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It's a Barbie World...or should we say a Super Mario World? We look at the two biggest grossing films of the year that have Hollywood once again embracing multiversal storytelling! We give brief histories of both Barbie and Mario before diving into the multiversal (or is that multidimensional) storytelling of both films and wrap up by speculating what could be next for these iconic characters.
Ep. 112 What if Barbie and Super Mario Bros blew away Hollywood with multiversal mayhem?
From the 2023 films Super Mario Bros & Barbie
Find us at https://linktr.ee/dearwatchers
Forget Barbenheimer, it's Barbio! The two biggest grossing US movies of 2023 are also multiversal movies so we dive into the green sewer pipe to explore the histories of Mattel's Barbie and Nintendo's Mario Brothers including the toys, video games, the weird Mario tv show, the even weirder Mario movie and of course, the box office sensations on 2023 (and what could be coming in the future). Pull up a seat at the Dream House and listen up!
Reading List:
- Super Mario Bros. (2023 film)
- Barbie (2023 film)
Theme music is Space Heroes by MaxKoMusic (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0)
Creators & Guests
Host
What is Dear Watchers: an omniversal comic book podcast?
Dear Watchers is a comic book podcast taking you through the omniverse where your Watchers Guido and Rob explore a different multiverse each episode, from Marvel’s What If to DC’s Elseworlds and far beyond. Join as we discuss the stories that were inspired by and take inspiration from each episode's alternate universe. Includes special episodes with guest creators, scholars and fellow podcasters to share their favorite trips to the multiverse and help ponder the possibilities of what lies ahead for comics and storytelling. For bonus episodes: www.ko-fi.com/DearWatchers
We are down the pipe and out of the box. Welcome to
Dear Watchers in Omniversal comic book
podcast, usually question mark, where we do a deep
dive into the multiverse.
We are traveling with you through the stories and the
worlds and the dream houses that make up an omniverse
of, fictional realities we all love.
And your watchers on this journey are
me, Ken and me.
It's me, Aravio.
I knew that was inevitable today,
that I'd have to hear you do say.
You did for me. That's
so lovely of you. And before we begin our
trip today, guido, what's new in our little section of the
multiverse?
Last week, we wrapped up our Age of Apocalypse, parts
one through three. So you now have a complete three
part episode, the first time we've ever done that. So you
can go listen to the multi parts, listen to them together, listen
to them again. But that's not all. There's more on Age
of Apocalypse coming soon with a very special guest.
So keep an eye out. It's also still our
summer of giveaways. It feels like summer's ending, but
still is. And we have one more
giveaway, as our regular listeners know.
And as always, we want to hear from you. So send us your
emails, send us your DMs. Reach out to
us on all social media at dearwatchers or
podcast@deerwatchers.com for email.
And if you're joining us for the first time, we have three parts
of our journey through the multiverse today. Origins of
the story, exploring multiversity and pondering
possibilities. So thank you for joining us on today's
journey.
And remember to please leave a review wherever you're
listening or maybe even someplace else that you're not listening. Just
review us. Thank you.
And with that, Dear Watchers, welcome to episode
112. 112? Yeah,
that's how you say it. And let's check out what's happening in the
Omniverse with our travels to today's alternate
universe.
Today we are hopping in our pink convertible
and traveling down a big green pipe to find
out the answer to the question, what if Barbie
and Super Mario Brothers blew away Hollywood
with multiversal mayhem?
I should have downloaded some sound effects for each, but
I didn't. So listeners, prepare yourself.
Should I just do.
That one's? Easy, but I don't know for Barbie what we're going to do. Can you
do a Lizzo singing, the pink song?
Oh, I was just thinking now I can't remember those, but
I'm just like, I'm still Ken.
All right, today we are talking about the
2023 films, barbie
and Super Mario Brothers. They are two
of the biggest grossing films at,
the domestic box office and abroad. And both
are kind of multiversal stories. They
don't interconnect. We're not treating them as one
multiverse. Our multiverse
today, I guess, is actually our current
Earth, where there is an influx
of billion dollar making multiversal
movies. And we
talked a little bit. We've talked a few times in the past
about the influx of multiversal
content. And on our hundredth episode, we looked back at why
we think Hollywood might be so obsessed with
multiverses right now. Is there anything new you're thinking
about generally before we get into these two
pieces?
I think just why Hollywood approaches it
is it can take these other
worlds and still give them a level
of familiarity. So it's not just
placing us in these other universes,
just dropping us in.
It's kind of easing us in because, oh, we're still kind of in
our world, but now we're in these other worlds. Do you think that's kind
of part of it? It's a little bit of a spood feeding
us the multiverse?
I don't know. I don't have much to say
because I want to save it because it has to do with these two
pieces. I think these two pieces might
represent a shift,
in our culture of.
Yeah, well, these two pieces are
Barbie and So or Mario,
depending on how you say his name.
Yeah, I'm sure that's controversial to say.
I was told in New Jersey, we say Mario, even though it should
be Mario, so maybe that's my New
Jersey roots.
