The First Trailer for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is a Cinema Event
Sorry, there’s absolutely no way your secret Santa is going to get you a better gift than the one Greta Gerwig and Warner Bros. got us this holiday season: the first teaser trailer for Barbie. Fans have been obsessing over this movie for years, dissecting every set photo (much to the chagrin of star Margot Robbie), and theorizing what the final product could possibly look like. Now, we finally have (a bit of) an answer.
The trailer opens on a beautiful sunrise over a desert. A voiceover comes in, saying, “Since the beginning of time, since the first little girl ever existed, there have been...dolls.” We see shots of modernly dressed girls playing with baby dolls as Richard Strauss’ “Sunrise,” used in 2001: A Space Odyssey, begins playing. At that moment, it’s clear this is a reference to the 1968 film. And just like when the black monolith appeared seemingly out of nowhere, so too comes Robbie as the first Barbie, standing tall in her pin-up style black and white bikini, her legs posed just so. With one tip of the sunglasses and a wink, the little girls go wild, smashing and discarding their baby dolls for this new toy, throwing them in the air like the apes did their bones.
From there, the music picks up and we get to have a little fun. We see a glimpse of what could only be Barbie World, as well as Ryan Gosling giving his best blue steel as Ken. Issa Rae fist pumps into the air, and Simu Liu dances in a void. The teasers ends with a glammed-up Robbie giving a decisive clap as the title card comes on screen, revealing the release date of July 21st.
Gosling as Ken.
As of now, little is known of the actual plot of the film. We know it follows Barbie as she leaves her world to enter into ours and experience life as a real woman. Gosling’s Ken follows her, as does Will Ferrell as the Mattel CEO, trying to get Barbie back where she belongs. If this trailer says anything, it’s that the film will strike a nice balance between witty and referential, while not taking itself too seriously, as a movie about Barbies never should. The script was written by Gerwig along with Noah Baumbach and the cast is rounded out by Emma Mackey, Connor Swindells, Nicola Coughlan, Emerald Fennell, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera, America Ferrera, Ncuti Gatwa, Scott Evans, Hari Neff, and Alexandra Shipp.
Watch the full teaser below:
