Barbie and Oppenheimer are unlikely cinematic twins. Released on the same day, they both achieved immediate, immense success. Barbie generated $1 billion in ticket sales in 17 days, the fastest time any Warner Bros. film has reached that landmark. Oppenheimer crossed the half billion dollar mark in the same time span, making it the highest grossest World War II movie in history.
Barbie is a playful fantasy about a Barbie doll whose arched feet suddenly flatten. She must venture out of Barbie World to the real world, to find the human owner responsible for this and other “malfunctions.” The film features colorful plastic backdrops, and rocking song and dance numbers performed by troops of Barbie and Ken dolls. There are occasional gravitas breaks for sermons on feminism, but the most part this is a movie that wants its audiences to relax and have a good time.
Oppenheimer is a 3-hour biopic about the creation of the atomic bomb. Like the critically acclaimed biography American Prometheus, upon which the movie is based, Oppenheimer takes a generally sympathetic view of its subject, portraying him as a brilliant and patriotic scientist, unfairly caught up in the Cold War hysteria following the end of the war. Whatever its editorial bias, the movie is a thoughtful work of history, accurately depicting the scientific and engineering challenges faced by Oppenheimer’s team, and even offering extensive expositions on nuclear physics.
Unlike Barbie, Oppenheimer has no songs, no dance numbers, and not a single joke. This is a movie that wants its audiences to take it seriously.
With their cosmic content differences, one might expect the movies to appeal to vastly different audiences. Surprisingly, there has been much overlap in viewership. On opening weekend, 200,000 viewers paid for tickets to see both. Culturally, “Barbenheimer” has become a meme, with t-shirts showing Barbie and Oppenheimer together watching a pink mushroom cloud rising over the desert.
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