We are down the pipe and out of the box. Welcome to Dear Watchers in Omniversal comic book podcast, usually question mark, where we do a deep dive into the multiverse. We are traveling with you through the stories and the worlds and the dream houses that make up an omniverse of, fictional realities we all love. And your watchers on this journey are me, Ken and me. It's me, Aravio. I knew that was inevitable today, that I'd have to hear you do say. You did for me. That's
so lovely of you. And before we begin our trip today, guido, what's new in our little section of the multiverse? Last week, we wrapped up our Age of Apocalypse, parts one through three. So you now have a complete three part episode, the first time we've ever done that. So you can go listen to the multi parts, listen to them together, listen to them again. But that's not all. There's more on Age of Apocalypse coming soon with a very special guest. So keep an eye out. It's also still our
summer of giveaways. It feels like summer's ending, but still is. And we have one more giveaway, as our regular listeners know. And as always, we want to hear from you. So send us your emails, send us your DMs. Reach out to us on all social media at dearwatchers or [email protected] for email. And if you're joining us for the first time, we have three parts of our journey through the multiverse today. Origins of the story, exploring multiversity and pondering
possibilities. So thank you for joining us on today's journey. And remember to please leave a review wherever you're listening or maybe even someplace else that you're not listening. Just review us. Thank you. And with that, Dear Watchers, welcome to episode 112. 112? Yeah, that's how you say it. And let's check out what's happening in the Omniverse with our travels to today's alternate universe.
Today we are hopping in our pink convertible and traveling down a big green pipe to find out the answer to the question, what if Barbie and Super Mario Brothers blew away Hollywood with multiversal mayhem? I should have downloaded some sound effects for each, but I didn't. So listeners, prepare yourself. Should I just do. That one's? Easy, but I don't know for Barbie what we're going to do. Can you do a Lizzo singing, the pink song?
Oh, I was just thinking now I can't remember those, but I'm just like, I'm still Ken. All right, today we are talking about the 2023 films, barbie and Super Mario Brothers. They are two of the biggest grossing films at, the domestic box office and abroad. And both are kind of multiversal stories. They don't interconnect. We're not treating them as one multiverse. Our multiverse today, I guess, is actually our current Earth, where there is an influx of billion dollar making multiversal
movies. And we talked a little bit. We've talked a few times in the past about the influx of multiversal content. And on our hundredth episode, we looked back at why we think Hollywood might be so obsessed with multiverses right now. Is there anything new you're thinking about generally before we get into these two pieces? I think just why Hollywood approaches it is it can take these other worlds and still give them a level
of familiarity. So it's not just placing us in these other universes, just dropping us in. It's kind of easing us in because, oh, we're still kind of in our world, but now we're in these other worlds. Do you think that's kind of part of it? It's a little bit of a spood feeding us the multiverse? I don't know. I don't have much to say because I want to save it because it has to do with these two pieces. I think these two pieces might represent a shift, in our culture of.
Yeah, well, these two pieces are Barbie and So or Mario, depending on how you say his name. Yeah, I'm sure that's controversial to say. I was told in New Jersey, we say Mario, even though it should be Mario, so maybe that's my New Jersey roots. But we are talking about those two, properties. And before we get into each of their histories, let's talk about our histories with them. So, Guido, what was your background with Barbie?
Barbie I played with as a kid because I have two pretty significantly older sisters, so they had their 70s Barbies and the dream house, and they were all in the attic, and I would play with them. And, my next door neighbor, who I mentioned on the Gem episode, alex and I would sometimes incorporate her Barbies into our play, but I was never into it. It's not like I craved having my own Barbie. I certainly never watched any of the other Barbie media that was out there. I saw it as bland and
boring. I think it wasn't obviously a gender thing. I liked Gem, I liked she RA, but Barbie did not feel like it was a thing for me. What about you and Barbie? I never played with Barbie because I had no siblings, so I can't even use that as like, oh, I got it from my know. I was able to play with my siblings. And even you have two close, extended family members who are boys. Yes, that's true Barbies, and I think
you just said it, which I kind of agree with. I think even if I could have played with him, I don't think it really interested me, because Turtles ninja Turtles ghostbusters, we were dealing with, like, the fantastical. There was mutants, there was powers involved. I don't know if I really wanted to just pretend to be a doctor or an astronaut. I don't remember doing that much in make believe play, either.
