Barbie has one of the worst messages I’ve ever seen in a mainstream film. And no, it’s not the message you think.

Genre: Fantasy/Toy
Premise: When Barbie learns that the person playing with her in the real world is having depressed thoughts, she travels there to try and sort it out, causing complete mayhem for the Mattel toy company.
About: Barbie just crossed a billion dollars at the box office and it doesn’t look to be slowing down! The phenomenon kept the film in first place against three heavy-hitting contenders this weekend. Yet in its third weekend, it still came out on top.
Writers: Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach
Details: 90 minutes

I don’t know why it’s taken me this long to see Barbie.

I’m not a Barbie hater.

I’m sure if I grew up as a little girl, I would’ve been yanking these dolls off the shelves.

I was just never convinced this movie was made for me.

I walked into the theater yesterday hoping I was wrong.

Let’s see what happened.

In case you haven’t seen the film, Barbie lives in Barbie Land, a place where all the Barbies are living their best life every day and all the Kens are cast off to the side, usually at the beach.

One day, Main Barbie (Margot Robbie), has her thoughts interrupted by death. Confused, she starts searching for the meaning of this unwelcome thought-intrusion. While that’s happening, we get to know Main Ken (Ryan Gosling), who’s only ever wanted to be with Barbie and, yet, Barbie enacted atomic-level friend-zone status upon him.

Barbie eventually figures out that whoever’s playing with her in the “real world” is the one having thoughts of death. So Barbie travels to the real world (with Ken, reluctantly), to clear all this up.

Once in the real world, she’s confused by the fact that women don’t rule, but rather men do. Consequently, Ken is the happiest person ever. He didn’t know there could be a world where men dominated.

So while Barbie tries to find this girl who’s playing with her, Ken heads back to Barbie Land, and turns it into a Ken-topia, instilling the rules he learned about dude-osity in the real world, which basically amounts to making horses a primary feature. That and there’s a lot more bro-time.

When Barbie finally comes back from her travels, she sees that the Kens have taken over. So she gets all the Barbies together, concocts a plan to have them all fake-cheat on their Ken boyfriends so that they’ll fight with each other. And while they’re busy doing that, the Barbies will re-institute the matriarchy. The End.

I’m going to be honest.

This movie has one of the worst messages I’ve ever seen in a mainstream movie before. Maybe the worst ever. And the idea people have of this being some fun happy film… I mean, if you have no concept of subtext then maybe. But, otherwise, you should be recognizing how terrible this movie’s message is.

But before we get to that, I actually liked a lot about this movie.

I absolutely loved Ryan Gosling. This is his most memorable role ever. It’s not close. He was hilarious. That image of him in the big fur coat throughout the final act is iconic. His musical number was awesome. I loved everything about Gosling in this.

I also liked Margot Robbie. They say the mark of a great performance is that you can’t imagine anybody else in the role. That is Margot Robbie in Barbie. I’d say that maybe – MAYBE – the only other person I could see pulling this off is a 28 year old Reese Witherspoon. But, other than her, Margot Robbie was it.

It says a lot that despite me hating the message of this movie, I still liked the primary character who delivered that message.

I liked Villain Ken (Simu Liu). That actor is really growing on me. He was the perfect foil for Main Ken.

I liked the concept of the film and found it all rather clever – this idea that you’re being played with by someone in the real world and their feelings can seep into you. And the only way to stop it is to go into the real world. And then you have the meta stuff with Mattel freaking out that one of their Barbies has gotten into the real world. All of that was fun. I’m a big fan of fish-out-of-water stories and I don’t think it’s a coincidence at all that the two biggest movies of the year (Barbie and Super-Mario) are both fish-out-of-water scenarios.

Greta Gerwig is now an official directing force. I admit that I previously saw her as an indie mumblecore vet who lucked into a Hollywood directing career. I did not pray at the alter of Lady Bird. But the vision of this movie is so strong and so distinct that I don’t think you can argue that Gerwig is anything other than a top-tier director in Hollywood.

