The success of Barbie is the success of a filmmaker who spent the past 15 years finding her voice. In that way, Greta Gerwig is the antithesis of the process that has produced many of the filmmakers behind the blockbuster franchise films that have dominated theaters for the past decade.
Colin Trevorrow, the filmmaker best known for helming Jurassic World and Jurassic World: Dominion, had only directed one fiction feature before being picked for Universal's first raptor reboot. His debut, the low budget indie comedy Safety Not Guaranteed, cost just $750,000 to make. Jurassic World was a massive leap to the big leagues, with a budget roughly 200 times that. Similarly, Jon Watts had made two low budget movies, Clown and Cop Car, before Marvel hired him to make the Spider-Man films, which range in budget from $160 to $200 million.
Filmmakers moving from indie films to tentpole blockbusters with nothing in between has become increasingly common, especially in the MCU. Chloé Zhao made Nomadland for $5 million, then got a $200 million budget for Eternals. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck had never made a movie for more than $8 million, then got a budget north of $150 million for Captain Marvel. Taika Waititi had only worked with single-digit millions before getting a $180 million budget for Thor: Ragnarok. If you went from managing a McDonald's to running the Mall of America, those jobs would be fundamentally different, even if your job title was the same. Handing an indie filmmaker the keys to a big Hollywood project is similarly overwhelming. Marvel has a pipeline running through movies and TV that needs to be maintained, and hiring filmmakers who have no experience with large budgets is a good way to make sure the corporation, which only works at this level, retains creative control.
This is both a cause and a symptom of the death of the mid budget film. Given the lack of middle ground, it's understandable for directors to want to jump at the opportunity to join the big leagues. Making a massive blockbuster hit has typically been the way to gain greater personal freedom to make whatever you want later on. Christopher Nolan made Batman Begins, which let him make The Prestige. He made The Dark Knight, which let him make Inception. He's the most successful example in history of a one-for-them, one-for-me filmmaker; his one-for-mes play like one-for-thems. But, when directors take the jump from tiny indies to massive tent poles with nothing in between, it can rob them of the opportunity to figure out the craft of making big movies while maintaining a unique point of view.
The filmmakers with the most distinctive voices of the current generation have, by and large, taken their time to develop it, instead of allowing themselves to be swallowed up by the corporate IP machine. Jordan Peele made Get Out for $4.5 million and after its massive success could have easily signed on to direct a Marvel or DC tentpole. Instead, he made Us, for just $20 million, and it was another huge hit. His most recent film, Nope, had the grandest scale yet, with blockbuster ambitions, but still only cost $65 million. That’s solidly in mid-budget range and, if you’re keeping track, cheaper than any movie the MCU has ever produced. Other young filmmakers with distinctive voices, like Ari Aster and Robert Eggers, have made the same calculus, making films with slowly increasing budgets, instead of diving into the deep end.
But among millennial filmmakers, no one has played the game better than Greta Gerwig. The director and co-writer of Barbie has made big hits at every stage of her solo career. And she gained the knowledge to do that through years of other work in the industry, honing her storytelling skills.
Gerwig started out working in low-budget mumblecore movies with director Joe Swanberg, starring in Hannah Takes the Stairs, which she acted in and co-wrote, and Nights and Weekends, which she co-directed, co-wrote, co-produced, and starred in. Toward the end of the '00s, she began working with her creative and, later, life partner, Noah Baumach, starring in his films Greenberg, Frances Ha, and Mistress America. During that time, she was cast as the lead in a How I Met Your Mother spinoff, How I Met Your Dad, but it didn't make it past the pilot stage. She's mentioned that event when asked for an example of a negative moment that ended up being positive in the long run, and her three films as solo director show that it would have been an almost tragic loss for her to get derailed by a network TV spinoff for who knows how many years.
Gerwig's solo directorial debut, Lady Bird, cost $10 million, made $79 million at the box office, and scored Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture. She then moved up to the next budget tier with Little Women, which cost $40 million, earned $218.9 million worldwide, and also scored Oscar noms for screenplay and picture. And, with Barbie, Gerwig moved solidly into the blockbuster budget level ($128-145 million) and knocked it out of the park with a movie that has now grossed a billion dollars and counting. Given its immense success and Gerwig's past nominations, it will be extremely surprising if Barbie doesn't get some love from the Academy, as well.
At every level since embarking on her solo directorial career, Gerwig has been able to use her previous experience to navigate to bigger success. More importantly, she hasn't lost her voice in the process. But, if she had skipped from Lady Bird to Barbie, who knows? Maybe she would have.