I think I always wanted to be a superhero. So maybe Barbie almost seemed too earthbound for me, though. I played teacher as a kid, and look at me now. and I still didn't like Barbie, even though I was playing really boring things like school teacher. But what about Mario for you? Mario, though, was a completely different story. I was super into Mario, I think. No pun intended, or that's not a pun, but play on words, whatever. Super Mario world. The one for the SNES. That was maybe
my first video game period. And I played the heck out of that. Beat that then Super Mario 64. My first game for that console. I remember watching the live action TV show, which we'll talk a little bit about, but overall, I was just always a big Mario fan. What about you? Because you even had the NES that predates me a little too much. as, our listeners know, I am older. And so I got the better experiences of the that in this case included NES. And yeah, I mean, Mario was just a staple of
anyone my age's life. And for me, I did own an NES and play all of the Marios on it. I would play with friends. It was that kind of thing where you would just watch each other play for hours and then totally watch on and off because there wasn't co op at that point in Mario. And I loved it. It was it's to this day, I mean, they don't really make side scrolling platformers, that are not,
mobile games so much today. But that is my type of game, I think, because I just grew up with that two dimensional, totally scrolling. And so I watched a TV show. I, owned some of the comics. I was very into Mario. But Mario didn't have much of a world to get into, actually. And, I'll, want to talk about that with the movie. So my love died when I walked away from the video games. I wasn't thinking about
Mario anymore, which is not true, obviously. I was thinking about she RA, even when I wasn't watching the TV show or playing with the she RA action figures. So even his, contemporaries in video games like Legends of Zelda and Starfox, they had like, deeper benches of worlds and other places and more backstories. Mario, you never even really knew what his backstory was. So it wasn't a world that you could super easily get into.
No, you keep saying super, super easily get into super on this episode because you're going to run out of, chances to use it. So yeah, I think, more familiar with Mario than most people, but certainly not a super fan and not at all familiar with Barbie. So I think we're about the same on each of those. Well, let's get familiar by powering up to our first segment origins of the story right now on this very show. You're going to get the answer to all your questions.
Our amazing story begins a few years ago, of course, before they became films. Both Barbie and Mario began their lives in other mediums. So before we get into their movie backstories, we're going to give you some very abbreviated histories of these two iconic characters. Multiple episodes. Oh, my gosh. Write books, of course. But yeah. Let's start with, Barbie, perhaps the world's most famous doll.
Yes. Well, as people who've seen her movie got some of, we know she was created by Ruth Handler, and the company that Ruth founded with her husband Elliot and business partner Matt. Mattson. Mattel. And Barbie, you could say, perhaps has her comics, her root in comics, because Handler based Barbie on the German Lily doll, which was based on a comic strip. I had no idea a lawsuit. The Lily doll had put against Mattel. But that was settled out of
court a long time ago. So Barbie was very successful, very early, and one of the first toys to have a television ad campaign became a, staple, probably, of every girl young girl at that point. And Barbie's boyfriend, Ken, debuted in 1961, named for another of Ruth's children. So that's a little strange. But. by 2006, Mattel claimed that three Barbies were sold every second. So at that point, there are
thousands of the dolls. Yes, and just hundreds of thousands, I'm sure millions at this point, being sold. And Barbie became more diverse starting in the 1980s and in 2019. By 2019, the best selling Barbie was black. And Barbie has, at this point, over 35 skin tones and over 255 jobs. She can't hold one generations.
And in recent years, Barbie's sales had been sagging and interesting to wonder why and if know is the American Girl doll or some other I mean, that's not a new phenomenon or just cell phones or iPads. There's a lot of competition out there. Girls away from Barbies. Yeah. but I'm sure that is definitely changing. The market is surely growing, thanks to the movie. And there's a whole backstory to the character, including a life in Wisconsin and a last name and parents,
but it might not be canon. Who even knows what Barbie cannon is? And we're not going to get into that at this point. And I had no idea that she even had a background in comics. I want to check out that comic to see if there's any Barbieisms that I can even pick up from the Lily character. Yeah, I'm assuming you have to read French to read it. That's true. Or German. I know neither. But I do know
Brooklynese as a New Yorker. So let's head to Brooklyn and learn a little bit more about Mario, who was created by the high guru of Nintendo, guido, do you know how to pronounce his name? shiguro miyamoto. Miyamoto. Everyone knows Miyamoto. Any nerd knows Miyamoto. M not nerdy. First name lesso but Miyamoto legend. And he also created legends of Zelda, Donkey Kong and Starfox. So as you said, complete legend. Mario first appeared in Donkey Kong, in 1981, but his name was Jump Man
in the English Instructions. There's a little Easter egg of that in the new movie. And Miyamoto planned to actually name the character Mr. Video. And he himself said if he had named the character of Mr. Video, you would have never heard of this character. And Mario was given his own arcade game in 1983 with Mario Brothers, followed by the NES game Super Mario Brothers in
1985. Since then, Mario and his brother Luigi, who premiered in 1983, have appeared in countless games, many of which are some of the most beloved and acclaimed titles of all time. And as of 2020, like Mario Paint. And I loved Mario Paint. People who had it, loved it. But like, that game will never have a resurgence. No, there was a little side game in it where you had to kill a fly with a fly swatter. I loved it. Obsessed.
