Greta Gerwig Hasn't Read a Single 'Barbie' Review Yet

It would be an understatement to say that Barbie was a box-office hit, as it collectively made $1.38 billion (and counting). These astronomical numbers are also historic, as Barbie became the highest-grossing movie ever directed by a woman. Clearly, Barbie was a success with moviegoers worldwide — and had similar praises from the majority of movie critics.

But what exactly does director Greta Gerwig think about all the Barbie reviews? Hard to say, because she hasn't read a single one according to her latest interview with Vanity Fair.

"I’ll probably sit down with a binder sometime in February,” she said. "But right now it’s too fresh."

"Everything I know about the movie’s success is an anecdote," she continued. "Apparently, there was a very high percentage of people who said they couldn’t remember the last movie they saw in a movie theater."

In the interview, she credited everybody but herself for the success of the film and admits it's difficult to fully comprehend the veracity of the unquestionable stardom she now finds herself in. "This year is the most that I’ve ever been recognized in my neighborhood,” she shared. 

Gerwig acknowledged that the long history and greater cultural importance of Barbie had her proceed with caution throughout the film process.

“Honestly, there was nothing but fear around all of it from the outset," she revealed. "You’re dealing with a topic that is already so filled with opinions, but the trick is to say well, instead of trying to tiptoe around it, what if we just stepped in it? And the whole undertaking was definitely like ‘Drive it like you stole it.’ Go, go, go. Don’t tell them, don’t tell them where we’re going."

While she's been taking it slow regarding digesting the feedback, Gerwig does reveal some of her favorite scenes. One of which is a scene most people likely find themselves laughing about, and that's when Ken (played by Ryan Gosling) turned Barbie's Dreamhouse into his Mojo Dojo Casa House and threw out all her clothes.

More specifically, when Barbie (played by Margot Robbie) cried "Not the palazzos," Gerwig laughed the way Robbie said that line "still gets" her.

Barbie wasn't the only box-office hit of the summer. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum released Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. The film follows physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy) and a team of scientists who work on the Manhattan Project — otherwise known as the development of the nuclear bomb.

The dual release of the two films on the same day ushered in the now iconic Barbenheimer phenomenon — the online showdown that caused the Internet to create memes and fandoms around the two starkly contrasted films.

Gerwig found Barbenheimer quite comical, and sung nothing but praises towards Nolan.

“Chris Nolan is one of my heroes, a proper auteur. It was an odd pairing, but it’s kind of like a film festival where you watch three movies a day," she said.

Now, Gerwig is taking the time to reset and refresh, and rush into the project (though that's not to be confused that she's taking a complete break). She is slated to direct Netflix’s upcoming Chronicles of Narnia adaptation, but she shared that her current future film ideas are "little blobs" that she’s protecting while trying not to “internalize the pressure to live up to something."

“But I don’t want to get too precious about making the ‘right’ decision. Two years ago, nobody thought Barbie was the right decision,” she said. “I want to give myself enough time to get lost so that I’m not so demanding of output to let it be uncomfortable. Not feeling like you have to be extremely productive is probably good for long-term health of the soil."