Unauthorized Barbie doc recounts the secret history of the world's most famous doll

Between The Flash hitting a wall, The Boogeyman failing to scare up dollars and the latest Indiana Jones adventure not dialing up great word of mouth, it's been a tough summer for Hollywood blockbusters. Fortunately, there's a hero looming on the horizon that could turn the multiplex back into a dream house for cash-hungry studios: Barbie. Greta Gerwig's live action feature starring the world's most famous doll isn't stepping onto screens until July 21, but Barbie is already a social media superstar, with anticipation for the movie reaching fever pitch as the release date nears.

Barbie's anticipated success will be a boon for the beleaguered Warner Bros., but according to documentary filmmaker Susan Stern, it's even more crucial for Barbie's owners at Mattel. "This is an important film for them," says the director of Barbie Nation — an unauthorized 1998 film about the doll's history that is getting a 25th anniversary re-release pegged to Gerwig's film. "I think their stock price has shown that!"

Even though Barbie still seems like a ubiquitous presence in toy stores, Stern says that the brand has been lapped by the Disney Princesses in the quarter century since the release of her film. In her view, that's because Disney has actively put those classic characters back into the pop culture consciousness with its critically lambasted but highly lucrative line of live action remakes of classic animated films — from Cinderella to The Little Mermaid.

"There have been all these tie-ins with the big Disney princess movies, whereas Mattel has not exploited its assets in films," Stern notes. "I think that's why they finally agreed to make a live action Barbie movie. They are literally putting a new face on her."

That new face, of course, belongs to Margot Robbie, who plays the central Barbie in Gerwig's film. But as the trailers and posters have teased, there are multiple Barbies populating the movie's candy-colored Barbieland, played by everyone from Issa Rae to Dua Lipa. That approach not only embraces the diversity of the current toy line, but it also avoids one of the pitfalls that always made Mattel leery of taking Barbie into the live action realm. "They didn't want to limit the idea of Barbie," Stern explains. "They wanted her to be something that every girl — and boys, too — could put their dreams on. If they made her one person, it would limit kids from being able to project their dreams onto her."

Keeping the character aspirational is one of the reasons why Mattel's previous Barbie films have either been completely animated or bizarre hybrid productions like the notorious 1992 Workout with Barbie video in which a M3gan-esque Barbie led a group of flesh-and-blood girls through various aerobic routines. "Mattel had this line of strange and somewhat creepy Barbie movies," Stern says, laughing. "So going live-action is a big step."

Stern made Barbie Nation during a period when Mattel was extra-protective of Barbie, actively pursuing lawsuits against artists that were, as she puts it, doing "strange things" with the doll. The Europop band Aqua was one of the toy company's most famous targets after they scored a chart-topping hit with the 1997 anthem, "Barbie Girl." Mattel sued the group for "damaging" their star's reputation, but the courts eventually ruled that the song was protected under First Amendment laws. (At Robbie's own request, a cover of "Barbie Girl" featuring Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice will be featured on the Barbie soundtrack.)

Fortunately, Stern didn't end up having to take Barbie Nation to court. "I had amazing karma with the film," she says now, recalling how Mattel immediately rejected her initial overtures. "They said, 'Not only are we not making a film about Barbie — you're not either.' But I talked to lawyers who said that I could do it without their approval." Mattel ended up playing a role in the documentary anyway; after meeting representatives from the company at toy shows, Stern says they responded positively to what she was doing and licensed her vintage Barbie commercials. More importantly, they facilitated an interview with the doll's creator, Ruth Handler, who founded Mattel with her husband, Elliott Handler, in 1945.

But Stern says she still took extra steps to ensure that her movie could be seen in case Mattel experienced a last minute change of heart. "I told them that I would let them know when the movie was first going to air," she remembers of the days leading up to Barbie Nation's debut on PBS's POV series in July 1998. "And I let them know at 5 p.m. on the day it premiered, so they couldn't get a restraining order against it!" (Barbie Nation opens with a disclaimer stating that the film "is not authorized by Mattel.")

While Barbie Nation is far from a Barbie takedown, there are portions of the film that would likely make Mattel skittish even today. For example, Stern openly acknowledges the sexual side of Barbie, speaking with collectors who pose their dolls in S&M-inspired tableaus. While those scenes would have given Mattel executives heart palpitations, Stern thinks that Handler — who died in 2002 — would have been just fine with it. After all, as the documentary points out, one of the inspirations behind Barbie was a German "call girl" doll named Lilli.

"In my interview with her, Ruth talks about the resistance to having a doll with breasts," the filmmaker says, noting how Handler specifically wanted Barbie to have an adult body type. "And, of course, some people remain resistant to that. I recently found out that there are parents who use nail polish to paint over her body. And at some point, Mattel started modeling underwear onto the dolls so they wouldn't appear naked."

Not for nothing, but Stern also thinks that Handler would enjoy the subtle sex jokes that Gerwig has slipped into her PG-13 rated Barbie yarn, like when Ryan Gosling's Ken asks to "stay over" at Barbie's house. "She's acknowledging or at least winking at the sexuality of the dolls," the director says. "That's always been an issue for Mattel. One of the great instances of that was when they made this Ken doll that appeared to have a cock ring and a purple mesh outfit. And they were like, 'It's just a key chain! He's not really gay!'"

"They've obviously given [Gerwig] some license," Stern continues. "I like to say that her Barbie winks at the things that Barbie Nation doesn't blink at. They're appealing to children, and yet there are also these 'wink, wink' double entendres. We go into all the deep and weird stuff people do with Barbie that they wink at in their film."

Even as she's rooting for Gerwig's movie to succeed, Stern says she has no plans to revisit Barbie Nation in a sequel documentary. "It's the perfect capsule of the way humans use imaginary things to make fantasies," she notes. But the 25th anniversary re-release does feature a scene that didn't make the final cut of the 1998 version — an interview with a Black collector named Marcella who specifically collects the various Black Barbie dolls that Mattel has released over the years. It's a subject that's also explored in Lagueria Davis's new documentary, Black Barbie, that's currently seeking distribution and Stern gives that project her full-throated endorsement.

"The reason my interview with Macella didn't make it into Barbie Nation originally is because the issues it raised were so big and important, and I realized it wasn't me that should make that film," she explains. "As is said in Black Barbie, white Barbie remains the central figure. Even though there have been some changes, white culture remains central and white people tend to unfortunately see everybody else as a kind of accessory."

That's a criticism that Gerwig seem to be trying to avoid by filling her film with Barbies of all sizes and colors. Still, Robbie remains the central figure, which Stern says is also a potentially risky decision. "One of the reasons that Mattel gave for not making a live action movie before now is that they didn't want to limit the idea of Barbie. They wanted Barbie to be something that every girl — and, as we know, boys, too — could project their dreams onto. Making her one person seemed like it would limit people from being able to do that."

"Now that they've done it, it will be interesting to see what happens," Stern continues. "Will it be less possible for people to act out their fantasies? I actually don't think so, and I think Barbie Nation illustrates that. As humans, we have this ability to fantasize and we'll just keep going with that."

Barbie Nation is currently available on most VOD services, including Prime Video and iTunes