But we are talking about those two, properties.
And before we get into each of their histories, let's talk
about our histories with them.
So, Guido, what was your background with
Barbie?
Barbie I played
with as a kid because I have two pretty
significantly older sisters, so they had
their 70s Barbies and the
dream house, and they were all in the attic, and I
would play with them. And, my next door neighbor, who
I mentioned on the Gem episode, alex
and I would sometimes incorporate her Barbies
into our play, but I was never
into it. It's not like I craved having my
own Barbie. I certainly
never watched any of the other Barbie media
that was out there. I saw it as bland and
boring. I think it wasn't obviously a
gender thing. I liked Gem, I liked she
RA, but Barbie did not feel like it was
a thing for me. What about you and
Barbie?
I never played with Barbie because I had no
siblings, so I can't even use that as
like, oh, I got it from my know. I was able to play with my
siblings.
And even you have two close, extended
family members who are boys.
Yes, that's true Barbies, and I think
you just said it, which I kind of agree with. I
think even if I could have played with him, I don't
think it really interested me, because
Turtles ninja Turtles ghostbusters, we
were dealing with, like, the fantastical. There was
mutants, there was powers involved. I don't know if I
really wanted to just pretend to be a
doctor or an astronaut. I don't remember
doing that much in make believe play, either.
I think I always wanted to be a superhero. So
maybe Barbie almost seemed too
earthbound for me, though.
I played teacher as a kid, and look at me
now.
and I still didn't like Barbie, even though I was playing really boring
things like school teacher.
But what about Mario for you?
Mario, though, was a completely different
story. I was super into Mario, I
think. No pun intended, or that's not a pun, but
play on words, whatever. Super
Mario world. The one for the
SNES. That was maybe
my first video game period. And I
played the heck out of that. Beat that
then Super Mario 64. My first
game for that console. I remember
watching the live action TV show, which we'll talk a little bit about,
but overall, I was just always a
big Mario fan. What about you?
Because you even had the NES that predates me a
little too much.
as, our listeners know, I am older. And so I
got the better experiences of
the that in this case
included NES. And yeah, I mean,
Mario was just a staple of
anyone my age's life. And
for me, I did own an NES and play
all of the Marios on it. I would play with
friends. It was that kind of thing where you would just watch each other play
for hours and then totally watch on and off because there
wasn't co op at that point in
Mario. And I loved
it. It was it's
to this day, I mean, they don't really make side
scrolling platformers, that are not,
mobile games so much today. But that
is my type of game, I think, because
I just grew up with that two dimensional,
totally scrolling. And
so I watched a TV show. I, owned some of
the comics. I was very into Mario.
But Mario didn't have much of a world
to get into, actually. And, I'll,
want to talk about that with the movie. So
my love died when I walked away
from the video games. I wasn't thinking about
Mario anymore, which is not true, obviously. I was
thinking about she RA, even when I wasn't watching the TV show or playing
with the she RA action figures.
So even his, contemporaries in
video games like Legends of Zelda and
Starfox, they had like, deeper
benches of worlds and other places and more
backstories. Mario, you never even really
knew what his backstory was. So
it wasn't a world that you could super
easily get into.
No, you keep saying super, super easily get into
super on this episode because you're going to run out of, chances
to use it. So yeah, I
think, more familiar with Mario than
most people, but certainly not a super
fan and not at all familiar with
Barbie. So I think we're about the same on each of
those.
Well, let's get familiar by
powering up to our first
segment origins of the story
right now on this very show. You're going to
get the answer to all your questions.
Our amazing story begins a few
years ago, of
course, before they became films. Both Barbie and
Mario began their lives in other mediums.
So before we get into their movie backstories, we're
going to give you some very
abbreviated histories of these two
iconic characters.
Multiple episodes.
Oh, my gosh. Write books, of course. But
yeah. Let's start with, Barbie, perhaps the world's most famous
doll.
Yes. Well, as people who've seen
her movie got some of, we know she was created by
Ruth Handler, and the company that Ruth
founded with her husband Elliot and business
partner Matt. Mattson. Mattel.
And Barbie, you could say, perhaps
has her comics, her root in comics,
because Handler based Barbie on the German
Lily doll, which was based on a comic strip.
I had no idea a lawsuit.
The Lily doll had put
against Mattel. But that was settled out of
court a long time ago. So Barbie was
very successful, very early, and one of the first
toys to have a television ad campaign
became a, staple, probably, of every
girl young girl at that point.
And Barbie's boyfriend,
Ken, debuted in 1961,
named for another of Ruth's children. So that's a little
strange.
But.
by 2006, Mattel claimed that three Barbies were
sold every second. So at that point, there are
thousands of the dolls. Yes,
and just hundreds of
thousands, I'm sure millions at this point, being
sold. And Barbie became
more diverse starting in the
1980s and in
2019. By 2019, the best selling
Barbie was black. And Barbie has,
at this point, over 35 skin tones and over
255 jobs.
She can't hold one generations.
