We Rewatched Barbie And It's Completely Different Now - Looper (2024)

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ByLarissa Zageris/April 8, 2024 6:15 am EST

"Barbie" premiered in 2023 as a pink and powerful pop culture phenomenon. It made a mint at the box office, and conversations about its complicated themes were inescapable online. "Barbie" made movie marketing history, not to mention a number of powerful memes. Plus, everyone who worked on the film seems to have loved collaborating with its co-writer and director, Greta Gerwig.

The movie launched countless think pieces, critiques, and tie-in product collaborations. But now that the pink promotional dust has cleared and the glitter of awards season has settled, we ask a simple question: What changes in a "Barbie" rewatch? What shifts, like so much color-changing doll hair after a day in the sun? What pink plastic Easter eggs did we miss the first time around? After being so celebrated, discussed, and promoted, could there possibly be any tiny accessory of theuntold truth of the "Barbie" movie still stuck under the metaphorical couch of our movie-watching minds?

"Barbie" is all about how we contain more than what meets the eye — and the movie does, too, from that big "2001: A Space Odyssey" homage to its anarchic climax. So come on, Barbie. We rewatched "Barbie" and have new insights — strap on your rollerblades and let us show you what we found.

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Barbie's struggle is real, and when it comes to being cast in "Barbie," so was John Cena's. John Cena is a man among men — and a merman among Kens. But this almost wasn't the case. The wrestler-turned-actor has serious acting chops and has been steadily building a solid resume through work like "Blockers" and "Peacemaker," and Cena's representatives kept an eye out for roles that would make their "you can't see me" star be seen as a proper leading man.

Cena jokingly alluded to missing out on a bigger role in "Barbie" early on, telling"Pop Culture Spotlight with Jessica Shaw,""I tried, and I got rejected." When he was offered a cameo, his team thought it wasn't good enough for him. Cena was told to reject his "Barbie" cameo, and in a February 2024 appearance on "The Howard Stern Show,"Cena said his team just wanted him to stay in his lane — presumably, a high-octane leading man lane, not a pink and glittery one.

But when Cena and Margot Robbie ran into each other while shooting "Barbie" and "Fast X" in neighboring lots in London, Cena surprised her by picking up her team's lunch tab — and she surprised him by urging him to take the merman part. He did, and the movie is all the better for it. Even Greta Gerwig agrees, saying on her director's commentary that Cena "showed up for one day and wore a mermaid outfit and was totally game to do everything, which is fabulous." We agree, and that the stars aligned to make the cameo happen makes his brief mermaid appearance that much more special.

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"Barbie" has its share of award-winning writer-director-actors both onscreen and behind the camera, including Emerald Fennell as Midge, the permanently pregnant Barbie. Fennell is known for her acting on "Call the Midwife," as well as writing and directing both "Promising Young Woman" and "Saltburn" — but she could've been known for an epic "Barbie" deleted scene.

According to this photograph of some "Barbie" storyboard cards posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, a scene called "Midge in Labor" was shot for the film. Eventually, the cut scene was added as a post-credits sequence for the IMAX release of "Barbie." It features Midge in labor, the scene cut short by The Narrator (Helen Mirren) screaming that it's "disgusting" and turning the camera away.

While this could have been a major movie moment that addressed the controversy behind pregnant Barbie dolls, Fennell said she didn't mind that her big scene ended up on the cutting room floor. Fennell toldPeople that the movie is a "masterpiece," saying, "I'm so grateful to even just be in it, waving in the background, just for a second. It's worth it, because what an extraordinary work of art." Plus, cutting the scene from the main release frees Fennell up to make a darkly comedic "Barbie" thriller spin-off called "Midge: Mother of All Evil." We're just spitballing here.

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"Barbie" almost featured a fart opera — you read that right. Greta Gerwig has worked with film editor Nick Houy on all three of the films she's directed — "Lady Bird," "Little Women," and "Barbie" — and apparently, on all three, they've tried to work in a little toot humor. But due to the pair putting a lot of trust in audience test screenings, their jokes about passing gas have never passed muster — not even in "Barbie." "We've always tried to get in a proper fart joke and we've never done it," Gerwig toldIndieWire. "We had like a fart opera in the middle [of 'Barbie']. I thought it was really funny. And that was not the consensus."

"It was in the wrong place, too," Houy lamented. "We need to work it into a more significant narrative moment next time." While there's no real way for us to know just where the proposed "fart opera" could have happened, who was involved, and what it even would look and sound like, it delights us to no end to think of it in the scene where Barbie sits on a bench and looks around approvingly at the Real World's combination of highs and lows. And its exclusion makes us appreciate all of the humor that remained in the final cut — even if there are no farts, there's still that "beach-off" joke, the Proust Barbie joke Gerwig adores,and plenty of physical comedy to go around.