But as of 2022, Mario games are estimated to have sold over 830,000,000 units. So that is a lot of video games. I wish we could find the total number of Barbies ever sold and see if it's comparable. There is one every three or three every 1 second or whatever they said. I don't know how just verify 30. Million Barbies out there in the world.
That's true. So I know Guido, both of these characters have had big histories in comics, but we're not going to really maybe that will save that for a future episode. Yeah, but there's other media. They're similar because they're both IPS that have been pretty tightly controlled by their owners. And their owners are the corporations where they were created. So they haven't passed hands, they haven't been bought, they haven't been split up. And they are hugely
licensed, but very tightly controlled. So for Barbie, she has had, ah, a large presence, of course, in the license of books and apparel and music and cosmetics and video games and a lot more. There are apparently 16 classic animated films starting at the relatively late date of 2001. Perhaps I was the advent of computer animation with it. I was super surprised that we didn't really have a Barbie film as far as I could see until 2001 for a character that premiered many years earlier.
Yeah. And so then there's another 20 or so animated films through 2017. There's a Netflix partnership that was started for Barbie and Stacy to the rescue. And more is apparently on the way. But in terms of that live action film which we'll get into, there were some rumors of development dating back to 2009. From Sex in the City. Writer Jenny Bix later from Juno, writer Diablo Cody. Then a few years after that, 2016 Amy Schumer is attached, later Anne Hathaway,
finally 2018 Margot Robbie. But perhaps with Patty Jenkins of Wonder Woman Fame directing and in 2019, Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach came on board. So I'd say that's a small amount of time in movie development land, first of all, the fact that it only had rumbling starting in 2009, but then also for those two to be on board in 2019, knowing that the pandemic started shortly after. And that movie is out in 2023. Totally. And I remember the Amy Schumer announcement
that was like the one. I was like, oh, that's perfect casting. But, I'm, still glad we got the movie. We got, of course, yeah. And Barbie has made over a billion dollars worldwide at this recording. The highest grossing film by a woman ever. The highest grossing Warner Brothers film ever. Domestically, it's going to surely keep breaking records because they're rereleasing it in IMAX in a few weeks. And so this
movie is wild. And there are, as you mentioned, comics with some pretty famous creators, but we're not discussing those today. So maybe another day. Well, Mario's on screen life is, I'm going to say, a little weirder than Barbie's. More varied. Yes, very varied. His first appearance outside of video games was in animated form on Saturday Supercade in 1983, alongside such characters as Frogger and Donkey Kong. And then in 1989 was the premiere of the Super Mario Bros. Super show.
This featured animated Mario sequences as well as animated Legend of Zelda segments. But it became definitely probably much more well known, or at least that's how I remember it, for its live action framing sequences, which featured the wrestler Captain Lou Albano as Mario and Danny Wells as Luigi. And I don't know if you agree, Guido, these sequences really give you very hard public access vibes to me. Yeah. And they actually feel like two different shows,
which is fun. I mean, the animated parts, I think, are great, but they are like kitty cartoons. And then the live action ones are strange and definitely akin to stuff like Peewee or Elvira. Yeah, we've been exploring some peewee and some Ernest, and I think they're definitely all of the same.
Ilk because the live action sequences featured cameos by a huge amount of people, but some of them were Patrick Dempsey, norman Fell, ernie Hudson, sergeant Slaughter, vanna White, cindy Lauper, moon Zappa and of course, as you mentioned already, elvira M then in 1993, things got even weirder because then Mario came to the big screen with Super Mario Brothers, starring Bob Hoskins john Leguizamo as the Plumbers dennis Hopper as King Cooper the weirdo outsider musician mojo Nixon as
Toad. They wanted Tom Waits, but I guess they couldn't afford him, so they got Mojo Nixon. And that film was directed by the, people behind the cult TV show Max Headroom. Many A listers like Danny DeVito turned it down, and that film was really met with a lot of confusion over its dark tone. The fact it really doesn't look like the video game at all. Feel like the video game did not do well at the box office. Has since though, has really been kind of, reevaluated by fans and now.
