An incredible director with a passion for the history of cinema, Gerwig was inspired by a wide range of other filmmakers, including Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Howard Hawks, Tim Burton and Francis Ford Coppola.
Gerwig revealed this during a discussion with Letterboxd, where she listed each and every film that had an effect on her creative choices throughout the making of Barbie. Whilst she opted for such inspiring films as Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Hawks’ His Girl Friday and Burton’s Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, her pick for the Coppola movie that informed Barbie was rather curious.
Speaking to the publication, Gerwig frankly stated: “We all know why The Godfather was in there, because it’s a triumph of Robert Evans’ and [Francis Ford] Coppola’s aesthetic genius. It was so fun to watch again. It’s the best ever; it’s a masterpiece”.
Sure, whilst the Corleone family might not be the first thing you think of when you cast your eyes over the dazzling pink vistas of ‘Barbie World’, it’s true that Gerwig finds the filmmaker and his 1972 classic endlessly inspiring. A crime epic, the story follows the characters who lead the Italian-American mafia, living out their version of the US dream whilst organising the future of their supremacy.
Speaking about the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon, Coppola weighed in on the matter, stating: “I have yet to see them, but the fact that people are filling big theatres to see them and that they are neither ‘sequels’ nor ‘prequels’…no number attached to them, meaning they are true one-offs, is victory for cinema”.
