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Greta Gerwig’s Barbie isn’t the first movie to be made about the impossibly statuesque doll Mattel executive Ruth Handler invented around the dawn of the mid-century. Credit where credit is due to 2001’s animated direct-to-video release Barbie in the Nutcracker, which kickstarted a series where the iconic blonde tended to live out fantasies where she was variously reimagined as a princess or a fairy or a mermaid. But it is the first to put a live-action format to use; be handsomely budgeted (at something to the tune of $145 million); and feature a Barbie who is not, say, preoccupied with making good use of her kindness and irrepressible can-do attitude by striving to reinstate peace to the troubled waters of Mermaidia or the floral canopies of Fairytopia but instead the unanswerable questions of life’s meaning — what it would be like to die.

The Barbie brand has been existentially fraught since its inception; it’s felt like such a cultural given for so many decades to ponder whether this vessel of femininity effects more harm (with its impossible-to-attain and, for decades, strict ideas of beauty) or good (with its cheery insistence that women can be anything they want to be) that it feels generally like a tired train of thought. In the wake of a particularly financially unsteady last decade for Mattel, the timing is right for the Barbie brand to now dig as deeply as it can into the self-awareness and criticism-prompted reflexiveness that has recently proven a commercial boon with a multimillion-dollar movie that will simultaneously function as an ultimate brand refresh and the start of what Mattel is hoping will be a Marvel-style Hollywood takeover.

Read the full column on 425.