And in recent years, Barbie's sales had been
sagging and interesting to
wonder why and if know is
the American Girl doll or some other I mean,
that's not a new phenomenon or just cell
phones or iPads.
There's a lot of competition out there.
Girls away from Barbies. Yeah. but I'm sure
that is definitely changing. The market is
surely growing, thanks to the movie. And there's a
whole backstory to the character, including
a life in Wisconsin and a last name and parents,
but it might not be canon. Who even knows what Barbie
cannon is? And we're not going to get into that at this point.
And I had no idea that she even had a
background in comics. I want to check out that
comic to see if there's any Barbieisms that I
can even pick up from the Lily character.
Yeah, I'm assuming you have to read French to read
it.
That's true. Or German.
I know neither. But I do know
Brooklynese as a New Yorker. So let's head to Brooklyn
and learn a little bit more about Mario, who was
created by the high guru of
Nintendo, guido, do you know how to pronounce his name?
shiguro miyamoto.
Miyamoto. Everyone knows Miyamoto. Any
nerd knows Miyamoto.
M not nerdy.
First name lesso but Miyamoto
legend.
And he also created legends of Zelda, Donkey Kong and
Starfox. So as you said, complete legend.
Mario first appeared in Donkey Kong,
in 1981, but his name was Jump Man
in the English Instructions. There's a little Easter
egg of that in the new movie. And Miyamoto
planned to actually name the character Mr. Video.
And he himself said if he had named the character of Mr.
Video, you would have never heard of this character.
And Mario was given his own arcade game in
1983 with Mario Brothers, followed by the
NES game Super Mario Brothers in
1985. Since then, Mario and his
brother Luigi, who premiered in 1983,
have appeared in countless games, many of which are
some of the most beloved and acclaimed titles of all
time.
And as of 2020, like Mario Paint.
And I loved Mario
Paint.
People who had it, loved it. But like, that game will never
have a resurgence.
No, there was a little side game in it where you had to kill a
fly with a fly swatter. I loved it. Obsessed.
But as of 2022,
Mario games are estimated to have sold over
830,000,000 units.
So that is a lot of video games.
I wish we could find the total number of Barbies ever sold and
see if it's comparable.
There is one every three or three every 1 second
or whatever they said. I don't know how just verify
30.
Million Barbies out there in the world.
That's true. So I know Guido, both of
these characters have had big histories in
comics, but we're not going to really maybe that will save that
for a future episode.
Yeah, but there's other media. They're similar
because they're both IPS that have been pretty
tightly controlled by their owners. And their
owners are the corporations where they were created. So they
haven't passed hands, they haven't been bought, they haven't
been split up. And they are hugely
licensed, but very tightly controlled. So for
Barbie, she has had, ah, a large presence, of course,
in the license of books and apparel and music
and cosmetics and video games and a lot more.
There are apparently 16 classic
animated films starting at
the relatively late date of 2001. Perhaps
I was the advent of computer animation
with it.
I was super surprised that we didn't really have a Barbie
film as far as I could see until 2001
for a character that premiered many years
earlier.
Yeah. And so then there's another
20 or so animated films through
2017. There's a Netflix
partnership that was started for Barbie and Stacy to the
rescue. And more is apparently on the way.
But in terms of that live action film which we'll
get into, there were some
rumors of development dating back to
2009. From Sex in the City.
Writer Jenny Bix later from Juno, writer Diablo
Cody. Then a few years after that, 2016
Amy Schumer is attached, later Anne Hathaway,
finally 2018 Margot Robbie. But perhaps
with Patty Jenkins of Wonder Woman Fame directing
and in 2019, Greta Gerwig and Noah
Baumbach came on board. So
I'd say that's a small amount of time in movie
development land, first of all, the fact that it
only had rumbling starting in 2009,
but then also for those two to be on board in
2019, knowing that the pandemic started
shortly after. And that movie is out in
2023.
Totally. And I remember the Amy Schumer announcement
that was like the one. I was like, oh, that's perfect casting.
But, I'm, still glad we got the movie. We got, of course, yeah.
And Barbie has made over a billion
dollars worldwide at this recording.
The highest grossing film by a woman ever. The highest
grossing Warner Brothers film ever.
Domestically, it's going to surely keep
breaking records because they're rereleasing it in
IMAX in a few weeks. And so this
movie is wild. And
there are, as you mentioned, comics with some pretty
famous creators, but we're not discussing those today.
So maybe another day.
Well, Mario's on screen life is,
I'm going to say, a little weirder
than Barbie's.
More varied.
Yes, very varied. His first appearance outside
of video games was in animated form on
Saturday Supercade in 1983,
alongside such characters as Frogger and Donkey
Kong. And then in 1989 was the
premiere of the Super Mario Bros. Super show.
This featured animated Mario sequences as well
as animated Legend of Zelda segments. But
it became definitely probably much more well known, or at
least that's how I remember it, for its live action
framing sequences, which featured the wrestler
Captain Lou Albano as Mario and Danny
Wells as Luigi. And I
don't know if you agree, Guido,
these sequences really give you very
hard public access vibes to me.
