Barbie is currently shaping up to be one of the biggest films of the year. It’s bright, it’s colourful, it’s just knowing enough, and its publicity machine has been bulldozing the general public for what seems like several years at this point. From all that anyone can tell, Barbie is going to be one of those staggeringly rare films that manages to excel commercially as well as intellectually.
Although, that said, doesn’t a part of you wish that it bombs? Not because it’s a bad film, or because you wish ill upon anyone involved in its creation, of course. No, a tiny part of you wants Barbie to fail because it might just spare us the miserable inevitability of a dark and gritty Hot Wheels film.
This isn’t a joke. Mattel is apparently so keen to maximise the perceived success of Barbie that it is currently attempting to chuck its entire IP catalogue at the big screen. Barbie will be followed by a Daniel Kaluuya-produced Barney the Dinosaur movie that has been described as an “A24-type” film that is heavily inspired by the work of Charlie Kaufman. Which is fine, of course, because it exists – as Barbie does, to some extent – on the assumption that the children who grew up with Barney have now become literate, intelligent, self-aware adults who are able to satisfactorily deconstruct the tropes of the content they enjoyed in their youth.
But after that, at least according to a recent piece in the New Yorker, comes a JJ Abrams-produced Hot Wheels movie. And, were you to judge this movie on the tone and style of the Barbie and Barney movies that preceded it, you might assume that this film would be a silly, knowing exploration of the dumb lizard-brain joy that comes from repeatedly smashing two impractical cars into each other in a vast array of physics-defying stunts. In the right hands, this could be wonderful; like a cross between Jackass and the last few Mission: Impossible films.
Instead, however, we’re getting what sounds an awful lot like the exact opposite of that. Abrams told the New Yorker: “For a long time, we were talking to Mattel about Hot Wheels, and we couldn’t quite find the thing that clicked, that made it worthy of what Hot Wheels – that title – deserved … Then we came up with something emotional and grounded and gritty.”
I hope I’m not jumping the gun too much when I say: oh God, someone’s overthought this. Hot Wheels doesn’t need to be emotional and gritty. There isn’t some dark and layered mythology to Hot Wheels that deserves our serious attention. Hot Wheels doesn’t have a canon that fans demand an adherence to. Hot Wheels is some little cars in a box that sometimes do loop-the-loops if you buy the right kind of track. Look at any Hot Wheels advert that has ever been made. It isn’t dark and emotional and gritty. It’s a bunch of explosion noises and some little cars going fast and a guy going “HOT WHEELS!” and some kids looking completely boggle-eyed.
That doesn’t seem to be what Abrams has landed on, though. In fact, what JJ Abrams seems to have landed on is the 2014 Need for Speed film.
Oh, you remember the 2014 Need for Speed film. It was a film based on the successful video game series about car racing. It starred Aaron Paul, who at that point was coming out of Breaking Bad blazing hot. In the trailer he delivered a portentous monologue – backed with opera music and accompanied by slow-motion footage of him looking wracked with angst – that began with him growling: “They took everything from me.” He goes on: “All those who defied me shall be ashamed and disgraced; those who waged war on me shall perish,” with all the world-weary weight of a man who just spent several years acting opposite Heisenberg.
For a while, the trailer felt exciting. It felt emotional, grounded and gritty. And then everyone collectively thought: “Hang on, isn’t this based on a video game about cars going really fast? Why’s it so self-important?”. And then the film actually came out, and it got 22% on Rotten Tomatoes, primarily because it wasn’t fun enough.
And this might well be the fate of the new Hot Wheels movie. The worst thing in the entire world that it can do is take itself too seriously, but so far that seems to be where it’s heading. Perhaps all is not lost, though. Perhaps we can intervene. If someone makes an online petition demanding that the film’s title be changed to Hot Wheels: Brum Brum Wheee!, then I promise to sign it.
