getting back out there + barbenheimer
"the movies" - vin diesel
I’m not trying to recap or anything but FYI, there may be mild spoilers here for Barbie and Oppenheimer!
What’s up guys? I know I said I was gonna try to keep up with this thing but then Tears of the Kingdom happened to me. You understand.
Anyway aside from me deciding to watch all of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, the most recent major entertainment offering, the summer tentpole event, has been BARBENHEIMER. “Barbenheimer” was the portmanteau assigned to the funny juxtaposition of Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and directed by Greta Gerwig, and Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy and directed by Christopher Nolan, being released on the same weekend. Social media had a ball with it; two warring factions of film fans going head to head in a kind of postmodern battle of sexes. In one corner, the Nolan fans, tech-heads and heavy drama-lovers, ready to sink their teeth into an expertly-crafted three-hour meditation on power, legacy, and the horrors of war. In the other corner, Gerwig fans and Barbie die-hards, chomping at the bit for an unhinged bubblegum-pink fantasy-musical-comedy confection with a gutsy, feminist twist. Of course the true lunacy of BARBENHEIMER was planning to see both movies on the same day, opening weekend. An unforgettable experience I’m sure, but I opted to spread them out a bit.
These two films got so much hype because of the Barbenheimer thing; the meme got so big that movie fans were starting to express worry they would be disappointed when they finally got the chance to Experience Barbenheimer for themselves. But right on schedule, when opening weekend came, the Rotten Tomatoes “Certified Fresh” ratings and 4- and 5-star Letterboxd reviews began pouring in. Viewers all over were declaring best movies of the year, their new favorites from the directors. There were the more negative takes as well. Barbie didn’t have a strong enough feminist message, it’s ultimately one big toy commercial and we’re all falling for it, capitalism is eating the world and Barbie can’t solve it. Oppenheimer didn’t include any Japanese voices, it erases the displacement of indigenous people at the Los Alamos site and the radiation poisoning that affected local residents in New Mexico after the Trinity test. For these reasons and others, some claimed Barbenheimer was offensive on its face.
I tell you all this to tell you that I really did try to avoid knowing any of it before I watched the films. I watched the trailers but no interviews, no “first looks”, no articles about what Nolan and Gerwig were “trying to do” with these stories. I just wanted to go in fresh and be part of the spectacle. Something many of us haven’t really done in the past three years!
Because when Barbie and Oppenheimer opened, there was a real rallying cry from film fans that “the movies are back”. This had been suggested before, but the turnout at the theatres for Barbenheimer made it feel more tangibly true. I felt it, going to see Barbie on opening weekend and seeing people of all ages headed into the theatre dressed in their best Barbie pink. People were outside again! Going to the movies in person for the pleasure of seeing a big movie on the big screen, but also just kinda for the novelty of it? That element of exhibition, going to the movies because you can’t get the same experience anywhere else, has been on the decline for years. It took a massive dive during the height of the pandemic, and has led many film critics and scholars to wonder: is there any hope for movie theatres in a landscape of endless streaming, little public interaction, and increasingly terrible shared-space etiquette?
After seeing Barbie and Oppenheimer, having my little quibbles* but ultimately enjoying myself immensely, I must join my fellow film fans in their assertion. The Movies Are Back. After Barbie’s success, Mattel immediately announced a slate of movies based on other famous toys, proving once again the studios are too stupid to realize the secret sauce here isn’t just “existing IP”. The audiences who flocked to Barbenheimer didn’t do it because they want to see Barbie team up with Polly Pocket to take down the Rock’Em Sock’Em Robots in ten years. They did it because two good movies came out at the same time and the posters looked kind of funny next to each other. We used to do this shit all the time. It was called a “double feature”. Maybe someday soon we’ll be doing different things at the movies again.
<3 Elyse
*My quibbles, should you care to hear them:
Barbie is a bit underwritten and as far as feminist statements go, kinda basic. I loved the performances, the sets, the costumes, the whole spectacle, but the message didn’t blow my mind. Don’t get me wrong, I laughed, I cried, I had a great time, but it is kind of a bummer that Ken has the most defined character, motivations, and journey in the literal Barbie Movie.
Oppenheimer is long and feels long. Like it’s good and I get it but man, it’s intense. Anybody who tells you “it flies by” or “it doesn’t even feel like 3 hours” is lying. Also while I understand the root of the critique that the movie portrays Oppenheimer in a too-heroic light and there’s no real visual acknowledgement of the harm done to the Japanese, the Native Americans and New Mexicans affected by the bomb and its testing (the nods are there, but I see the argument that they’re weak) the scope Nolan has chosen for this film makes it frankly the wrong one for such a reckoning. More could have been attempted but it would likely come off mawkish and trite. Better to look to other movies, documentaries and features actually from these people, to get their perspective.
I apologize for the recent shared article— my mistake.