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For being a comedic fantasy movie that leans hard on silliness, "Barbie" has a lot of rules to its world. One is that there is no liquid in Barbie Land, Greta Gerwig said in her director's commentary. The Barbies pantomime taking a drink or showering, just like a kid would make them do when playing with a doll. Even the ocean waves in Barbie Land are just sculptures of waves, made, Gerwig explained, to evoke the style of artist Jeff Koons. The no-liquid rule is why Ken (Ryan Gosling) crashes into a hard ocean wave when he tries to impress Barbie, then bounces off and flies back onto the beach. The hard plastic high tide is toy-like and dangerous for the Kens, but it could have been even worse for Allan (Michael Cera), according to cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto.

"We did this shot on Allan that emulated 'Jaws'," Prieto told Variety. "He's terrified [when] Ken hits a wave and then flies in the air. There's a moment where the police officer sees someone being eaten in the water." Prieto also said that Gerwig would request to rewatch the dramatic scene over and over again because it made her laugh so much. Sadly, the scene was a little too much beach for "Barbie," and it was scrapped. But an extended cut of the movie with all of the deleted scenes would really make a splash.

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"Barbie" cinematographerRodrigo Prieto has lensed a wide range of iconic films, from "Amores Perros" to "Frida" to "Killers of the Flower Moon." But when it came to shooting "Barbie," Prieto faced a horse of a different color: pink. Because so many pink props, sets, and backdrops were used in the film — and"Barbie" used so much pink paint that it caused an actual shortage — Prieto had to deal with the color wreaking havoc with his lighting. Some actors' faces turned magenta when the stage lights were on due to all the pink bouncing light back at them.

So how did Prieto solve the problem? "We had to get tons of neutral gray fabric to drape over everything that was off camera," Prieto toldBelow the Line."That became a big part of the lighting. First, what's the angle? Then, what's out of shot? Covering everything with gray to avoid a pink reflection." It's probably the only time someone on the "Barbie" set won big by thinking not-so-pink. The cinematographer's ingenious approach to lighting solidified the film's unique toy aesthetic — though it's something almost nobody would have suspected on a first watch.

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America Ferrera plays Gloria, the human heart of the "Barbie" movie. Gloria's major movie moment is a monologue she delivers to remind Barbie (Margot Robbie) that while she is good enough, there is frustratingly no such thing as "good enough" when you're a woman. Ferrara's performance earned her an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actress.

Greta Gerwig wrote the speech for Ferrera, then opened it up to collaboration. "We wouldshare with each other articles, or episodes of TV shows, or podcasts that felt like this sentiment — the sentiment that Gloria delivers in the monologue, which is essentially the impossible assignment of being all things to all people," Ferrera toldVanity Fair, elaboratingtoBackstagethat she and Gerwig shared inspiration "for months, which is crazy, to spend that much time thinking about 300 words."

Ferrera also said she recorded anywhere between 30 and 50 takes of the speech. "I think we got about five takes into it, and then I just started crying," Gerwig said on her director's commentary, adding, "All the women on set were crying. And then I saw the men were emotional, too." Gerwig explained that there's something universal about the speech and that people of all genders feel like life is walking one big tightrope. She adds that Ferrera's performance is "almost like an invitation to the audience to get down off the tightrope." Her authenticity — and the collaborative effort that brought it to the big screen — made it a monologue heard around the world.

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Ryan Gosling has Kenergy — but he almost didn't. While we can't imagine a world without Ryan Gosling's bleached blond, heartbroken himbo Ken, it turns out that Gosling could. He turned down Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie's requests for him to take the starring role multiple times.

Gosling has told news outlets he initially rejected the role because he was too busy. Gerwig and Robbie would text him, convinced that he was the only one who could play Ken with the perfect mix of crazed charm, good looks, and vulnerability. "Margot was like, 'Is it weird if I go to his house?'" Gerwig toldSiriusXM. Robbie said she even bribed Gosling with the promise of a present a day if he took the role. It was a promise she delivered on after he read the script and signed on.

Gosling admitted to Variety in February 2024 that it wasn't easy being Kenough. "It's the hardest role I've ever had to play," he said. "It was like a high-wire act — in tiny shorts and no shirt — with no net." Gosling, known for being an indie movie powerhouse, said what helped him embody Ken was reconnecting with the blockbuster-movie-watching, Hammer-pants-wearing song-and-dance boy he had once been. "At a certain point I thought I had left that kid behind," Gosling toldEntertainment Weekly, adding, "I had to go back and make peace with him and ask for his help. It was good for me." And, we think, for the world.

