The Age of Barbieheimer

Okay, with all the chaos going on in the political world, are we the United States ready as a nation to handle a cultural moment like having two movies not compete but complement and co-exist with each other?

Because we're at that moment July 21 2023 where the Hollywood tradition of "counterprogramming" - where a movie release of obvious blockbuster proportions makes it difficult to release other films, except  giving a smaller sometimes more artistic movie a chance to attract audiences that are not attuned to that blockbuster - offered us the movie Barbie - a comedic, lighthearted, brightly colored goofball type of movie based on "Intellectual Property" (IP) bringing in an established and fervent fanbase designed solely to entertain and make $500 million at the box office - versus Oppenheimer - a dramatic, darkly lit serious biographical epic focusing on the man most responsible for the atomic bomb and the world-shattering implications of such a weapon, and designed to be Oscar Awards bait - to be the highlights of a movie summer season.

Except something weird happened. The movie-going fanbases got into the "counterprogramming" effort - we are now as a species in a kind of post-modern awareness of tropes - and started complementing each other's films to where a contingent of filmgoers openly planned to watch both films as a double-header.

The event got its own Wikipedia page: Barbieheimer. The meme of the year.

Via Rebecca Rubin at Variety:

At a glance, the audience overlap isn’t clear. “Oppenheimer,” starring Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. and Emily Blunt, is a somber character study about the theoretical physicist who led the development of the atomic bomb. “Barbie,” featuring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, is a neon-hued fantasy comedy about Barbie-Land expats who go on a quest for self-discovery in the real world. Visually, “Oppenheimer” is moody and intense, while “Barbie” is a physical manifestation of the color pink. Yet the contrast is the very thing that’s galvanizing film lovers.

“This could have been something dividing the masses, but instead it’s bringing everyone together,” says Nicole Boisseau, a 21-year-old Richmond, Va. student. Her dad, Jay Boisseau, who also has tickets to both films at Alamo Drafthouse on opening weekend, says that jokes aside, the mismatched scheduling works out for viewers. “Since they are so different, it’s not like you’re going to spend six hours watching the same thing,” he notes.

And as Rubin points out, as the fandoms got more into the idea of the double-feature, the situation got weirder as people noticed that the two films are going to be stunningly similar in archetypal ways:

But his daughter believes the movies have more in common than meets the eye. “They’re both questioning the nature of humanity.” (She’s serious. During one hilarious scene in the “Barbie” trailer, Margot Robbie’s life-size doll turns to her friends at a dance party to ask: “Do you guys ever think about dying?”)

That wham line from the trailer did indeed spark a new wave of discussions among the Barbie faithful, as more clues from other trailers and teasers pointed to that film sending their character on a Hero's Journey to find out what is wrong with herself (more specifically, what is wrong with the young girl that Barbie represents). The "something weird" got weirder... and more profound.

The audiences began realizing that instead of a cheap, fun, almost perfunctory piece of entertainment - like the animated Super Mario Bros movie released earlier this year that performed to box office expectations - they were getting a Barbie movie from a film auteur willing to explore the deeper ramifications of the doll's cultural impact since its introduction in 1959, alongside a bioepic film about the inventor of nuclear Armageddon from an equally imposing film auteur who knows how to stir emotional awe and enlightenment out of the darkness itself:

Some cinephiles believe it’s because the two filmmakers inspire a particular kind of loyalty in their fans. Nolan, who has delivered commercial winners like “The Dark Knight,” “Inception” and “Interstellar,” and Gerwig, the indie favorite behind “Lady Bird” and “Little Women,” are the rare directors who can draw audiences on their name alone.

“It comes down to the filmmakers, who are widely respected. They complement each other in a weird way,” says Meredith Loftus, 30, of Los Angeles. She compared the scheduling to an unusual double-header in 2008 of Nolan’s superhero epic “The Dark Knight” and the kitschy musical “Mamma Mia!,” which opened on the same day...

I'd discussed Nolan's Dark Knight before, when honoring Tiny Lister's passing, and how Nolan took an IP themed "product" - Batman - and crafted a noir-ish operatic epic that not only won the box office but wowed the film critics. I'd written elsewhere how The Dark Knight deserved Oscar love and yet got snubbed in such a way that the outrage reshaped the awards to accept more films for Best Picture (and opened the door for action thriller-type movies like Mad Max Fury Road to achieve the honor of getting nominated).

We're now facing a similar moment with Greta Gerwig taking an IP themed Barbie and turning it into an Oscar contender. Seriously, more than just the (deserved) Set Design and Costuming nods the film's likely to get (just the fact alone that the production used up every pink paint and dye on the planet should get the awards).

