Prompting the #Barbenheimer Collab
The Barbenheimer double-feature meme phenomenon needs no introduction at this point. What it does need is key visuals from a (totally non-existent) collab campaign.
Using mostly Midjourney, I imagined where the cross-promotional merging of the two cinematic universes might land.
After testing a range of prompts, I learned that no matter what adjective one puts before Barbie—"tattered,” “radioactive,” "wartorn,” whatever—she's coming out of the apocalypse smelling like roses, or maybe a pink carnation doused in Charlie. Which is to say, not even a smudge. And certainly not a radioactive glow.
Her vibe is calm, cool, and collected even while pushing the buttons leading us to certain, pink doom.
Under an apocalyptic sky, Fallout Ken is ready for the rays. All the rays.
Midjourney wanted to take Ken straight into musclebound, Army guy G.I. Joe territory. I tried to steer him back to good times Ken.
But how does Oppenheimer fare in a Barbie world?
Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer film world is, of course, stark, somber and foreboding. But add a little Barbie to the scientist behind the a-bomb and you get a vibe: We're all still gonna die but we're gonna do it at the hands of a tortured genius who can pull off this cute pink belted-jacket number.
Another lewk, courtesy of Stable Diffusion, is this mushroom cloud hat.
Overall, Stable Diffusion choked on this assignment, not quite understanding the brief. I did like the sartorial riff on "mushroom cloud” in this image.
My favorite —Malibu Einstein. There's your product extension.
Even amidst all the fallout, a lifestyle message emerges from our Barbenheimer collab:
Live your best life. Even at the end of human life.
The tl;dr takeaway: the AI fared pretty well in this mash-up, taking the pink make-believe universe of Barbie and imbuing it with just a bit of eerie dread. The prompts I used were not long or hyper-detailed. In a way, the AI kind of got there on its own with a minimum of iterating and it was not tripped up by community standards around violence. Nuclear annihilation is a-okay I guess!