Yeah.
And they actually feel like two different shows,
which is fun. I mean, the animated parts, I think, are
great, but they are like kitty cartoons.
And then the live action ones are
strange and definitely
akin to stuff like Peewee or
Elvira.
Yeah, we've been exploring some peewee and some
Ernest, and I think they're definitely all of the same.
Ilk because the live action sequences featured
cameos by a huge
amount of people, but some of them were Patrick Dempsey,
norman Fell, ernie Hudson, sergeant
Slaughter, vanna White, cindy
Lauper, moon Zappa and of course,
as you mentioned already, elvira M
then in 1993, things got even
weirder because then Mario came to the big screen
with Super Mario Brothers, starring Bob
Hoskins john Leguizamo as the Plumbers
dennis Hopper as King Cooper the
weirdo outsider musician mojo Nixon as
Toad. They wanted Tom Waits, but I guess they couldn't afford him,
so they got Mojo Nixon. And that film was directed
by the, people behind the cult TV show Max
Headroom. Many A listers like Danny DeVito
turned it down, and that film was really met with a
lot of confusion over its dark tone. The fact it really
doesn't look like the video game at all. Feel like the
video game did not do well at the box office.
Has since though, has really been kind of, reevaluated
by fans and now.
We just have to treat it, I think, as something different.
I mean, I loved it. I was twelve years old,
I saw it in the theater. I was a big fan of it. But
it's definitely telling that I've
never rewatched it past. I'm curious to
rewatch early adolescence. No,
could be good, could be bad. But it's telling that I
don't remember. Even though I loved it when it.
Came out, I think I had the general
thoughts when it came out was like, this doesn't look like Mario at
all, so why am I watching this movie? But now I think I might
appreciate it for that reason. But I
think the stink of that movie kind of held
over Mario in film world for quite
some time. He's kind of really finally come back,
of course, this year with this new movie from the creators
of Teen Titans, Go. And there are lots
of Nintendo comics, including Mario,
that fetch quite a pretty penny in the market. But we
are going to cover those on another maybe,
maybe not today. Well, for
now, we are going to throw on our
raccoon costume and fly into the
stratosphere of exploring multiversity.
I am your guide through these vast new
realities. Follow
me and ponder the
question,
what if?
And today we are asking the question, what if Barbie and
Super Mario Brothers blew away Hollywood with
multiversal mayhem?
they kind of ended Hollywood, right? Right now.
Yes, they have ended Hollywood. But
first up is the Super Mario Brothers
movie from Universal Illumination. And
Nintendo came out this April
2023.
Instructed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelaneck written
by Matthew Fogel produced by Chris
Mela, Dandry Shigaro Miyamoto
voices of Chris Pratt, Charlie Day amongst many
others So before we dive too far in,
what was your first impression? And I'll note we saw this
late. We did not see this when it came. We actually saw this after
Barbie in sequence. So we were
late to the Super Mario explosion. That
also seemed to take the studio by surprise. I remember a lot
of news about the amount of money it was making
being surprising and a lot of
people.
Were, ah, Chris Pratt, he's not really that's a weird
choice, but I actually really enjoyed the
movie a lot. I thought it was a lot of fun as a player
of the game. I thought it's full of Easter eggs, which is
great. Is it a movie that surprised me or I'm going
to want to go back and watch maybe even one more
time? Maybe not, but I thought it was a perfectly
lovely Friday Saturday night flick to
throw on. What about you?
Yeah, I think I have the same level of
fondness for it. I think
one of the things well, the Easter
eggs are great. I like that they really
operate on multiple levels, but don't take away from the film.
And that's something that I think is true for both of these movies we're
talking about. So I think there's something in that and the
multiverse, which I want to
explore a little more. But one of the things that took me by
surprise in the movie was its
epic fantasy feeling like it had these
worlds and these species and these
characters and even some rules in the world
that I want to know more about. I was watching
and I was like, oh, that cute little wizard thing.
I want a movie about them.
I don't remember those penguins very well. I want to see them.
It made me want more. Which I think
for me, good epic fantasy
world building does that because it
means I'm interested in facets of the
world.
Yeah, the opening sequence actually reminded me a
lot of Thor Love and Thunder that
opening because you get that opening battle sequence there
where Thor and the Guardians are trying to
save that one alien race.
And I kind of got that same thing here where oh, now
we're introduced right away, not to the Toad
Kingdom, the Mushroom Kingdom, but to these penguins. And I
think it did do a great job there of really
building up this world and kind of embracing the Lord of the
Rings ness. Almost. You almost get
a Sauron, or
wherever Sauron lives from, where Bowser lives
in this place. All molten lava and that kind of thing.
Mount Doom.
Yeah. Mount Doom. Yes, of course. And I was
surprised I mean, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that it was
a multiversal story, because
I guess we don't really know. How does Mario,
this plumber from Brooklyn, end up
in the Mushroom Kingdom? But
I'm curious, did you want more
backstory on the creation, the connection
between these two worlds? We also know, like, Princess Peach
probably came from Earth, but it's never really
explained well.
