Lights! Camera! Creation!

Summer 2023 was a season full of spectacular cinema. But between franchises old and new, two particular films caught my attention: Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and Barbie. Both offered a comedic experience led by respected filmmakers— James Gunn and Greta Gerwig respectively. But beyond excellent performances and cinematography, both productions featured themes—whether intentionally or not—drawing from Christian thought. At their cores, both tell a story about the relationship of a creator to his creation. Gunn’s Guardians 3 presents a satirical image of an evil creator with a disdain for life outside his limited utilitarian control, while Barbie adapts a biblical story to examine the place of free willed creations in a fallen created world.

Guardians of the Galaxy 3

Gunn’s Guardians 3 was a significant artistic departure from his previous brand of quips and action pieces. Gore and language feature predominantly; including drawn out body horror shots from team member Rocket Raccon’s origin story. After discovering that Rocket is being hunted down by his abusive creator, The High Evolutionary, the Guardians’ farewell film follows them, uncovering Rocket’s dark past before sending everyone on their own path.

Though its three hour run time juggles a massive cast of new and returning characters, the plot centers on Guardian Rocket Racoon and villain The High Evolutionary. The High Evolutionary is a utilitarian genius who desires to bend reality—specifically that of terrarian animal life—to become the god of his own humanoid Utopia. He sums up his philosophy as “Mo egraste forn, mo egalore fornonte,' which, translated, is 'be not as you are, but as you should be.'” The High Evolutionary then goes on to tell Rocket Raccoon “It's our sacred mission to take the cacophony of sounds around us and turn it into a song. To take an imperfect clump of biological matter such as you [Rocket], and transform it into something...perfect” (Guardians of the Galaxy 3 Script). The High Evolutionary looks down on all life around him. Even his own creations are measured by their fulfillment of his particular intentions. He screams at Rocket “You think you have some worth in and of yourself without me? No! You're an abomination! Nothing more than a step on my path! You freakish little monster!” His reverence for himself is matched only by his irreverence for creation, when he climatically declares “THERE IS NO GOD! THAT'S WHY I STEPPED IN!” (Guardians of the Galaxy 3 Script)

The High Evolutionary’s quest for perfection is a parody of the Christian God. Aided by the visceral horror of his experiments, the audience is shown a creator that, unlike the sower in the Gospels, pulls up the weeds of the field and with it the wheat (Matthew 13:29, NCB). Rather than display forgiveness or grace through his creations' failures, he instead destroys anything remotely flawed. Moreover, the Evolutionary is not an omnipotent God. For all his efforts, he can never do more than borrow from the preexisting fabric of proteins and DNA to create disturbing machine-animal hybrids. While he bemoans that “Without the capacity for invention, a civilization dies on the vine,” he does not realize that his godlike ego contradicts the free will presupposed by innovation.  As C.S Lewis writes, “A world of automata…would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for his higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him”(48, Mere Christianity). Even if The High Evolutionary strives for godhood, his physical limitations and perfectionist control would never allow him to be anything but a twisted demigod.

On the other hand, some of the Guardians are also scarred by the kind of body-morphing experiments The High Evolutionary performs. Guardian member Nova’s own body was picked apart and replaced with cybernetic implants by her father Thanos. Rocket’s current body was a High Evolutionary design—and his creation was not only a painful physical experience, but also included the pain of  seeing his fellow experiments purged. Nova and Rocket’s lost bodily autonomy is an injury they will forever deal with. Nova and Rocket’s bodies were a part of who they were: a point driven home when Rocket learns he truly was built from a North American racoon. Though Rocket had long denied this, when faced with his embodied truth, Rocket owns his identity, telling The High Evolutionary he is not an experimental serial number. He is Rocket Racoon. 

Rocket and Nova’s sentiments are in line with Christian tradition, which upholds the body as a fundamental component of human identity. The Catholic Catechism states that “The unity of the soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the ‘form’ of the body… spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature”(364, Catholic Catechism). The embodiment of Jesus Christ so closely weaves the body with the supernatural that Pope John Paul II once wrote, “In a certain sense, God has gone too far!... Precisely because He called God his Father, because He revealed Him so openly in Himself, He could not but elicit the impression that it was too much… man was not able to tolerate such closeness, and thus the protests[to Christianity] began”(40-41, Crossing Threshold of Hope). Modernity has heightened the aversion to bodies as intrinsic identity—only look at the rising use of plastic surgery or the use of bodiless Internet becoming increasingly incorporated into our self perceptions. With an audience biased against the personhood of their own bodies, Gunn’s violence shocks the viewer into recognizing the evil of what The High Evolutionary is doing. The final product draws the viewer both to the image of what a God doesn't look like and how a real God would behave.

Barbie

Then there is Greta Gerwig’s Barbie. While billed as a comedy, Barbie does so much more, briskly moving through scenes of joy, sadness, reflection, and outright philosophical musing. In covering the controversial brand, Greta Gerwig has called her directorial vision a “negotiation”(ABC interview, 2023) that recognizes both the good and bad Barbie has done for real girls. But Gerwig has also made it clear that the film is a “humanist” (ABC interview, 2023) production not about toys but using toys to say something about the relationship between creator and creation.

Barbie begins in the matriarchal utopia Barbie Land, where society is led and influenced by Barbies and their girlboss clique. Meanwhile, in the shadows of dream houses lay the Kens. Under Barbie, Gerwig explains, “[Ken] has no status…it is completely untenable long term” (ABC interview, 2023). But when Barbie begins to have visions of death, decay, and cellulite, she is forced to travel to the Real World, hoping to discover why she is being introduced to such dark ideas. Of course, the Real World inundates her with more horrors, including corporatism, sexual harassment, rejection, social beauty standards, and the American penal system. Barbie even learns that not only did her brand not solve sexism, but may have perpetuated it. 

