The far right is constantly warning that if you go woke, you’ll go broke. But when it comes to the new Barbie movie, they couldn’t be more wrong.
Barbie, which follows Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling) as they leave Barbie Land to explore the real world, earned a whopping $162 million in its opening weekend, Variety reported Monday. This is the biggest opening weekend of the year, and the biggest opening weekend for a female director ever.
The film had already made $22.3 million at the domestic box office from Thursday previews, the biggest preview haul of the summer. It blew the previous record of $17.5 million (made by Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in May) out of the water.
One complaint I have heard is that the resolution of the plot is the girls are back in power, where they could have provided a better message to the kids the film is aimed at by having neither Barbie nor Ken in power over the other
It is narrated, “eventually, the Kens would go on to have the same power in Barbieland that women have in the real world” (paraphrased). It’s basically kind of a joke and, perhaps more specifically, a reminder that positive change doesn’t happen overnight. I think it would be a bit… antithetical to spend the whole movie exploring the issues with a supposedly perfect system and then end by saying “okay we fixed it everything is perfect now”.