Oliver Stone says Ryan Gosling is ‘wasting his time’ making films like Barbie

‘Platoon’ director argues Gosling is part of the ‘infantilisation of Hollywood’

Oliver Stone believes Ryan Gosling is “wasting his time” making films like Barbie rather than more serious fare.

The Platoon and Natural Born Killers director also took aim at the John Wick movies, arguing that “the world has degenerated into non-logic”.

Stone, 77, made the claims in a resurfaced interview with City AM from last year. When asked if he would consider directing Barbie 2, Stone growled: “Ridiculous. Ryan Gosling is wasting his time if he’s doing that s*** for money. He should be doing more serious films.

“He shouldn’t be a part of this infantilisation of Hollywood. Now it’s all fantasy, fantasy, fantasy, including all the war pictures: fantasy, fantasy. Even the Fast and Furious movies, which I used to enjoy, have become like Marvel movies. I mean, how many crashes can you see?”

The director, who was speaking in London, added that he’d been unable to stay awake through John Wick during his flight.

“On the plane I watched John Wick, which is three hours and some,” said Stone. “And I fell asleep about 778 times during it. I kept waking up and having to face him killing more people. It’s like the world has degenerated into non-logic.”

‘Platoon’ director Oliver Stone (left) says ‘Barbie’ star Ryan Gosling is ‘wasting his time' (Getty)

Stone has been a consistently outspoken critic of Hollywood for some time. In 2020, he told The New York Times that “everything has become too fragile, too sensitive”.

“Hollywood now – you can’t make a film without a Covid adviser. You can’t make a film without a sensitivity counsellor. It’s ridiculous,” he added.

“The Academy changes its mind every five, 10, two months about what it’s trying to keep up with,” Stone continued. “It’s politically correct **** and it’s not a world I’m anxious to run into. I’ve never seen it quite mad like this. It’s like an Alice in Wonderland tea party.”

In recent years, Stone has switched his focus to campaigning documentary-making. Last year, he spoke to The Independent about his film Nuclear Now, which calls for the widespread adoption of nuclear power.

“They always say, if there is an accident with nuclear, it’s gonna be the end of the world. That’s bulls***,” said Stone. “The worst-case scenario already happened. We’ve had a nuclear explosion at Chernobyl, and it leaked all over northern Europe. But how many people actually died from it?”

Meanwhile, Gosling recently revealed that his young daughters have not yet seen his performance in Barbie.

“I don’t know if you should watch your father as Ken,” said Gosling. “I don’t know what age is a good age to see your father do that. It gets pretty crazy.”