We just have to treat it, I think, as something different. I mean, I loved it. I was twelve years old, I saw it in the theater. I was a big fan of it. But it's definitely telling that I've never rewatched it past. I'm curious to rewatch early adolescence. No, could be good, could be bad. But it's telling that I don't remember. Even though I loved it when it. Came out, I think I had the general thoughts when it came out was like, this doesn't look like Mario at
all, so why am I watching this movie? But now I think I might appreciate it for that reason. But I think the stink of that movie kind of held over Mario in film world for quite some time. He's kind of really finally come back, of course, this year with this new movie from the creators of Teen Titans, Go. And there are lots of Nintendo comics, including Mario, that fetch quite a pretty penny in the market. But we are going to cover those on another maybe,
maybe not today. Well, for now, we are going to throw on our raccoon costume and fly into the stratosphere of exploring multiversity. I am your guide through these vast new realities. Follow me and ponder the question, what if? And today we are asking the question, what if Barbie and Super Mario Brothers blew away Hollywood with multiversal mayhem? they kind of ended Hollywood, right? Right now. Yes, they have ended Hollywood. But first up is the Super Mario Brothers
movie from Universal Illumination. And Nintendo came out this April 2023. Instructed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelaneck written by Matthew Fogel produced by Chris Mela, Dandry Shigaro Miyamoto voices of Chris Pratt, Charlie Day amongst many others So before we dive too far in, what was your first impression? And I'll note we saw this late. We did not see this when it came. We actually saw this after Barbie in sequence. So we were late to the Super Mario explosion. That
also seemed to take the studio by surprise. I remember a lot of news about the amount of money it was making being surprising and a lot of people. Were, ah, Chris Pratt, he's not really that's a weird choice, but I actually really enjoyed the movie a lot. I thought it was a lot of fun as a player of the game. I thought it's full of Easter eggs, which is great. Is it a movie that surprised me or I'm going to want to go back and watch maybe even one more
time? Maybe not, but I thought it was a perfectly lovely Friday Saturday night flick to throw on. What about you? Yeah, I think I have the same level of fondness for it. I think one of the things well, the Easter eggs are great. I like that they really operate on multiple levels, but don't take away from the film. And that's something that I think is true for both of these movies we're talking about. So I think there's something in that and the multiverse, which I want to
explore a little more. But one of the things that took me by surprise in the movie was its epic fantasy feeling like it had these worlds and these species and these characters and even some rules in the world that I want to know more about. I was watching and I was like, oh, that cute little wizard thing. I want a movie about them. I don't remember those penguins very well. I want to see them.
It made me want more. Which I think for me, good epic fantasy world building does that because it means I'm interested in facets of the world. Yeah, the opening sequence actually reminded me a lot of Thor Love and Thunder that opening because you get that opening battle sequence there where Thor and the Guardians are trying to save that one alien race. And I kind of got that same thing here where oh, now we're introduced right away, not to the Toad
Kingdom, the Mushroom Kingdom, but to these penguins. And I think it did do a great job there of really building up this world and kind of embracing the Lord of the Rings ness. Almost. You almost get a Sauron, or wherever Sauron lives from, where Bowser lives in this place. All molten lava and that kind of thing. Mount Doom. Yeah. Mount Doom. Yes, of course. And I was surprised I mean, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that it was a multiversal story, because
I guess we don't really know. How does Mario, this plumber from Brooklyn, end up in the Mushroom Kingdom? But I'm curious, did you want more backstory on the creation, the connection between these two worlds? We also know, like, Princess Peach probably came from Earth, but it's never really explained well. I'd call it more multidimensional than multiversal And it's interesting because I think this is going to be one of the pieces of data I have for my grand thesis on the shift in
Hollywood. But I guess the question then it begs is what's the difference? What's the difference between a multi dimensional story and a multiversal story? And I'd say, for argument's sake, there really isn't one. I think we have, in many past episodes, argued about differences because in comics, there are always tons of dimensions. But an alternate universe tends to have much bigger rules, bigger stakes, or contort something about the prime universe. So I think
this story is a little more on the multidimensional side. But yeah, the warp pipe definitely has potential for a quote unquote multiverse here. Like you said, if Peach has not peach? Daisy peach in this. Oh, it's peach. If Peach has been taken from Earth to the kingdom, right, then we do have this rich backstory to explore of the warp pipe being used to conquer different dimensions and stuff. So yeah, I'm very interested in that multidimensional dimensionality, if that's a word of it.