Wow, Carson, you liked a bunch of stuff here. So you must have loved the movie!

No. I definitely did not.

The reason for this is that this movie hates people.

Something that I’ve despised over the the last five years is the way the media has worked so hard to divide us with these stories that pit one side against another.

In particular, ever since #metoo, there’s been this not-so-subtle campaign within the media to divide men and women. And, to a certain extent, I understand why this happens. Online media thrives on bold controversial takes. The most toxic divisive take is going to get the most clicks. And clicks equal money. I don’t like that the media stokes this division. But at least I understand it from a financial perspective.

The Barbie movie, however, doesn’t have to live by these rules. And yet it still chooses to. The message of this movie is, literally, men and women shouldn’t be together. We must always hold each other down.

That is literally what Barbie says at the end. Because men are in charge and keep women down in the real world, us ladies are going to be in charge and keep men down in the Barbie World.

Are we serious here????

This is what you’re teaching people!!!!!????

Some people are saying this movie is anti-men. I don’t think it’s anti-men. I think it’s anti-harmony. It does not want men and women to live in harmony with one another.

And the saddest thing about that is that Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach believe, from their privileged upper-crust educational ivory tower, that this is reality. That men and women hate each other and therefore should stay away from each other. When reality is the exact opposite. Go outside for an hour and talk to 20 men and 20 women and you’ll hear nothing but praise and love from each side about the other guaranteed.

If these two had their way, they would destroy that. They would get rid of that love. Because that love threatens their world view. If it turned out that men and women really do love each other, then there’s no cause left to fight for.

How out of touch are these two? Well, there’s this moment in the movie when Barbie first gets to the real world and construction workers start saying all these lurid things to her and I’m thinking, “Is it 1978? Who talks like this anymore? Better yet, when is the last year that a construction worker yelled out something sleazy to a woman? 1990 maybe???”

What reality are these two living in?

It’s such a sad point of view of the world.

One of the worst examples of this is the third act “Plan” to take back Barbie Land. On the men’s side, Gerwig and Baumbach have all the Kens serenade all the Barbies with Matchbox 20’s “Push,” a song whose lyrics are, “I want to push you around. Well I will. Well I will. I want to push you down. Well I will. Well I will. I want to take you for granted.”

Concurrently, the Barbies all agree to “cheat” on their Kens by going off and being with other Kens in front of them, so the Kens will get mad and start fighting each other.

These are the two behaviors Gerwig and Baumbach are choosing to highlight about men and women in the climax of their movie. What does that tell you about what they think about unity and relationships and togetherness and love? They hate it. Which is what makes this film so disgusting.

This was one of the most confusing moviegoing experiences I’ve ever had because, like I said, I loved so many things about the movie. And then this overbearing theme just destroys all that good will.

To a certain extent, I give these two credit because they did get a very dark message across in a giant Hollywood film. That’s hard to do. The studio system is built to be as inoffensive as possible. How they got WB and Mattel to buy into this message, I’m not sure. Maybe they were too dumb to realize it.

But that’s every indie writers’ dream, is to bring their dark indie-ness into the Hollywood machine because it’s so hard and Hollywood doesn’t ever let you.

And it’s paid off for them. The average moviegoer isn’t looking as deep as I am. They go to see the fun pretty colors, the beautiful Margot Robbie, and the funny Ryan Gosling, and they leave with a smile on their face. Which is probably the scariest thing of all. Is that they don’t realize that this dark toxic idea has now been injected into their brain. And that maybe, at some point in life, it starts manifesting itself.

Margot Robbie said it herself and I can’t agree with her more. “How did they let us make this movie?”

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Don’t be afraid to inject darkness into your mainstream screenplay. Darkness is what gives stories depth. Even though I didn’t like this message here, the inclusion of death as well as the complexity of male-female dynamics makes a movie like this stick with you for a lot longer than other big Hollywood movies, for better or for worse. :)

What: August Logline Showdown
Deadline: Thursday, August 24th, 10pm Western Time
Send: Title, Genre, Logline
Where: carsonreeves3@gmail.com

We have a fresh Logline Showdown at the end of the month! For those who haven’t participated in a showdown yet, you send me your title, genre, and logline for a feature screenplay. I choose my favorite five loglines, which then compete on the site over the weekend with you, the readers, voting for your favorite entry. Whichever logline gets the most votes, I review the script the following Friday. I can’t wait to see what you guys come with this month!

The other day, I was engaged in an e-mail exchange with a professional screenwriter with high-level studio credits so I was curious what they thought about Oppenheimer.

I’ve been curious what a lot of people think about Oppenheimer not just because it’s the movie du jour. But because I’m less than impressed with Christopher Nolan’s writing.  I don’t know if it’s because he’s still using Final Draft 2 or if he writes his scripts in notebooks like Tarantino then runs out of space therefore can’t rewrite.  Whatever the case, we can all agree his writing is inferior to his directing.

Yet it’s hard to argue with both a 97% critic and 96% audience score. So I’m wrestling with this contrary opinion of mine, even if I’ve been running into more and more people who I share secret whispered conversations with about their dislike of Oppenheimer. These Oppenhaters point out the same problems I had with the movie.  It’s long.  It’s messy.  It’s unfocused.  The multiple timelines hurt more than help.

Here’s what the writer said in their e-mail…

Regarding Oppenheimer, I genuinely, unequivocally, passionately detested it. I thought the first hour played like a trailer. There was no scene work. I hated the bombastic score meant to cover up the sh—y writing and act as collagen throughout the film. I was bored and confused for the entire second half (or 3rd act, or whatever you want to call it since the movie is so absurdly disjointed).

Arguably the most important beat in the film – the moment in which Oppenheimer chooses to build the bomb – was not articulated in the slightest. I am not saying it should have been this crazy exploration of how he got the “lightbulb” moment. But even a slow push-in as he studies his rivals’ equations or something would have worked. Another thing I don’t f—ing understand: Downey Jr giving interviews in which he praises Nolan’s direction, saying that he, Nolan, compared ‘Oppenheimer and Strauss’ to ‘Mozart and Salieri’ and Downey was like “ah! Yes! Now I know how to play it”. WHERE WAS THAT DYNAMIC IN THE FILM? It was completely non-existent. 

They make several points I agree with.

I, too, thought the first hour was constructed strangely. I wondered why we weren’t getting any actual scenes. It was pasted together almost like a montage, or, as the writer said, a “trailer.” Think about the scene in The Dark Knight where The Joker shows up at the bad guys’ meeting and imposes his plan to take down Batman. That’s a scene. Why didn’t we get anything like that in Oppenheimer?

I’m also right with this writer on their “absurdly disjointed” comment. We seemed to be bouncing back and forth between timelines with no clear purpose or logic. It felt random. Watching that, knowing that audiences bought into it whole-cloth, has me utterly confused. Am I expecting too much here? Am I over-analyzing? Or do I just not gel with Nolan’s storytelling style?

There was an argument in the comments section of my Oppenheimer review pushing back on my frustrations with the third act. My belief was that the movie was over once the bomb dropped. “Why are we still here?” Oppenlovers pointed out that the movie was called “Oppenheimer,” not “The Making of the Atomic Bomb.” Therefore, it made sense to stay with Oppenheimer 45 extra minutes after the bomb had been dropped. We hadn’t yet concluded *his* story, was the argument.

But here’s my pushback. If “Oppenheimer” was more about Oppenheimer than the making of the atomic bomb, how is it that I still don’t have a great sense of who Oppenheimer was as a person?? If I asked you to tell me who Oppenheimer was after seeing this movie, would you be able to easily do so? Or would you stumble around and throw a bunch of adjectives at me and expect me to make sense of it myself? Cause I’m guessing you would do the latter.

When I watch The Wolf of Wall Street, I know Jordan Belfort was a man done in by his insatiable appetite for excess. When I watch Taxi Driver, I know Travis Bickle was a man done in by his intense loneliness and isolation.  I know this because the writers hit on those flaws again and again and again.  They wanted the audience to understand their protagonist intimately.  I don’t know what I’ve learned about Oppenheimer after watching this film. That he really liked physics, sometimes almost kills professors, and gets involved with bats—t crazy chicks?