We're talking about a movie where the early reports about the plot - confronting the themes of Stepford Wives-ish suburban conformity, the gender roles that Barbie (and Ken) impart to the girls and boys who play with them (and reflect back onto themselves), the struggle between matriarchy and patriarchy as the fantasy of Barbies who can do everything - doctor, lawyer, President, mermaid - crash into the harsh real world where men are mostly in control and Barbies are treated as sex objects, even the fact that Barbie is an "Intellectual Property" of Mattel that the company (represented by Will Ferrell's CEO) insists on "keeping in a box" ("biting the hand" humor indeed) - that clearly makes the film more philosophical and wistful than a simple Product Placement movie is expected to be.

Anchoring all that are performances that fans are already expecting to be excellent. Margot Robbie arguably was born to play Barbie her whole life - naturally blond, dancer's legs, the slim body that the Barbie doll is (in)famous for - but with an expressive face that can convey incredible gravitas (and she's been Oscar nominated before, so unless Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren and Natalie Portman and Jennifer Lawrence and Angela Bassett all come out with jaw-dropping lead actress roles this autumn, Robbie should get her due). Ryan Gosling - he of the Photoshopped washboard abs - is also getting critical acclaim for his role as Ken, the "boyfriend" that culturally has been reduced to just another accessory for Barbie but whose exposure to the real-world "Alpha Male" movement threatens the stability of the fantasy Barbieland back home (Gosling has also received Oscar nominations before, so as long as Leo DeCaprio and Jamie Foxx and Timothee Chalamet and Andrew Garfield and Denzel Washington and Tom Hanks don't come out with serious lead actor roles this autumn, Gosling should get his due).

In the face of all that, the expectations for Oppenheimer are lower in terms of box office but higher in terms of critical acclaim: There is already Oscar talk for actor Cillian Murphy, and Nolan is bound to get another shot at Best Director. Given the A-list talent - Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr, Emily Blunt, Kenneth Branagh, Florence Pugh, Rami Malek - on-board other acting nominations are likely, and a lot of technical award nominations as well.

There's not much spoilers to what the audiences will know about the plot: We all know what happened July 16th 1945 when the Trinity Bomb test took place and the Atomic Age was no longer a product of Science Fiction. We all know there were serious debates among the physicists, military leaders, and politicians about the ramifications of weaponizing the atom. And we all endured the decades of Duck And Cover, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Doomsday Clock, Mutually Assured Destruction, "Shall We Play A Game?", and the post-Cold War nightmare of rogue nations carrying suitcase bombs.

Like all the other epic biographical films of before - Lawrence of Arabia, Gandhi, Weird: The Weird Al Story - Oppenheimer tries to delve into the background and motivations of a real-world figure whose personal life is still not well-known or understood. The general awareness is of a scientist who pushed during the Second World War for the creation of nuclear weapons before Nazi Germany could unleash them first, only to realize the dangers he himself brought to the world and later tried to atone for the damage he'd caused.

The best we remember Oppenheimer is his famous quote about what he thought when he saw the first nuclear mushroom cloud: 

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'

From all this, director Nolan is clearly creating a serious, almost bleak film that is going to be more adult, more frank about the human condition than Barbie ever could be. And yet, Nolan has a visual style - a desire to make things as realistic as possible, and yet as stunning as possible - that will also clearly dazzle the eye and leave audiences gasping. Look to his earlier stand-alone works like Inception or Interstellar: While based on Science Fiction/Fantasy, the visuals and technology on display were grounded in realism to where audiences could believe such things were possible. One of the fun facts of Interstellar was how Nolan's push to computer-generate an actual black hole (singularity) led to scientists discovering - and proving - previously unknown traits that black holes exhibit in real life. 

The fact that Nolan is claiming his film contains no CGI - no computer animation to enhance images, implying he's somehow mocked-up a nuclear explosion using practical effects - is going to be a major draw for people wondering how he pulled that off.

And in this telling, Nolan is likely going to use the similar Hero's Journey framework - detailing Oppenheimer's path from a student of nuclear physics to Destroyer Of Worlds - that Barbie will follow, creating a compare-and-contrast of two major figures that affected the entire post-war world of the last-half of the 20th Century.

It's no wonder Barbieheimer (or Barbienheimer?) is a thing.

This will be a day long remembered by the geekdom:

The only remaining argument is "Which order to see both movies?" If you go see Barbie first, you want to get the frivolity and fun out of the way before dealing with the nuclear nightmares that Oppenheimer elicits, and coming to terms with death in a sober manner. If you see Oppenheimer first, it means you want to wrap up the day/evening with the floating party that is the Barbie life by seeing the movies and then dance the hidden pains away.

Go to it, America.

Today is the day.

Now I am become Death, the Destroyer of Barbie Worlds...

Update 7/23/23: I survived Barbieheimer. I went to Barbie first at 11:15 AM and then Oppenheimer at 1:40 PM.

Wait, why was Barbie more expensive than Oppenheimer? Barbie was the first showing, isn't that usually a cheaper deal?!