Who built those pipes that I don't. Think we're ever going to get in this story? Oh, I don't know. I mean, that could be a good story for the next movie. Like, who built this connection between the two worlds? Was it just like an unseen? Was it Miyamoto? Did he just the unseen they go. Meta and ah, they have Miyamoto as the hand of God. I could see them doing that. Yeah. And it's making me think you've got, like, multidimensional stories, multiversal stories
and time travel stories. And they all intersect in little ways, but they also have different rules. That's ultimately our major project, I guess, of the podcast is, like, come up with an, overall thesis or a handbook is, like, explaining each of the three of those different storytelling types. Yeah. and I thought the other thing here that I found interesting was the multidimension, the other dimension, other world does not stay a secret because Bowser then comes into, I guess, what is basically
our world, and everyone knows about it. And I'm curious where that could go in another one is like, oh, now everyone knows about it. And I feel like that's even another subgenre of these stories is like, now everyone knows about the multiverse, or multidimension, what do they do about it now? Do people want to go as like, do they want to be tourists to the Mushroom Kingdom?
Yeah, and I'm curious if any of the later games, which I should have added in the intro and I think this is true for you, too, I haven't played, past retro games. So, like, mid 90s, perhaps. And I've replayed some of those or will play them in bits and pieces. But I haven't played too many of the
modern there was a wi one I tried. But my point is, I'm curious if any of the games like Galaxy or Universe or these different games that are out there ever do that, ever put a real world take on it, or ever try to fuse together different aspects of the lore. I'm just not sure. but there's definitely potential with the way they constructed it in the movie. And I can't imagine we won't have a sequel. Yeah. And the 90s movie really had a very
similar plot device as well. They could have just kind of set the whole thing in the Mushroom Kingdom, but they also played with this multidimensional. But yeah, I think you probably need it in a Mario Brothers story because you have these two plumbers from a you can't just go to the Mushroom Kingdom because then you're like, what are these two people doing here? And why? So you have to have a multidimensional story, I think, with the Mario Brothers yeah.
Built in. And so if you've played those later games and want to let us know, you can write to us on our email or hit us up on social media. But why don't we go to the movie that's on everybody's lips, this gigantic blockbuster known only as Barbie. And that is from Warner Bros. Heyday Films, lucky Chap Entertainment, Nbgg Pictures, and of course, Mattel from July 2023. It's directed by Greta Gerwig, who co wrote it with Noah Baumbach. It's produced by David Heyman, margot robbie
Tom Ackerley, robbie Brenner and Stars. Margot robbie Ryan Gosling and so many other amazing people. And, all right, I don't know how to start this well, overall thought, but my gosh, I'll say I think. This movie, as soon as I saw it, it felt like there's only a few movies every few years that are really going to be the movie that you think about a few years from now. And I was thinking, like, okay, The Shape of Water was a Best Picture winner, but are you really thinking about.
The Shape of Water talking about it for like a month? Exactly. Yeah, it's gone. Top Gun, Maverick, like, huge movie at the box office. Are people really going to be talking about that, like, years later? But this reminded me, the movie I thought in my head was like, get out, actually. Because maybe it's something about satire as well. But those movies are instant classics. 25, 30 years from now, people are going to be treating those movies as the movies we think about from 30 years ago.