I'd call it more
multidimensional than multiversal And
it's interesting because I think this is going to be
one of the pieces of data I have
for my grand thesis on the shift in
Hollywood. But I
guess the question then it begs
is what's the difference? What's the difference
between a multi dimensional story and a multiversal
story? And I'd say, for
argument's sake, there really isn't one. I think
we have, in many past episodes,
argued about differences because
in comics, there are always tons of dimensions. But an
alternate universe tends to
have much bigger rules, bigger stakes, or
contort something about the prime universe. So I think
this story is a little more on the multidimensional side. But
yeah, the warp pipe definitely has potential
for a quote unquote multiverse here.
Like you said, if Peach
has not peach? Daisy peach
in this. Oh, it's peach. If
Peach has been taken from Earth to the
kingdom, right, then we do have this rich backstory to
explore of the warp pipe being used to
conquer different dimensions and stuff. So yeah,
I'm very interested in
that multidimensional
dimensionality, if that's a
word of it.
Who built those
pipes that I don't.
Think we're ever going to get in this story?
Oh, I don't know. I mean, that could be a good story for
the next movie. Like, who built this connection
between the two worlds? Was it just like an
unseen? Was it Miyamoto? Did he just the
unseen they go.
Meta and ah, they have Miyamoto as
the hand of God. I could see them doing
that.
Yeah. And it's making me think you've got, like,
multidimensional stories, multiversal stories
and time travel stories. And they all
intersect in little ways, but they
also have different rules. That's ultimately
our major project, I guess, of the podcast is,
like, come up with an, overall thesis or a handbook
is, like, explaining each of the three of those
different storytelling types. Yeah. and I
thought the other thing here that I found interesting was
the multidimension, the other
dimension, other world does not stay
a secret because Bowser then comes
into, I guess, what is basically
our world, and everyone knows about it. And
I'm curious where that could go in another one is like,
oh, now everyone knows about it. And I feel like that's even another
subgenre of these stories is like, now
everyone knows about the multiverse, or
multidimension, what do they do about it now? Do
people want to go as like, do they want to
be tourists to the Mushroom Kingdom?
Yeah, and I'm curious if any of the
later games, which I should have added in the
intro and I think this is true for you, too, I
haven't played, past retro games. So, like,
mid 90s, perhaps. And I've replayed some of
those or will play them in bits and
pieces. But I haven't played too many of the
modern there was a wi one I tried. But my
point is, I'm curious if any of the games like Galaxy
or Universe or these different games that are out there ever
do that, ever put a real world
take on it, or ever try to fuse together
different aspects of the
lore. I'm just not sure. but
there's definitely potential with the way they constructed it in the
movie. And I can't imagine we won't have a
sequel.
Yeah. And the 90s movie really had a very
similar plot device as well. They could have just
kind of set the whole thing in the
Mushroom Kingdom, but they also played with this
multidimensional.
But yeah, I think you probably need it in
a Mario Brothers story because you have these two
plumbers from
a you can't just go to the Mushroom Kingdom because then
you're like, what are these two people doing here? And
why? So you have to have
a multidimensional story, I think, with the Mario
Brothers yeah.
Built in. And so if you've played those later
games and want to let us know, you can write to us on
our email or hit us up on social media.
But why don't we go to the movie
that's on everybody's lips, this
gigantic blockbuster known
only as Barbie. And that is
from Warner Bros. Heyday Films, lucky Chap
Entertainment, Nbgg Pictures, and of
course, Mattel from July
2023.
It's directed by Greta Gerwig, who co wrote it with
Noah Baumbach. It's produced by David Heyman, margot robbie
Tom Ackerley, robbie Brenner and Stars. Margot robbie
Ryan Gosling and so many other amazing people.
And, all right, I don't
know how to start this well, overall thought, but
my gosh, I'll say I
think.
This movie, as soon as I saw it, it felt like there's only
a few movies every few years that are
really going to be the movie that you think about a few
years from now. And I was thinking, like, okay,
The Shape of Water was a Best Picture
winner, but are you really thinking about.
The Shape of Water talking about it for like a month?
Exactly.
Yeah, it's gone.
Top Gun, Maverick, like, huge movie at the box
office. Are people really going to be talking about that, like, years
later? But this reminded me, the movie I thought
in my head was like, get out, actually.
Because maybe it's something about satire
as well. But those movies are
instant classics. 25, 30 years from
now, people are going to be treating
those movies as the movies we think about from 30
years ago.
Well, what's true is they
don't just hit the Zeitgeist, but they
operate on many levels.
And what's true for both of them, and I think this
is always the thing that will be cemented
in culture. And I always think about Buffy in my history
of this, the things that not
only as a fan can you obsess, but
academics can do stuff with totally.
