evidence: The story they landed on, a hero’s journey that follows the titular doll as she starts to question her own reality in the Technicolor matriarchy that is Barbie Land (Gerwig’s fixations made themselves apparent with Barbie’s now-infamous question, "Do you guys ever think about dying?") and journeys to the Real World for clarity, is silly, surreal and sentimental. It asks its audience how children play — and why adults stop playing. It also wonders, often, "Who is Ken?" (And why is he Kenning so hard?) To Gerwig, he’s like Eve, created out of Barbie, as an afterthought to Barbie, in a sort of gender-flipped Garden of Eden. "On the toy box it just said, ‘Ken is Barbie’s boyfriend,’ and I thought that was so odd," she says with delight. "He has no references other than her." [...] Ferrera’s first copy of the Barbie script included a note from Gerwig: "I wrote a Barbie movie, hear me out," she remembers with a laugh. She was taken by the self-deprecation imbued in that — the title page said "Barbie," with "And Ken" written and crossed out underneath, and Gerwig and Baumbach opened by acknowledging that the document was long, but they promised the dialogue would move quickly.