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"I'm Just Ken" is one of the most significant and unhinged musical sequences in cinema — and it was almost cut from "Barbie." In a conversation at the BFI London Film Festival (via Variety), Gerwig said that studio execs didn't understand her vision at first. Gerwig said, "There was a big meeting that was like, 'Do you need this?' And I was like, 'Everything in me needs this.'"

Gerwig fought to keep the sequence in, and thank all the horses in the patriarchy that she did. While the sequence was described briefly in the script, musicians Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt found they had to extend "I'm Just Ken" to accommodate an epic slow-motion battle. "Everybody's pretending to move in slow motion," Gerwig explained in her director's commentary. "This is all fake slow-motion. ... It was one of those things in the car on the way home after that day, I thought, ooh, I hope that's okay."

While the battle and the "Singin' in the Rain"-style dream ballet made the final cut, some ideas did not. "One of the ideas that Ryan had was that he would have a dance duet with his mink and that the mink would be fighting him, and then love him, and then fight him again, eventually defeat him, and that he would be birthed anew out of the mink," Gerwig said on"The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."She promised that rehearsal footage exists of this — somewhere.

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Kate McKinnon is a comedy legend who can do many things — but Weird Barbie-style splits isn't one of them. While many first-time viewers probably guessed that McKinnon didn't do her own splits, the behind-the-scenes explanation for the stunt didn't come until later. "Can't do that," the actress joked in an Entertainment Weekly round table after the movie premiered, adding, "That's a fake leg, and a heavy one."

Greta Gerwig achieved Weird Barbie's always-in-the-splits legs with practical effects to emulate the busted joints of an over-loved Barbie doll. "We had a gymnast who was able to fall into the splits and everything like that," Gerwig said in her director's commentary. "But then we also had a fake leg and a rig so that she could put her real leg into the wall and the fake leg goes up the wall."

Production designer Sarah Greenwood found the perfect spots in Weird Barbie's house for the leg holes. Gerwig added, "We kind of created blocking around where we knew she had the ability to put her leg in the wall." McKinnon's President Barbie co-stars, America Ferrera and Issa Rae, were as impressed as any other audience member who didn't know the trick. "Every single person asked if that was your leg," Rae told McKinnon in the Entertainment Weekly roundtable, adding, "The way that you sold that, you should be proud."

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"Dance the Night" marks the first of the "Barbie" movie's two epic dance sequences — and Issa Rae would like to burn it with fire. The comedic actress plays President Barbie in the film, and she's at the front of the pack for the first big musical number in "Barbie." "Dancing to it was my worst nightmare. It was the worst day of my life," she toldPeople. She clarified, "It was the best day of my life being on that set. It was exciting, and then literally the first day, I had to learn the choreography to shoot the [following] day. And it was terrible."

Learning choreography at warp speed doesn't sound too fun for everyone — especially when the song doesn't have finished lyrics. Gerwig describes how Dua Lipa actually wrote her lyrics while watching footage of the finished dance — and Rae describes just how painful creating that finished dance was. "All we had was the instrumental, so I was just like, 'What the f*** is this? What am I dancing to?'" Rae said. Regardless of how chaotic learning the dance was, Rae looks like she was born to disco. President Barbie's gotta do what President Barbie's gotta do — and given how great she is in the scene, Rae has no reason to feel "Insecure" about any future dance sequences.

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Poor long-suffering Allan. Played by Michael Cera, Ken's buddy helps stage a coup, fights a bunch of rogue Kens, and helps the Barbies bring peace and order back to Barbie Land ... but why? As he says to Gloria and Barbie when the Kens take over: "I cannot sit on one more leather couch, it will break my spirit." So why does he stay? Well, in an interview with ScreenRant, Cera said it's because he thinks Allan might be in love with Ken.

"The way I read it in the script was that Allan is sort of obsessed with Ken, if not in love with him," Cera explained. "I love that he just wants the best for Ken, even if that means Ken not being near him. He wants Ken's happiness. I thought that was sort of a life of servitude in a way. Distant yearning." Greta Gerwig also said in her director's commentary, "Allan is the most tragic figure in Barbie Land, which Michael and I decided would be correct for Allan — that not everybody gets their fantasy."

Star and producer Margot Robbie weighed in on potential queerness in Barbieland, saying in an interview with Attitude, "They are all dolls, so they don't actually have sexual orientations because they don't have any organs or reproductive organs." Nevertheless, many critics — especially at LGBTQ+ outletsThem and Out — have identified Allan as the queer core of "Barbie."Maybe one day there will be a spin-off project that gives Allan his due. Until then, he can wear all of Ken's clothes.