People who like to think, because even those of us who are not
academics, who are not cultural critics, who are not
sociologists, who are not doing this kind of
work, enjoy, thinking. A lot of us
do. And these are all products. Get
out. Buffy, 30 years ago, and
now Barbie, where you can think so much
about the material, in so many different ways, and
that's why it will exist. But not only that,
for this movie, because that makes it sound heavy
handed, but I think this is the
most fun version of that ever to be
made in the history of the world. I think this is
the best 50
50 smart, has
something to say and
fun movie that's just ever been
made. And I loved it. It's like a gender studies class
in a super fun wild Zany
movie.
Yeah, I totally agree. And it's funny. I
think it's a thing that Get Out does, and I think,
everything everywhere, all at once does for me as well, where
you can really think about it. There's stuff to study, but it's
putting it in the package of a horror movie or
an action movie or a fish out of water
comedy, in Barbie's case, almost like
it's taking those really complex ideas,
but putting them in this other super
fun, wild, fun
package. Yeah.
it's masterful.
Now, on the multidimensional
multiversal element, I thought one thing that was
really interesting about this movie was
there's some people that know about this other
world and some people that don't. So, like America
Ferrara and her family, the general
population does not know about land,
but basically everyone, it seems, who works at
Mattel does. So, like, what did you kind
of think about that? That there's
some people who know about this world and there's some people
that don't?
Well, it's funny, I hadn't thought about that
point as in and of itself being somewhat
meta. but I'll now make it meta. The movie is
sexual. But because what
my thesis in this episode is
what I have observed about these
two movies, and I think some people might think I'm
coming late with this, but I don't think I am.
I think I'm right, frankly. which is,
I think these two movies show us that we
have past the point of critical mass
on multiversal storytelling, that
the world now can just understand and
accept it. That the genre, if we're
calling multiversal storytelling a genre that had been
so well developed in superhero
storytelling and as big as superhero movies had
come, was still relegated to superhero
storytelling. Everything everywhere, all at once,
I'd say was like the first crack in that and
sort of broke through hit people, but
was still on the edge of
a mainstream thing. These, two movies
are completely mainstream,
completely digestible. Everyone and
anyone can, has and will see
them likely. And
your point you just made about in the movie, that
some people know about Barbie Land, some people don't, and
you just accept it. Right. We never need to
have some moment with America Ferreira
where she's completely shocked
that this could be happening and she needs some
rational explanation. No, she just accepts
it. And I think that's what, to me, these two
movies are telling us audiences are now ready
to do, or at least content creators are ready to do
for audiences, which is just say, we can
just accept it. We can just accept Barbieland,
and that's it. We don't need to explain it. It doesn't
really matter in the movie. It doesn't matter. Yes,
Mattel knew. Mattel kept it a secret. But as soon as other
people know, they don't question it, they don't care. They just move on
with their lives. And I think that's how we, as audiences now can
deal with multi dimensionality, multi
versal storytelling.
yeah, and maybe it needed to be a
property like Barbie that everyone knows.
So when these characters, like
America farah's daughter, hears about,
like she knows who Barbie is, and then we
even conceptualize, okay, then there's a Barbie land where they
all live. It's almost something that we've all thought about as kids,
where it's kind of the basis of Toy Story, right?
Like when we're gone, our toys are
conversing only in that movie, they're talking in our
reality and not in another reality. Like
they kind of are here. But it's almost something that we've
all thought about a little bit. Barbie's all a
character that we know. So maybe this was the
perfect movie property to really
crack that code for everybody.
Well, because of what you're saying, I think because
not everyone in the movie knows that's sort
of what makes it I don't know if it's
accessible, but that's
putting our world in this movie.
Whereas The Avengers, it's
slightly adjacent to our world. All
Sci-Fi movies are like near future
slight variations on our world. But
what this movie has done is it's said
like, our world exists. Oh, and there's this other little
world over here and the two can connect. So it
almost places, our reality
in the text of the story.
So I think that might be one of
the powerful things. And I think you're right, it had to be Barbie
who did that. It had to be something people know and are familiar
with both in the movie and in our world.
That had to be true.
Now, would you want more,
even explained about Barbie
land? Like, we get a little bit of info from the narrator at
the beginning of the film, but would you want to know more
about why this place even exists
or the rules there, or exploring? Is there a
Mount Doom of Barbie land that we haven't really
explored? Would you want that?
Absolutely not.
No, I think the reason it works
m so well for me, and the reason
I imagine it's so accessible to people, and the reason I
think it's indicative of this tipping
point that we've reached is that
you don't need that. Not only do you not
need that, but I think in some cases that would take
away from
the fun of it. It would take away from the depth of
it, perhaps, because then I'd be able to fit
it, relegate it to some rational
other place. I mean, it's almost
like in everything, everywhere, all at once, which is a
great third movie to bring in, in this
discussion. There's
a rational explanation given, like, a
pseudoscientific explanation given for how you can
traverse the multiverse, but there is never an
explanation given for why this suddenly happens
now, or why it ever is allowed to happen. There's
no origin given, and I think an origin
would also take away from this aspect of
Barbieland that it just exists. And we can sort
of think maybe it has to do with imagination. And that's
sort of the realm of imagination and everything that,
big ideas that humans have dreamed up have
taken become, personified in some other realm.