In my newsletter review of “Armored” yesterday, I talked about connecting the character’s internal life with the plot and how bad writers never make that connection. That’s exactly how I felt watching Oppenheimer. What issues in Oppenheimer’s tumultuous family life bled into his job? Where were the parallels?

A primary character flaw is all-encompassing. It stretches across all aspects of your life. In the Oscar-winning screenplay, Promising Young Woman, the main character, Cassie, is consumed by revenge. It informs every nook and cranny of her existence. For that reason, we know exactly who that character is. Can you tell me the same about Oppenheimer? Do you “get” him as well as you get that character? If you say “yes” I say you’re lying. I say that the only reason you feel like you have a sense of this character is because his name is in the title.

And by the way, I’m not trying to crap on this movie. I’m trying to understand it. I’m trying to understand what others saw that I didn’t. Cause there’s a part of me that thinks people are falling for the Nolan effect. Oppenheimer is an extremely pretty movie. It’s got movie stars for days. The attention to detail is insane. It’s got this, almost, old Hollywood feel that makes it shine in a way that other movies don’t. But, in the end, isn’t it just a beautifully directed film? Does anyone come out of this movie feeling emotion? If so, what was that emotion? I’m curious. Cause I felt way more emotion watching the first act of The Flash.

Obviously, something works in the film. This movie might end up becoming Nolan’s most successful movie ever. So I ask you, what am I missing? What is it that I’m not seeing? I truly want to know. One of my favorite movies ever is Terrance Malick’s The Thin Red Line. That movie does not stand up to narrative scrutiny. It is an uneven plotless experiment. But the cinematography is gorgeous. The score is amazing. The acting is incredible. There’s a realness to the way the film is shot that makes it feel like you really are in the middle of a war. So maybe that’s what people are feeling here? It’s more of a feeling they get while watching this movie? Help me. Help me understand why I don’t see the genius in Oppenheimer. Be as harsh as you want!

A voice from above spoke to me this weekend. Gave me some life-changing screenwriting advice that I pass on to you guys. I’ve got some Christopher Nolan trivia that only true Nolan fans will be able to answer. We’ve got some amazing trailers to dissect, including Wonka, Napolean, and Neil Blomkamp’s latest. I reflect on one of the great screenwriting runs of our time. I highlight a James Cameron AI quote that I couldn’t agree with more. And I’ve got a new script review for you that’s going to inspire the heck out of you action-thriller writers.

No official post today. Sorry about that. If you haven’t received this newsletter or haven’t received any others, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and I’ll add you to the list!

I’m way too busy at the moment to do a proper post. However, I’ve been wanting to post about the “Give it 3 Pages” test for a while now and this seems like the perfect time.

The “Give it 3 Pages” test is this idea that it’s impossible to get people to read your script. But anyone will read 3 pages. So you should be asking people not to read your script. But to read the first 3 pages of your script.

And guess what? If you’ve done your job, they’ll keep reading. In other words, it’s a cheat code. You get people to read your script who would never otherwise read your script.

There’s a caveat, of course. Those first 3 pages need to be good enough that people want to keep reading. But guess what gift you receive if they don’t keep reading? You get the gift of knowing you need to improve your first 3 pages.

So here’s what I want everyone to do. In the comments section, ask as many people as possible to read your first 3 pages. As the reader, you simply tell the writer if you stopped after page 3 or kept reading. If you kept reading, that’s a win for the writer.

Since I know [almost] everyone here is nice, a lot of you are going to say you stopped on page 3 but “plan to keep reading.” No no no no. Sorry writers. That doesn’t count if the reader says that. They have to actually have kept reading. Not say that they plan to keep reading.

If you’ve done your job, they will keep reading because they will not have been able to stop.

All right.

Have at it, everyone.

The “Give it 3 Pages” Test.