Meanwhile, Ken, who had stowed away with Barbie, finds out it's a man’s world. For the first time, he sees social spaces dominated by men, gleefully uncovering masculine tropes like weightlifting, cars, and cowboys that come with patriarchy. But Ken also believes the Real World (with MBAs and medical licenses excluding him from work despite his manhood) doesn't go far enough. Because of this, Ken returns to Barbie world to perfect the patriarchy, forcing Barbie to also return alongside mother-daughter pair Gloria and Sasha to stop him and bring equality among the sexes.

Gerwig’s foundation is explicitly drawn from Biblical narrative. She states that “[Barbie starts] in a world where there's no aging or death or pain or shame or self-consciousness, and then she suddenly becomes self-conscious — that's a really old story[from Genesis]…I think I always go back to those older story forms because I went to Catholic school and I resonate with them.”(Gerwig AP interview, 2023) Because of this, Barbie’s narrative seems to be set in a conception of the world that is intriguingly similar to Christian anthropology. Interestingly, Gerwig also isn't the first to use the medium of toys to remark on Christian anthropology: C.S. Lewis used the same allegory (specifically tin soldiers) in his Mere Christianity (179). Like Lewis’ tin soldiers and real humans, Barbie suddenly gains a conception of good and evil; the result is a Fall from being a literal play thing, to a full agent capable of good or bad decisions. She cries, she feels pain, she knows mortality. But at the same time, she is overwhelmed with joy by a regular day at the park. Knowing what it means to lose or be rejected fills each moment of her life with a new sense of triumph and courage.

Barbie also begins doing something previously unheard of: creating. Previous Barbies did not have a sense of creativity—no one in Barbie Land changed their routine, much less created something new. This even includes starting a family or having children: Barbie Land’s only pregnant member, Midge, is considered an oddity. But in the Real World, Barbie begins making her own unique choices, with unique results. She can decide what to wear on her own, what thoughts and beliefs to hold, and how she builds relationships with others. Rather than being a canvas to project ideas upon, Barbie becomes an agent capable of making creative decisions. Though she doesn't always make perfect choices, she nevertheless finds fulfillment in her role as junior creator. Barbie’s final scene shows Barbie’s introduction to an act that is an intrinsic part of her newfound humanity: she attends her first gynecology appointment.

Now, free will famously includes the letters to spell “free ill.” Ken’s awareness of matriarchy and patriarchy gives him a choice— and the option he chooses is the self-absorbed latter. Lewis reminds us that “The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first” (48, Mere Christianity). Ken embodies this. Overnight, Barbie Land becomes the macho “Kendom,” as self-aware Kens turn the tables on a now servile Barbie population. While Barbie learns to see beauty in everything created, the Kens use their will to create oppressive structures, satisfy their personal cravings for attention, and most tragically of all, recreate the Hummer. Upon returning to this new Barbie Land, Barbie, overwhelmed at this tension between the highest joys and the lowest pains, receives an answer about navigating life from her Real World friend Gloria: the golden mean. Life is suffering. It is also a joy. Womanhood is beautiful. It is also scary and difficult. Those two opposite feelings do not need to be mutually exclusive; the human experience, according to Gerwig, is big enough to be both. 

But Gloria’s answer doesn't solve Barbie’s own existential dilemma. Previously, she was a toy made for a task. Now she can do anything. But an abundance of choices can also be paralyzing. Billie Eilish’s chorus, at the end of the film, “What was I made for?” drives the lesson home. In a private moment, a ghostly vision of her own creator Ruth, reveals herself to Barbie, similarly to how God revealed himself to humans. She begs her god to tell her how her story ends and what her existence was for. Ruth  explains that she could return to the bliss of new Barbie Land, or become a human, where “Humans have one ending. [but] Ideas live forever.” Ruth continues that she will not control Barbie’s human life: “I never imagined what you would become. I made you, but I never imagined what you would do”. Barbie’s god-like creator gives her the grace to do her own will, including make her own mistakes. This tolerance for error is drastically different to The High Evolutionaries perfectionism.

Barbie chooses to accept her self knowledge and become human,where she can create and experience new things. She will always be a creation. God has still fashioned her a certain way. But now her place in creation is not an object which God’s will can be straightforwardly projected onto. She will become a sub-creator herself, much like how Adam’s first act in Genesis was to name all of the animals God created (Genesis 2:19). God allowed Adam to participate in creation not knowing precisely what he would do; like Adam, Barbie can now live a life where her actions play a specific role in reality. Yet she is not a tyrannical creator like The High Evolutionary. Borrowing the language of St Teresa describing the Child Jesus, Barbie is like a single flower in a vast meadow–a small creation, but one that nevertheless works to fill God’s field with brilliant, unexpected colors. 

Conclusion

Guardians 3 shows its audience a false creator, one who wills for a utopia made out of his creations, both desiring and destroying his monstrosities, manipulating them like cogs in a machine. But Barbie’s creator? Barbie’s creator is far closer to the nature of the Christian God. A God of intention, not pure determinism. A God who is Supreme yet lowly. A God who bestowed on only one creation, humans, the agency to create or destroy, to be saved or be damned. Together, the films help us reflect on the nature of living within creation, and how we should be grateful for the God of Barbie and not the God of Guardians. 

Guardians of the Galaxy script was accessed on transcripts.foreverdreaming.org