Opening Argument

We know that there are already plans to make a lot more movies about Mattel toys and games -- Uno, Polly Pocket, Magic 8-Ball. Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. It's hard to imagine what on earth an Uno Movie would look like (the other ones are easier), but here we are. And it's too easy to declare that movies based on games or toys can't be good, even beyond Barbie. On top of the success of Barbie, The Lego Movie got good reviews, as did this year's Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

But is "audiences love movies about toys" the right lesson? Because Barbie has a lot of qualities other than being a toy movie. It's a movie from Greta Gerwig, it's a movie starring Margot Robbie, it's a movie with a lot of women in it, it's a movie that taps into nostalgia, it's a movie without sex or violence, it's a movie that was marketed out the wazoo, it's a movie that is aesthetically bright and cheerful. You could list 50 possible things Hollywood could decide they should make more of if they want to continue with the success of Barbie.

The same kind of question arises about the recent Suits discourse. As you may know, Suits is a light comedy-drama that ran on USA from 2011 to 2019, about a law firm (where one paralegal is played by Meghan Markle). It was well-liked enough to last for 134 episodes, and now it's available on Peacock and Netflix (Peacock has all of it; Netflix has all but the last season). As Alan Sepinwall wrote in Rolling Stone, Suits belonged to what's often called the "Blue Skies" era of USA, where they were making a lot of light, easily digestible, but also creatively solid drama series like Monk or Burn Notice. (I think of Burn Notice as the show that most exemplifies the era.)

This summer, it seems that Suits has gotten extremely popular. Now, streaming services provide very little transparency around numbers, so you have to be cautious. But Netflix has been showing it high on its streaming charts for some time, so even if these numbers are imprecise, there seems to be something happening, enough that you have to suspect Hollywood is going to be trying to figure out how to make money from whatever that something is. That's true even though it's not entirely clear how to draw a line between viewing and money on a channel like Netflix, at least when people are watching without ads.

Of course, at least some of the lessons of Suits and Barbie are directly related to the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes. Suits writers have pointed out recently just how little money they make from their show's resurgence on Netflix. It's true that streaming can give a show new life, but who benefits? NPR's Eric Deggans pointed out this week that the strike itself may be behind the Suits-aissance, as it's pushing people more toward streaming (and perhaps to library titles rather than new stuff). With Barbie, you can see the critical contributions of a lot of people in crafts like production design and music supervision, all of whom are part of other unions with their own contracts to figure out. And given how much this strike has focused attention on fortunes created by writers and actors, the success of Gerwig and Robbie's collaboration is a welcome reminder that it takes hard work and vision by human beings to make work that's really worth seeing.

Moreover, Suits in particular drives home that on a streaming service, there are opportunities to manipulate what succeeds much more directly than would have been possible with traditional marketing. Netflix can put Suits at the top of your home screen if it chooses to; it can use whatever promotional photo works best based on who they think you are; it can recommend it to you every time you turn around. If streaming services were paying residuals in a way more similar to what broadcast does, could they also decide to bury something they don't want to pay people for? It certainly seems like they could, absent some reason not to. It calls to mind some of the "creative accounting" discussions that have also flared around these strikes; there are lots of ways to end up not paying people.

What is taken away from a success is just as important as the success itself. There are past examples of hit properties like Get Out and Gone Girl where attempts to duplicate the performance of the original have mostly led to so-so results. We won't know for a while which lessons Hollywood learns from 2023's success stories; on top of the strikes, it takes a while for imitation as the highest form of flattery to work its way through the system of development and production. Perhaps we're all in for a summer blockbuster where the Hungry Hungry Hippos (who have been circled for a possible movie project for some time!) start a law firm.