“I knew it was a thing”: Barbie Director Greta Gerwig Breaks Silence on Zack Snyder Joke That Angered Snyderverse Fans for a Surprising Reason
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
Recently, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, was released in theaters all over the world. The response from viewers and critics has been positive, with many stating that the film would fit perfectly on the list of Academy Award nominees.
The first live-action Barbie movie tells the tale of Robbie’s Barbie, who, after experiencing an existential crisis, leaves Barbieland and enters the real world, where she is confronted by the most repulsive realities it has to offer. There is a group of people who are not pleased with Gerwig making fun of Warner Bros. project Zack Snyder’s Justice League, even though everyone has been praising the director.
Greta Gerwig reacts to taking a dig at Zack Snyder’s Justice League
During a recent interview with ComicBook, Barbie director Greta Gerwig, who has been receiving appreciation from the audience and the critics since the movie came out, is now clear about the subtle dig the movie made at Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
According to reports, in the movie, Barbies needed to be taken out of a trance so that they could join Margot Robbie’s Barbie and revert to a dangerous situation where Ken played by Ryan Gosling has taken over the Barbieland. Alexandria Shipp’s Writer Barbie is one of those and when she wakes up and describes the trance, she says “It’s like I’ve been in a dream where I was really invested in the Zack Snyder cut of Justice League.”
This comment from Writer Barbie did not sit well with fans as it upset them that they have now commented that this was not a dig at Zack Snyder but at the audience.
Talking about the same, Gerwig said, “I didn’t even really realize that. I didn’t even… Because I don’t have a dog in this fight, I didn’t even really know, I knew it was a thing. I don’t know the contours of all the ins and outs. But it’s the kind of thing that I vaguely know. But I think that was the thing, that it was like if [Writer Barbie] had a vague knowledge of, and then all of a sudden, in a certain state, it really meant a lot to her, and then it went away.”
What does Greta Gerwig’s dig at Zack Snyder’s Justice League mean?
The purpose of Gerwig’s recent film, which poked fun at Zack Snyder’s Justice League, as observed by film devotees, was easy to understand.
In the film, Ken discovers that men run the world and goes back to Barbieland to preach the message of toxic masculinity to take over. It’s the same way as ardent fans ran a campaign #ReleaseTheSnyderCut against the studios to restore the Snyderverse along with compelling them to release the original cut of the 2017 Justice League after Joss Whedon took over and shortened it to a reasonably entertaining film.
It was mentioned that the campaign continued long after the movie’s release in 2021 and that men primarily ran it and it contained a lot of toxicity in some places. The company spent an additional $70 million to shoot additional scenes for the movie.
Greta Gerwig on refusing to cut a scene from Barbie
During her interview with Rolling Stone, the talented director shared that there is a scene in the movie which might have never made it to the on-screen if she hadn’t held her ground against the studios for it. According to Gerwig, it’s one of the emotional scenes where Robbie’s Barbie meets an elderly woman on a bench and tells her that she is beautiful.
Gerwig said that it was initially suggested that they could cut the scene from the movie and the story could go on just the same, but she was not going to let such an iconic scene go to waste. The director noted, “I said, ‘If I cut the scene, I don’t know what this movie is about.’ That’s how I saw it. To me, this is the heart of the movie.”
The director explained that even though the scene has nothing to do with the plot of the movie, she needed to put it in because it helps in understanding Barbie’s perception of the real world after she leaves her Barbieland. She describes the scene which features costume designer Ann Roth, the older woman, as a ‘transaction of grace’.
Barbie is now playing in theaters nationwide by Warner Bros.
Source: ComicBook
