The first trailer for Margot Robbie's Barbie movie has been released – and it shows that as Aqua's cheesy but beloved Barbie song says, life in plastic really is fantastic.
The teaser for the rom-com movie, which arrives in theaters in July 2023, is only 60 seconds long, so there's not much we can glean from its footage. However, it looks like it could be a surprising smash hit next year – particularly with A-listers in Robbie (The Suicide Squad, Babylon) and Ryan Gosling (Blade Runner 2049, La La Land) , who plays original Ken, in its lead roles.
Check out the first teaser for Barbie below:
Mocking Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, the teaser shows a number of girls playing with old-fashioned dolls. However, once Robbie's Barbie arrives – complete with shiny, plastic skin and her iconic hourglass figure – the same girls smash up the toys they had been playing with in favor of Barbie's arrival.
The final few seconds tease actual footage from the film, including a look at Robbie's Barbie, Gosling's Ken, and Shang-Chi star Simu Liu's Ken 2.0 partaking in various dance/music-based sequences. Sure, it looks incredibly campy, but you just know it'll be a summer blockbuster for the ages. Or, for 2023, at the very least.
While the first teaser's arrival is good news, we still don't have a plot synopsis for the movie. Ordinarily, teaser trailers are emailed to the press alongside a rundown of what a film or TV show's story is about. However, the only information accompanying the teaser's press blast was who is starring in it (Robbie, Gosling, and Liu), when it'll be released (see below), and the movie's director (Greta Gerwig).
Still, we have some idea of what to expect from the Barbie movie. Speaking to Variety in July, Gosling teased Ken's character arc: "That Ken life is even harder than The Gray Man life, I think. Ken’s got no money, he’s got no job, he’s got no car, he’s got no house. He’s going through some stuff."
Meanwhile, speaking to The Wall Street Journal magazine, Will Ferrell – who plays the CEO of Mattel, the toy company behind Barbie – said: "It’s a loving homage to the brand and, at the same time, couldn’t be more satirical – just an amazing comment on male patriarchy and women in society and why Barbie’s criticized and yet why every little girl still wants to play with Barbie. Boy, when I read it, I was like, 'This is fantastic.'"
Barbie is one of many new movies coming in 2023 that everyone at TechRadar is excited to see in cinemas. As a Warner Bros. project, it'll join the likes of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Dune Part 2, The Flash, Creed 3, Shazam! 2, and Wonka in being released over the next 12 months.
Barbie arrives in theaters worldwide on July 21, 2023.
