How 'I'm Just Ken' Went From A Small Song To An Epic Barbie Battle
The soundtrack to Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" movie is full of wall-to-wall bangers, but the bombastic anthem "I'm Just Ken" has become a bonafide (and charting) sensation. And to think that the song almost had a much smaller presence in the film. In an exclusive featurette from Vudu to promote the highest-grossing film of the year's arrival on video on demand. Gerwig, music producer Mark Ronson, Ryan Gosling, Ncuti Gatwa, and others discuss how the now-beloved scene came to be. Ronson's song was originally just a short little ditty, but Gerwig loved it so much she wanted more.
"It went from being this song that was maybe gonna be played somewhere in the film to this song that they built this epic battle around," Ronson said. Once Gerwig heard the song, she wanted more — which became the nearly 11-minute long song.
The goal was to use the song as the centerpiece of the ultimate beach-off battle between the Kens. In the hopes of capturing the absurdity of the battle scene in "The Nutcracker" between the toy soldiers and the rats, Gerwig put "I'm Just Ken" at the center of the fight. Mission definitely accomplished, as the way the Kens fight operates under the same childlike logic of playing with toys. Warner Bros. released the music video for "I'm Just Ken" ahead of the film's theatrical release, which only featured about a minute and a half of the song, brilliantly hiding the massive scope of the show-stopping number.
War by way of the telephone game
As truly absurd as it appears on screen to see all of the Kens march into battle, it's a perfect showcase of how these characters, who only recently learned about the patriarchy, would interpret a fight at this scale. "They have zero information about what war is," Gosling said. "It's like the telephone game from the real world. It's been distorted by the time it gets back to them, and they're just kind of doing their best, but it's really the worst."
And by worst, it's absolutely the best, because watching a gaggle of grown men use hobby horses, frisbees, surfboards, lacrosse sticks, tennis rackets, suction cup arrows, and pool inflatables as weapons is an absolute blast and a half to watch. A different behind-the-scenes featurette released in August showed what shooting the scene entailed, including the fact the actors were all pantomiming moving in slow motion, rather than actually shooting the scene in slow-mo.
It's hard to imagine "Barbie" without "I'm Just Ken" at the center of the battle (with Jennifer White's brilliant choreography), as it not only evokes a feeling of golden age movie musicals like "Singin' in the Rain," "Sweet Charity," "Grease," and "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg," but helped solidify the film as one of the best of the year. It's almost shocking to see what Gerwig was able to get away with in "Barbie," and the "I'm Just Ken" battle is right at the top of that list.