Well, what's true is they don't just hit the Zeitgeist, but they operate on many levels. And what's true for both of them, and I think this is always the thing that will be cemented in culture. And I always think about Buffy in my history of this, the things that not only as a fan can you obsess, but academics can do stuff with totally. People who like to think, because even those of us who are not academics, who are not cultural critics, who are not sociologists, who are not doing this kind of
work, enjoy, thinking. A lot of us do. And these are all products. Get out. Buffy, 30 years ago, and now Barbie, where you can think so much about the material, in so many different ways, and that's why it will exist. But not only that, for this movie, because that makes it sound heavy handed, but I think this is the most fun version of that ever to be made in the history of the world. I think this is the best 50 50 smart, has something to say and fun movie that's just ever been
made. And I loved it. It's like a gender studies class in a super fun wild Zany movie. Yeah, I totally agree. And it's funny. I think it's a thing that Get Out does, and I think, everything everywhere, all at once does for me as well, where
you can really think about it. There's stuff to study, but it's putting it in the package of a horror movie or an action movie or a fish out of water comedy, in Barbie's case, almost like it's taking those really complex ideas, but putting them in this other super fun, wild, fun package. Yeah. it's masterful. Now, on the multidimensional multiversal element, I thought one thing that was really interesting about this movie was there's some people that know about this other
world and some people that don't. So, like America Ferrara and her family, the general population does not know about land, but basically everyone, it seems, who works at Mattel does. So, like, what did you kind of think about that? That there's some people who know about this world and there's some people that don't? Well, it's funny, I hadn't thought about that point as in and of itself being somewhat meta. but I'll now make it meta. The movie is
sexual. But because what my thesis in this episode is what I have observed about these two movies, and I think some people might think I'm coming late with this, but I don't think I am. I think I'm right, frankly. which is, I think these two movies show us that we have past the point of critical mass on multiversal storytelling, that the world now can just understand and
accept it. That the genre, if we're calling multiversal storytelling a genre that had been so well developed in superhero storytelling and as big as superhero movies had come, was still relegated to superhero storytelling. Everything everywhere, all at once, I'd say was like the first crack in that and sort of broke through hit people, but was still on the edge of a mainstream thing. These, two movies are completely mainstream, completely digestible. Everyone and anyone can, has and will see
them likely. And your point you just made about in the movie, that some people know about Barbie Land, some people don't, and you just accept it. Right. We never need to have some moment with America Ferreira where she's completely shocked that this could be happening and she needs some rational explanation. No, she just accepts
it. And I think that's what, to me, these two movies are telling us audiences are now ready to do, or at least content creators are ready to do for audiences, which is just say, we can just accept it. We can just accept Barbieland, and that's it. We don't need to explain it. It doesn't really matter in the movie. It doesn't matter. Yes, Mattel knew. Mattel kept it a secret. But as soon as other people know, they don't question it, they don't care. They just move on
with their lives. And I think that's how we, as audiences now can deal with multi dimensionality, multi versal storytelling. yeah, and maybe it needed to be a property like Barbie that everyone knows. So when these characters, like America farah's daughter, hears about, like she knows who Barbie is, and then we even conceptualize, okay, then there's a Barbie land where they all live. It's almost something that we've all thought about as kids, where it's kind of the basis of Toy Story, right?
Like when we're gone, our toys are conversing only in that movie, they're talking in our reality and not in another reality. Like they kind of are here. But it's almost something that we've all thought about a little bit. Barbie's all a character that we know. So maybe this was the perfect movie property to really crack that code for everybody.
Well, because of what you're saying, I think because not everyone in the movie knows that's sort of what makes it I don't know if it's accessible, but that's putting our world in this movie. Whereas The Avengers, it's slightly adjacent to our world. All Sci-Fi movies are like near future slight variations on our world. But what this movie has done is it's said like, our world exists. Oh, and there's this other little
world over here and the two can connect. So it almost places, our reality in the text of the story. So I think that might be one of the powerful things. And I think you're right, it had to be Barbie who did that. It had to be something people know and are familiar with both in the movie and in our world. That had to be true. Now, would you want more, even explained about Barbie
land? Like, we get a little bit of info from the narrator at the beginning of the film, but would you want to know more about why this place even exists or the rules there, or exploring? Is there a Mount Doom of Barbie land that we haven't really explored? Would you want that? Absolutely not. No, I think the reason it works m so well for me, and the reason I imagine it's so accessible to people, and the reason I think it's indicative of this tipping point that we've reached is that
you don't need that. Not only do you not need that, but I think in some cases that would take away from the fun of it. It would take away from the depth of it, perhaps, because then I'd be able to fit it, relegate it to some rational other place. I mean, it's almost like in everything, everywhere, all at once, which is a great third movie to bring in, in this
discussion. There's a rational explanation given, like, a pseudoscientific explanation given for how you can traverse the multiverse, but there is never an explanation given for why this suddenly happens now, or why it ever is allowed to happen. There's no origin given, and I think an origin would also take away from this aspect of Barbieland that it just exists. And we can sort
of think maybe it has to do with imagination. And that's sort of the realm of imagination and everything that, big ideas that humans have dreamed up have taken become, personified in some other realm. That's what I like to imagine it. Yeah, me too, but I don't want that explained to me. Even the Ruth Handler scenes, like, why. Is she a ghost there? We don't really know. Yeah, why does she have this quote unquote office in Mattel that Barbie can see, and can anyone else
ever see it? Is she actually there? Is she another figment of imagination that people can see or not? They can clearly see her at the end when she's in Barbie land. I like not having an origin of it, because obviously you need something to be really well developed, to not have an origin and be effective. And I think this is that it's so well developed that I'm good.