That's what I like to imagine it. Yeah, me too,
but I don't want that explained to me.
Even the Ruth Handler scenes, like, why.
Is she a ghost there? We don't really know.
Yeah, why does she have this quote unquote office in
Mattel that Barbie can see, and can anyone else
ever see it? Is she actually there? Is she
another figment of imagination that people can see
or not? They can clearly see her at the end when she's in Barbie
land. I like
not having an origin of it,
because obviously you need something to be really well
developed, to not have an origin
and be effective. And I think this is that it's
so well developed that I'm
good.
Well, let us jump in our
convertible, into our
snowmobile, into our boat, into
our roller skates, and head into the world of
pondering possibilities.
Will the future you describe
be averted, diverted,
togo? What are we talking about for our pondering
possibilities?
Well, let's just talk about these characters or the
future of these stories,
both specific to Mario and Barbie, and then
more loosely inspired or influenced. And
I just talked for a while with my thesis. So
why don't you talk about what you
think these two mean
for the future?
Well, I think for terms of seeing
Barbie on screen or continuation of this universe,
I know Greta Gerwig has said that she really put
all every idea she possibly had on this into
this movie, and that she doesn't really want a
sequel. And, I'm of the same way, I think, actually
going back to get out and everything everywhere all at
once are those movies we could continue to go back to.
Yes, but what also makes them so powerful is
that they are standalone. And I think it'd be
great to just leave this world here
and maybe find other ways to
explore the Barbie verse, taking
this as inspiration, but going in a different direction. Like,
I'd love to see maybe some of the
aesthetic and style and tone
of the Greta Gerwig world, but do it in
animation. What do you think about something like that? That kind
of takes some of the elements that we've been introduced,
but putting them into a different world,
maybe even comics.
I don't know. it would
be hard because it would be
canon, it would be
hard to do. You'd have to
remove stereotype Barbie out
because she's human. Right? So you'd want to keep it
unless you do a prequel story. But what I
can't tell and I'm okay not being
able to tell this, I can't tell if I want a story set
entirely in Barbieland. And, it would have to be
because you're
retreading that story or you're disrupting that story
if you tell some other story that has to do with the
intersection of Barbieland to our
world. So I imagine you'd need
a story set in Barbie land, and then
maybe I wonder if a Barbie fan could watch this
movie and take all of the other Barbie
stuff we described in history as canon. Maybe it all
happened in Barbie land.
There could be a multiverse even
within.
Then there's another multiverse where Barbie
is a professional woman living in Wisconsin,
perpetually engaged to Ken. So that's
a whole yeah.
Yeah. I don't it's because I guess
this is also the cool thing I'm just realizing about the
device where they're all barbie is. Like,
they've sort of built the multiverse into Barbieland,
where it's not actually a separate universe, but
it's almost like the variance of Loki,
but very similar on a much bigger scale,
where it's just like all of these yeah,
the astronaut Barbie you had as a kid
exists, and it's here in Barbieland. It's just not Margot
Robbie. It's like the other one. So
there's, all of those
different versions built in, which is
cool, but I don't know that there's story
potential in those as much as I would I mean,
Issa Rey as president was one of the
most wonderful things in the movie. but I don't need
more of that now.
We mentioned at the top that sales of
Barbie before this movie had dipped a bit, probably because there's
so much competition from other things. And I'm sure
they have or will be going up.
well, because we started buying them, I know for a fact that they started
going up.
That was kind of my question. Did
this movie make you interested more in the
world of Barbie?
Wildly, oddly,
wildly, unexpectedly, and
I'm a moderately easy
mark. I'd say,
give me some good world building, and I will want to
consume. Like, I will want that world.
But for that to have happened with Barbie
is, I'd say, pretty extraordinary
because we were at a yard sale
yesterday, and I was digging through the box of
like, you and I, we bought King Kong Barbie, and it's
sitting on our shelf. I never imagined I'd be willing
to own Barbies, and now I bought a book that's a catalog
of the history of collectors edition Barbies. So I
can basically go through it and decide which ones I want to track down on
ebay and buy.
And we should clarify, barbie is not a giant gorilla,
but it is,
in the fist.
So cool. But, yeah,
it's extraordinary to me. I mean, would I want to read
a Barbie storybook or would I want to read a Barbie comic,
like you said? No, absolutely not. But now
I am totally into buying some
of the dolls. They're pretty they're cool, and I just
feel a connection to that world that I've never felt
before.
Yeah, and there's a Netflix movie that is going to
be coming out and I'm just
curious if that it's called Barbie, and
Stacey to the Rescue. I'd imagine it's going to be
for kids, but animated, but
definitely be for. But see, that's not something that
you're not going to tune into Netflix to watch Barbie and
Stacey.
Absolutely not. Which I'm fine
with watching kids cartoons, but that absolutely
has no appeal to me as into the
world as I am at this point. That does not
appeal to me.
