Barbie—the box-office sensation about plastic, amongst different issues—doesn’t overstay its welcome. At a (tight, by fashionable requirements) 1 hour and 54 minute runtime, Greta Gerwig’s newest directorial effort ends on a winking, poignant in-joke, its titular protagonist (Margot Robbie) embracing a brand new frontier as she sheds her misconceptions about perfection. When the display screen cuts to the glittering magenta-pink emblem acknowledged the world over, that’s the movie’s closing reveal. Barbie doesn’t have a post-credits scene, nor does it want one. So, why does it really feel as if one’s lacking?
As evidenced by the sheer variety of tales (very a lot together with the one you’re studying now) addressing Barbie’s post-credits potential, and the tweets satirizing the identical, the Marvel Cinematic Universe—amongst different franchises-that-shall-not-be-named—has skilled audiences to anticipate an immediate addendum that hyperlinks a unending story. The connective tissue between movie installments can’t be left for followers to ponder. Now not is it sufficient to surprise what’s subsequent; we’re conditioned to organize for its imminent arrival. Ever since Nick Fury popped up on the finish of 2008’s Iron Man to announce “the Avengers Initiative,” Marvel’s post-credits phenomenon has change into an habit, turning what was once a Hollywood rarity into an expectation. The foreign money of right this moment’s Tinseltown is IP, and for IP to be price its funding, it should produce—ideally, within the type of dozens of sequels, spin-offs, and fan-service scenes that go viral on TikTok. In flip, IP expects as a lot of audiences because it does of its creations. It expects us to take a seat, wait, and watch.
The issue is that a lot ready and watching (and watching, and watching, and watching) will get exhausting, particularly when the roll-out is so dreadfully formulaic. Franchise fatigue is actual. As author Mark Harris outlined in a superb Tweet thread about this weekend’s Barbie–Oppenheimer success, “An surprising hit is far more disruptive to the Hollywood system than a giant flop is. That’s the place we’re: TWO shock smashes that recommend you get folks again to the flicks by giving them what they haven’t seen, not what they’ve.” And even within the context of an IP behemoth like Barbie, an ending that ends appears like one thing we haven’t seen. It’s easier, although not essentially extra satisfying, to journey the status-quo contentment of a promised continuation. To be offered with one thing unique, surprising, and clearly contained doesn’t match the mould we’re skilled to crave.
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It’s true, Barbie would possibly nonetheless get a sequel. (Given what we find out about Mattel’s eagerness to increase its territory in Hollywood, it virtually definitely will.) However Barbie the movie ends, definitively, with none guarantees of what would possibly observe. That makes its future unknown—and its singular affect felt all of the stronger.
Tradition Author
Lauren Puckett-Pope is a workers tradition author at ELLE, the place she primarily covers movie, tv and books. She was beforehand an affiliate editor at ELLE.