Well, let us jump in our convertible, into our snowmobile, into our boat, into our roller skates, and head into the world of pondering possibilities. Will the future you describe be averted, diverted, togo? What are we talking about for our pondering possibilities? Well, let's just talk about these characters or the future of these stories, both specific to Mario and Barbie, and then more loosely inspired or influenced. And
I just talked for a while with my thesis. So why don't you talk about what you think these two mean for the future? Well, I think for terms of seeing Barbie on screen or continuation of this universe, I know Greta Gerwig has said that she really put all every idea she possibly had on this into this movie, and that she doesn't really want a
sequel. And, I'm of the same way, I think, actually going back to get out and everything everywhere all at once are those movies we could continue to go back to. Yes, but what also makes them so powerful is that they are standalone. And I think it'd be great to just leave this world here and maybe find other ways to explore the Barbie verse, taking
this as inspiration, but going in a different direction. Like, I'd love to see maybe some of the aesthetic and style and tone of the Greta Gerwig world, but do it in animation. What do you think about something like that? That kind of takes some of the elements that we've been introduced, but putting them into a different world, maybe even comics. I don't know. it would be hard because it would be canon, it would be hard to do. You'd have to remove stereotype Barbie out
because she's human. Right? So you'd want to keep it unless you do a prequel story. But what I can't tell and I'm okay not being able to tell this, I can't tell if I want a story set entirely in Barbieland. And, it would have to be because you're retreading that story or you're disrupting that story if you tell some other story that has to do with the intersection of Barbieland to our
world. So I imagine you'd need a story set in Barbie land, and then maybe I wonder if a Barbie fan could watch this movie and take all of the other Barbie stuff we described in history as canon. Maybe it all happened in Barbie land. There could be a multiverse even within. Then there's another multiverse where Barbie is a professional woman living in Wisconsin, perpetually engaged to Ken. So that's a whole yeah.
Yeah. I don't it's because I guess this is also the cool thing I'm just realizing about the device where they're all barbie is. Like, they've sort of built the multiverse into Barbieland, where it's not actually a separate universe, but it's almost like the variance of Loki, but very similar on a much bigger scale, where it's just like all of these yeah, the astronaut Barbie you had as a kid exists, and it's here in Barbieland. It's just not Margot
Robbie. It's like the other one. So there's, all of those different versions built in, which is cool, but I don't know that there's story potential in those as much as I would I mean, Issa Rey as president was one of the most wonderful things in the movie. but I don't need more of that now. We mentioned at the top that sales of Barbie before this movie had dipped a bit, probably because there's so much competition from other things. And I'm sure they have or will be going up.
well, because we started buying them, I know for a fact that they started going up. That was kind of my question. Did this movie make you interested more in the world of Barbie? Wildly, oddly, wildly, unexpectedly, and I'm a moderately easy mark. I'd say, give me some good world building, and I will want to consume. Like, I will want that world.
But for that to have happened with Barbie is, I'd say, pretty extraordinary because we were at a yard sale yesterday, and I was digging through the box of like, you and I, we bought King Kong Barbie, and it's sitting on our shelf. I never imagined I'd be willing to own Barbies, and now I bought a book that's a catalog of the history of collectors edition Barbies. So I can basically go through it and decide which ones I want to track down on ebay and buy.
And we should clarify, barbie is not a giant gorilla, but it is, in the fist. So cool. But, yeah, it's extraordinary to me. I mean, would I want to read a Barbie storybook or would I want to read a Barbie comic, like you said? No, absolutely not. But now I am totally into buying some of the dolls. They're pretty they're cool, and I just feel a connection to that world that I've never felt before.
Yeah, and there's a Netflix movie that is going to be coming out and I'm just curious if that it's called Barbie, and Stacey to the Rescue. I'd imagine it's going to be for kids, but animated, but definitely be for. But see, that's not something that you're not going to tune into Netflix to watch Barbie and Stacey. Absolutely not. Which I'm fine with watching kids cartoons, but that absolutely has no appeal to me as into the world as I am at this point. That does not appeal to me.
