Hollywood dives ever deeper into the toybox

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This article was published 29/07/2023 (1163 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The word “toyetic” was coined in 1977. Relating to whether a movie is suited to spinning off toy-based merch, the term was reportedly invented by Kenner exec Bernard Loomis in a conversation with Steven Spielberg about Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which Loomis thought sounded good but not toyetic.

Loomis was right about Close Encounters. What could you market from that melancholic sci-fi flick — a Disappearing Father action figure?

Jurassic Park, though? Hoo-boy.

Capitalism being prone to devouring its own tail, some people are currently thinking not just about whether a movie is toyetic. They are wondering whether certain toys are cinematic.

Barbie, the blockbuster fantasy-comedy based on Mattel’s iconic doll, had an absolutely smashing weekend, taking in over $347 million globally, then going on to crush box office records for Mondays, beating out Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. The Greta Gerwig-directed flick also racked up the best opening numbers ever for a female filmmaker.

This will be happy news for the studios that currently have production deals going with Mattel and Hasbro to turn dolls, action figures, toy cars and board games into movies.

In these multi-corporate collaborations, studios are counting on brand recognition — or what is now sometimes called “pre-awareness.” (This latter term has a slightly dystopian vibe, like something that has colonized your mind without your knowledge, and there could be good reason for that.)

Audiences may claim they want originality, but familiarity seems to be what’s making money at the multiplex in these uncertain times. As pre-existing intellectual property has become an industry fixation, producers are casting around for brands that have deep links to the collective consciousness, and toys fit the bill.

Movie have tapped into childhood before with G.I. Joe and Transformers and My Little Pony.

Currently, J.J. Abrams is doing something with Hot Wheels. Polly Pocket is currently in talks with Lena Dunham. There’s an upcoming Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots movie with Vin Diesel attached, which totally makes sense.

Some IP projects channel weird gen-X and millennial nostalgia. The somewhat obscure astronaut toy Maj. Matt Mason, who lived on the moon and embodied ’60s and ’70s space dreams, is getting a screen treatment from novelist Michael Chabon, a childhood fan. Boglins, weird, fleshy hand puppets from the 1980s inspired by Gremlins and Ghoulies, are looking for a cinematic comeback.

Some toy-based projects just sound bizarre. There’s a horror comedy in development based on the Magic 8 Ball. Will the results be “Signs point to yes” or “Outlook not so good?”

There’s a project inspired by the View-master, which one suspects would only be good if the producers could somehow snag Wes Anderson, who’s always had a thing for arcane audio-visual tech.

There’s something being billed as “a Barney film for adults,” with Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) currently slated to star. Starting with that sing-songy purple dinosaur — a kids’ TV show character turned toy now turned back to the screen — the script is aiming for a surreal, Charlie Kaufman-style exploration of 30-something angst.

There’s even a movie based on Uno. Now, I will admit that Uno games at our house can get fairly dramatic — so many betrayals, so many underdog surges, so many last-minute reversals. But still, they’re cards. It’s hard to see how that translates into a narrative.

Ultimately, though, it’s not really the toy itself that makes or breaks the movie. It’s what the filmmaker does with it. That’s what separates The Lego Movie, clever, creative and irreverent, from Battleship, a board game adaptation declared dead in the water by critics and audiences alike.

Barbie started with potential pluses and minuses. Everyone knows Barbie, but she’s a very complicated brand. Some people hate her, and some people adore her. Mattel evidently decided they could live with that, and the company took a chance on allowing Gerwig enough creative latitude to both celebrate and satirize its titular subject. Barbie is a big-budget studio pic that smuggles in some indie feminism.

Centred by Margot Robbie’s complete commitment to the central role, the movie is both wildly artificial and earnestly emotional, telling a story that is pretty and pink and pro-girly, while also making room for tween characters in baggy black clothes who denounce Barbie as “sexist and fascist.” It builds up Barbie Land with obsessive affection, and then explodes it, also with affection.

And somehow this never comes off as wink-wink, having-it-both-ways cynicism. Gerwig’s and Robbie’s connection to Barbie is genuine, and that’s what makes this doll really come to life on screen.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca