ok but going back to my post from a while ago about one of my main frustrations with the Barbie Movie and it's ending and how as a creator the whole "ideas live forever" dichotomy not being compelling enough

I think the real reason is not that I'm a creator and I want and need for once to just be the created. I think it's that it's the wrong choice for the film. Whenever you have a movie that has this "magical" character who ends the movie by joining the friends they made in the "normal" world, it's either because they don't fit in their original world and have reason to want to leave it behind as a sort of reverse escape fantasy, or because their world is now too different from what they want and need and by staying in the "normal" world they find the fulfillment they now know they need. Barbie doesn't have either of those things. The closest to an outcast is Weird Barbie and while it's hard to tell where her role is in the community at large, she is obviously quite content and has no problem with her life. Our Barbie is "stereotypic" Barbie, she has tons of friends and things to do. All of the Barbies (and the Kens, in their own way) do. They all have jobs and roles in the community and purpose; everyone in Barbieland has raison d'être, which is essential for life. When a "magical" character feels the need to leave for the "normal" world, its because now or originally, they lack purpose in their world. Barbie didn't and wouldn't.

In the tags of my first post I compared the Barbie Movie to the Last Unicorn because there's a lot of similarities there. Of needing to leave your perfect home to go find something bigger than yourself and change it to save everyone else and preserve who you are, but then being fundamentally changed by it against your will. At the end of the Last Unicorn, Amalthea returns to live with the freed unicorns, back where she belongs but distressed because despite the other unicorns having spend a few decades trapped in the foam of the ocean, she is the only one to truly know sadness. I understand why she left but I've always felt it was the wrong choice, that she grew up away from the other unicorns and was far too changed, that she should stay with her friends who had proven themselves to be ride or die. In the Barbie Movie, Barbie leaves where she belongs to go live a life that, honestly, is what a lot of other people think she should lead and which she goes to because the woman is super easily influenced by peer pressure and a handful of more "leadership oriented 'Barbies'" think it's a good idea for her. She left Babieland, was changed, but came back to a place that was similarly changed. She is not Amalthea, who was changed and goes to return to the unchanged.

Anyhow I started writing this and then realized my initial thought of "why should Barbie leave for the real world, the idea that living as an idea would now be unfulfilling falls flat for her because she comes from a place where the ideas all have a reason to be" had way more to it but it's raining something awful and my head fucking hurts so I'm gonna just tag this as barbie movie and hit post