The use of AI in many forms has become a huge debate, as well the instigator of both the writer’s and actor’s strikes currently bringing Hollywood productions to a standstill. However, when it comes to using AI generators to create “what if…” art, there are many social media users who have jumped at the chance to make the most of the boom in the generative technology. Having already brought the likes of “Wes Anderson does…” and “What if Indiana Jones had been recast in the 90s” to often scarily accurate life, next in line is the question of what if a live-action Barbie movie had been cast in the 80s or 90s with some of the biggest stars of the day?
Thanks to Schrodinger’s Film Club, fans can now see what the likes of Jennifer Aniston, Pamela Anderson and even RuPaul could have looked in the pink-perfection of Barbie’s world. Others in the list include Whoopi Goldberg, Demi Moore, Janet Jackson and Phoebe Cates. While this collection doesn’t take the greatest stretch of the imagination to think of several actresses wearing a range of excessively pink dresses, the overall result is still something to behold and the use of AI to generate such images continues to enthrall the world of social media.
Of course there is much more to creating an actual live-action Barbie movie, as has been proven with Greta Gerwig’s current hit. Having the right person up front is a big part of it, but crafting a story that works in standing out from decades of kiddie-level Barbie fodder is a trickier task to work around.
Barbie Has Arrived at the Perfect Time
While a live-action Barbie movie decades ago may have worked, Greta Gerwig has more than proven that sometimes a project is just waiting for the right person to come along and take the world by surprise. Barbie has been years in the making, having originally been planned as a Diablo Cody-written movie back in 2018 with Amy Schumer set to star in the title role. Recently, Cody explained why he couldn’t turn in a script that fit the needs of the movie. She said:
“That idea of an anti-Barbie made a lot of sense given the feminist rhetoric of ten years ago. I didn’t really have the freedom then to write something that was faithful to the iconography; they wanted a girl-boss feminist twist on Barbie, and I couldn’t figure it out because that’s not what Barbie is.”
In the end, the version of Barbie that is now tearing up the rulebook in cinemas is exactly the version it needed to be in order to make a mark and not fall into the category of just another Barbie product. With the film having real potential to join the $1 billion club, there is probably no one questioning whether a live-action Barbie movie should have been made decades ago.
