Why Barbie's Snyder Cut Joke Is Hysterical - And Makes The Pre-Backlash Look Silly
Contains spoilers for "Barbie"
Greta Gerwig's adaptation of "Barbie" was always going to be a lightning rod. An unapologetic ode to women and how hard it can be to exist as a woman in a patriarchal society, "Barbie" is going to be divisive as its initial rollout continues — and one joke in the movie is causing an unexpected amount of trouble.
Perhaps "unexpected" is the wrong word; Gerwig herself said, ahead of the movie's release, that she wasn't quite prepared for what would come with the joke. That said, she kept it in the movie anyway. Here's the deal: after Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling) leave Barbie World for the Real World and discover that men hold positions of power there — the inverse of Barbie Land — Ken gets fully patriarchy-pilled, and returns to Barbie Land solo only to transform it into "Kendom." When Barbie goes back and brings her new friends Gloria (America Ferrera) and her daughter Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt), they find the Barbies completely subservient, including Barbies who are accomplished physicists, have won Nobel Prizes, or won the Presidency.
After being snapped out of her Ken-induced funk, Writer Barbie (Alexandra Shipp) can't believe what's happened to her — and that's where the "Snyder Cut" comes in. Writer Barbie says that she felt like she fell asleep and got "really invested" in director Zack Snyder's cut of "Justice League" during her induced stupor. This is a seriously benign joke, but people on the Internet really don't like it when others take Zack Snyder's name in vain.
The Snyder Cut isn't the only thing Barbie pokes fun at during its story
Sorry, but that Snyder Cut joke is funny (and for the uninitiated, Zack Snyder's long-awaited cut of the DC superhero epic "Justice League" finally hit streaming services in 2021 after the previous, much-maligned version helmed by Joss Whedon preceded it). Beyond that, Gerwig, an obvious student of pop culture lore, skewers a lot more than "Zack Snyder's Justice League." In the very same section of the movie, President Barbie (Issa Rae) helps a fellow Barbie out after she's been deprogrammed, and she insists that one of the Kens show her Francis Ford Coppola's classic "The Godfather" — and not only that, she specifically asks that he talk through the entire movie and explain it to her, distracting him while the Barbie he held hostage is shown the light.
Nobody in their right mind is arguing that Greta Gerwig actually thinks "The Godfather" and "Zack Snyder's Justice League" are bad movies worthy of our disdain. That's not what the joke is — instead, the joke is at the expense of the Kens and their bloated sense of self-importance, wherein they were obviously spending their time explaining movies to various captive Barbies. Gerwig's film is rich with references to other movies and pop culture properties, and while only a few are shouted out directly — like the "Snyder Cut" — it's not from a place of actual criticism.
Fans reacted before the movie was released — and then people came to Barbie's defense
Fans of Zack Snyder, upon hearing there might be one joke about their favorite director, jumped online before the movie even came out to defend his honor. (Again, they did not know the context or content of the joke yet.) On July 19, two days before "Barbie" hit theaters, @chocomovietwt wrote, "So Greta Gerwig is desperately trying to position Barbie as a feminist blockbuster. But the fact that the movie takes shots at Zack Snyder- the leader of 3rd wave Hollywood feminism- leads me to doubt her storytelling capabilities." @Snyder_Cut_240, appropriately, agreed: "Barbie has been popular for decades, yet they have to find a way to make a dig about Zack Snyder/his fans/his cut out of spite as usual. Stay classy, WB." (Both "Barbie" and "Zack Snyder's Justice League" are distributed by Warner Bros.)
After seeing the movie, though, others chimed in to defend "Barbie" without insulting "Zack Snyder's Justice League." As @TomMCJL put it, "YES – #Barbie directly references Zack Snyder & his Justice League – No, it isn't distasteful nor unfunny, it's actually very funny. It's a great joke. & The audience went pretty crazy at it."
Nobody is going to like "Zack Snyder's Justice League" any less after "Barbie," so honestly, all's well that ends well. The joke was a bold move on Gerwig's part, though — which makes sense, since "Barbie" is a pretty bold movie overall. "Barbie" is in theaters now.