As throngs of people set out to watch and celebrate the long-anticipated Barbie movie now out in theaters, Seattle audiences were reportedly baffled by why so many of the female characters were painfully walking around on weird pairs of tall, pointy things they’d never seen before.
“It’s almost like a pair of Space Needles … on her feet? But why? Are those a special kind of crampon or macro-spikes people use to walk on real beach sand?” said one concerned movie theater-goer as the rest of the audience pointed in horror at their arched feet, with all subsequently losing the entire plotline. “Either way, I really hope all of those ankle spikes are CGI—and if they’re not, I think I’m beginning to get why so many actors are striking right now.”
The movie only began to make sense again to Seattleites when Kate McKinnon’s character came on-screen to display the first pair of footwear the audience could recognize: a pair of Birkenstocks. Director Greta Gerwig confessed the entire point of showing them was to not completely lose Pacific Northwest audiences.
“We also made sure we released the movie in July so that that PNW folks had time to acclimate to all of the blazing sunlight in the film,” said Gerwig. “Yeah, we audience-tested the film in Seattle last winter and … it wasn’t pretty—melted eyeballs everywhere.”
Although inclusion was top-of-mind for the film, Gerwig said she needed to draw the line at accommodating Seattle audiences when they demanded all the beach umbrellas be tossed into a bonfire and replaced with far more sensible beach tents.