Well, what about our little plumber
brothers?
Because I think where
do you think that's going? I mean, that's an
easier one to have a sequel, to have this ongoing
story that sort of sets itself up.
But what do you think it's going to
do? And how multiversal is it going to be?
Well, I think they really set up a lot, as you
said. And we were mentioning a potential with a sequel
by really setting up what is Peach's origin story?
How did she get to the mushroom kingdom? Is
she actually human? So I think that
would be really interesting to explore. So I definitely think
we'll see a sequel. And it was so long before we got
Mario in a film in
between the failed live action
film and this one. So I don't think we're going to be
waiting that long for a new
sequel. But I'm wondering too, in terms of
multiversal or multidimensional,
could the next movie even be
a backdoor pilot, if
you will, to, Nintendo,
connected universe?
I do always wonder if like Metroid
or Link from
Zelda or Kid Icarus, which he's
playing in Mario Brothers. I wonder
if these Nintendo properties,
should we know they could coexist? Because
again, Nintendo has always kept a great
deal of control of their IP. There's an example of this
in Captain and the Games Master from the 80s, where
they overlap and link up their different,
worlds. But I wonder if
it should be what do you think? I
mean, should Link
be in a world with Mario or should
Zelda just be its own world?
I think it maybe should just be its own world
because, yes, as you
were mentioning, this new Super Mario
world was very mythological and
had a lot of kind of Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings
kind of feel in terms of expansiveness. But
that doesn't mean that Zelda has to be in another
kingdom over there. I would like to see that be
its own world rather than
struggling to interconnect. How is
Starfox in this world, too? You could easily
put fucking animals.
I guess Metroid would have to be on some alien planet.
Yeah, but I think they should almost be
their own world. And maybe this was more just functioning
to ease people back into the world
of what a more family
oriented video game movie
adaptation could really feel. Like, and really also
staying true to the video game, because I'm sure there were many
people over the years saying you can't really just
adapt Super Mario to the screen. It's
silly. And that's what exactly they did. And it's
the second biggest movie of the year. We're just going to have power ups.
We're going to have him in the raccoon suit.
We're just going to homages even to like,
Mario Kart.
You and I both played Mario Kart and Mario party over the
years. And they do such a good job of pulling ah,
that in without turning it into
they could have done a standalone Mario Kart race car movie, and it probably would
have been awful. Instead, it was fun to have
sequences that remind you so much of that game and
the world of that game and the mechanics of that game. But within
this movie now I.
Think we might see spinoffs with the Donkey
Kong characters and stuff like that. That's within kind
of the I guess that's the thing about Nintendo. They do have
their own interconnected worlds
of like, with and
Donkey Kong and stuff like that. And then you do have other characters
like Lincoln, Zelda and Samus that
are completely separate.
Yeah. And so moving away from
both Mario and Barbie, do you think
I'm right? do these two movies tell
us that we have moved past the tipping
point and we're just
in a post multiversal world?
I think so, because you made a good point
referencing some of the other movies. And I'm thinking there's that big
sequence in I think it's endgame right. Where they kind of need
to explain time travel again and
what they're doing. And I think you could almost get by
now just like skipping that altogether. Because
we just all as you were saying, we
just embrace this device.
And, I think we're at peak, but I don't think
it's also fully been
mined yet.
No, I think at this point, what will
happen I imagine this happened with probably
with time travel stories, maybe even with like, Back to the Future at some
point or something. I'm not a cinema historian in that
way, but I think,
yeah, we're at peak. We've passed the
tipping point, I think. That doesn't mean they're
going away, nor does that mean they're going to be at
the top of everything. It means there will just now
always be multiversal stories. They're just going to
always be a part of some stories
that get told. And they're no longer
relegated to even the fringe, large
fringe that it was, but the fringe of superhero
stories. They're now able to be in
anything, thanks to everything, everywhere, all at
once. Mario and Barbie.
And now, before we wrap up, Guido, I had one final question
for you. So of course, we
had Barbenheimer this year
taking over everyone. The word on everyone's
lips was Barbenheimer. But of course, today we were
doing Barbie and Mario. So what would it be for you?
Would it be Marbie
or Barrio? What would their
couple name be?
It can't be Barrio because that's the neighborhood
in Spanish. So it has to be Barbio. And
I think it's barbio.
Barbio, okay. There we go.
How about you?
Oh, no, I love it. Barbio. There we go.
So that was, the new trend, the new celebrity
couple of Barbio.
That'll be the name of the movie when they cross over in
20 years.
Which is just inevitable onto.
Itself. So that then is
a wrap. Dear.
Watchers.
That is enough. There is
no other giveaway this week. We do have that one final
one lingering and I recommend you listen
to the last few episodes if you have no idea what we're talking about with
our giveaways.
Yes. And I have
been Robio.
And I have been Ken. The reading list
is in the show notes. You can follow us on all social
media at dear watchers.
Leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. We'll be back soon
with another trip through the multiverse.
In the meantime, in the words of Watu, it's
a dream house, mother.