Well, what about our little plumber brothers? Because I think where do you think that's going? I mean, that's an easier one to have a sequel, to have this ongoing story that sort of sets itself up. But what do you think it's going to do? And how multiversal is it going to be? Well, I think they really set up a lot, as you said. And we were mentioning a potential with a sequel by really setting up what is Peach's origin story? How did she get to the mushroom kingdom? Is
she actually human? So I think that would be really interesting to explore. So I definitely think we'll see a sequel. And it was so long before we got Mario in a film in between the failed live action film and this one. So I don't think we're going to be waiting that long for a new sequel. But I'm wondering too, in terms of multiversal or multidimensional, could the next movie even be a backdoor pilot, if you will, to, Nintendo, connected universe?
I do always wonder if like Metroid or Link from Zelda or Kid Icarus, which he's playing in Mario Brothers. I wonder if these Nintendo properties, should we know they could coexist? Because again, Nintendo has always kept a great deal of control of their IP. There's an example of this in Captain and the Games Master from the 80s, where they overlap and link up their different, worlds. But I wonder if
it should be what do you think? I mean, should Link be in a world with Mario or should Zelda just be its own world? I think it maybe should just be its own world because, yes, as you were mentioning, this new Super Mario world was very mythological and had a lot of kind of Game of Thrones, Lord of the Rings kind of feel in terms of expansiveness. But that doesn't mean that Zelda has to be in another kingdom over there. I would like to see that be its own world rather than
struggling to interconnect. How is Starfox in this world, too? You could easily put fucking animals. I guess Metroid would have to be on some alien planet. Yeah, but I think they should almost be their own world. And maybe this was more just functioning to ease people back into the world of what a more family oriented video game movie
adaptation could really feel. Like, and really also staying true to the video game, because I'm sure there were many people over the years saying you can't really just adapt Super Mario to the screen. It's silly. And that's what exactly they did. And it's the second biggest movie of the year. We're just going to have power ups. We're going to have him in the raccoon suit. We're just going to homages even to like, Mario Kart. You and I both played Mario Kart and Mario party over the
years. And they do such a good job of pulling ah, that in without turning it into they could have done a standalone Mario Kart race car movie, and it probably would have been awful. Instead, it was fun to have sequences that remind you so much of that game and the world of that game and the mechanics of that game. But within this movie now I. Think we might see spinoffs with the Donkey Kong characters and stuff like that. That's within kind
of the I guess that's the thing about Nintendo. They do have their own interconnected worlds of like, with and Donkey Kong and stuff like that. And then you do have other characters like Lincoln, Zelda and Samus that are completely separate. Yeah. And so moving away from both Mario and Barbie, do you think I'm right? do these two movies tell us that we have moved past the tipping point and we're just in a post multiversal world? I think so, because you made a good point
referencing some of the other movies. And I'm thinking there's that big sequence in I think it's endgame right. Where they kind of need to explain time travel again and what they're doing. And I think you could almost get by now just like skipping that altogether. Because we just all as you were saying, we just embrace this device. And, I think we're at peak, but I don't think it's also fully been mined yet.
No, I think at this point, what will happen I imagine this happened with probably with time travel stories, maybe even with like, Back to the Future at some point or something. I'm not a cinema historian in that way, but I think, yeah, we're at peak. We've passed the tipping point, I think. That doesn't mean they're going away, nor does that mean they're going to be at the top of everything. It means there will just now
always be multiversal stories. They're just going to always be a part of some stories that get told. And they're no longer relegated to even the fringe, large fringe that it was, but the fringe of superhero stories. They're now able to be in anything, thanks to everything, everywhere, all at once. Mario and Barbie. And now, before we wrap up, Guido, I had one final question for you. So of course, we had Barbenheimer this year taking over everyone. The word on everyone's
lips was Barbenheimer. But of course, today we were doing Barbie and Mario. So what would it be for you? Would it be Marbie or Barrio? What would their couple name be? It can't be Barrio because that's the neighborhood in Spanish. So it has to be Barbio. And I think it's barbio. Barbio, okay. There we go. How about you? Oh, no, I love it. Barbio. There we go. So that was, the new trend, the new celebrity couple of Barbio. That'll be the name of the movie when they cross over in 20 years.
Which is just inevitable onto. Itself. So that then is a wrap. Dear. Watchers. That is enough. There is no other giveaway this week. We do have that one final one lingering and I recommend you listen to the last few episodes if you have no idea what we're talking about with our giveaways. Yes. And I have been Robio. And I have been Ken. The reading list is in the show notes. You can follow us on all social media at dear watchers.
Leave a review wherever you listen to podcasts. We'll be back soon with another trip through the multiverse. In the meantime, in the words of Watu, it's a dream house, mother.