Life is plas­tic and fan­tas­tic in the first Bar­bie trailer

Every year’s movie cal­en­dar brings with it a slew of sub­plots, mini-nar­ra­tives that accu­mu­late and even­tu­al­ly cool into what we accept as his­to­ry. This sum­mer promis­es a res­o­lu­tion to one of 2023’s big ones, the Graduation/​Curtis face-off of our time – by which we of course mean the impend­ing box-office duel between Christo­pher Nolan​‘s destroy­er-of-worlds biopic Oppen­heimer and Gre­ta Ger­wig​‘s plas­tic, fan­tas­tic movie treat­ment of icon­ic children’s play­thing Barbie.

Can Ger­wig, one of the few name-brand film­mak­ers in her gen­er­a­tion mak­ing dis­tinc­tive work at the stu­dio lev­el, best the reign­ing king of the think­ing man’s block­buster? More­over, can she make it through Hollywood’s IP Fac­to­ry with her sense of wit and per­son­al­i­ty intact? The first prop­er trail­er for her salute to the game-chang­ing dol­ly has arrived this morn­ing, and offers an encour­ag­ing answer to both questions.

The trail­er delib­er­ate­ly with­holds the details of the plot, instead more focused on explor­ing Bar­bi­eland, a chip­per dimen­sion in which every­one appears as smi­ley and smart­ly attired as Bar­bie (Mar­got Rob­bie) her­self — except, it seems, for our Ken (Ryan Gosling), fum­ing with jeal­ousy over those com­pet­ing for his gal’s affec­tions. An adven­ture to the real world may be in the cards, if the road signs are to be believed, but there’s plen­ty of trou­ble in the par­adise of Bar­bi­eland to go around. We’ve got a beach-off on our hands!

As a fleet of 24 char­ac­ter posters con­firmed ear­li­er, Rob­bie is not the Bar­bie, but rather a Bar­bie, joined by Hari Nef, Emma Mack­ey, Dua Lipa, Sharon Rooney, Ana Cruz Kayne, and Issa Rae, while the posse of Gosling’s Kens includes Kings­ley Ben-Adir, Simu Liu, Scott Evans, and Ncu­ti Gat­wa. Emer­ald Fen­nell also has a char­ac­ter poster of her own, as Midge, whose only defin­ing fea­tures seem to be that she is preg­nant and Midge. She’s Midge! And Michael Cera plays Allan. You know Allan. He’s Ken’s best friend.

Most intrigu­ing of all, it appears that Ger­wig has embraced the col­or-sat­u­rat­ed arti­fice of dig­i­tal film­mak­ing for an aes­thet­ic that fore­grounds its fak­e­ness until it cir­cles back to hyper­re­al­i­ty, the same trick deployed by the Wachows­ki sis­ters in Speed Rac­er. That film was anoth­er big-swing attempt to make some­thing clever and idio­syn­crat­ic from big-bud­get IP adap­ta­tion, con­signed to the sad fate of a megaflop only appre­ci­at­ed with time. Amer­i­ca wasn’t ready, but this time around, they just might be.

Bar­bie comes to cin­e­mas in the UK and US on 21 July.