One is a wacky postmodern comedy about a range of dolls known for their bright pink clothing. The other is a brooding biopic of the scientist who built the atom bomb during World War Two. One has Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling singing and dancing on a pastel plastic beach. The other has a skeletal Cillian Murphy fretting that he might accidentally destroy the world. At first glance, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer could hardly appear more different, and yet the two films are so closely linked that they have spawned a portmanteau name, much like two celebrities in a tabloid-friendly relationship. This is the summer of Barbenheimer.
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The nickname came about when it was announced that both films would be released on the same day. Initially, it looked like a classic example of counterprogramming, whereby cinemagoers could choose one film or the other depending on their tastes. There were even rumours that Warner had vengefully put Barbie up against Oppenheimer because Nolan had left the studio, his long-term home, and moved to Universal. But the tonal contrast between the films was too hilariously stark for social media-users to resist, and soon the scheduling resulted in more of an unofficial partnership than a contest. The Barbenheimer name took off. Posters and T-shirts were mocked up with images of what a Barbenheimer movie might be like. People shared their plans to see the bombshell and the A-Bomb as a double bill, with much discussion of which order to see them in, what to wear, which cocktails to drink, and what the accompanying snacks should be: pink candyfloss for Barbie and pitch-black liquorice for Oppenheimer, perhaps.
The meme became an extraordinary, if largely accidental, marketing coup that has served to promote both films, and encouraged people who might have seen just one of them to see both of them instead. A key factor is that they aren’t actually total opposites. Both have starry ensemble casts and terrific production values, and both are passion projects made by painstaking Oscar-nominated auteurs, so there is no reason why you can’t be a Barbie fan and an Oppenheimer fan as well. Many people are predicting that Barbenheimer day will be the highlight of their cinematic year.
As fun as all this is, though, the meme is also a sign that Hollywood isn’t offering much else to look forward to this summer. Neither film is the kind of mainstream blockbuster that would usually dominate the box office: Oppenheimer is three hours of scientists arguing in rooms, and Barbie has so many challenging philosophical and political questions that it could befuddle the young girls who are most likely to own Barbie dolls. (One Barbenheimer irony is that Barbie and Ken suffer just as much existential angst in their film as J Robert Oppenheimer does in his.) In most years, they might well have been overshadowed by a more straightforwardly commercial superhero or science-fiction epic. But this year, now that Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny are already out, there is precious little left to get audiences queuing until Dune Part 2 and The Marvels come along in November.
In that light, the Barbenheimer chatter starts to sound slightly desperate – like an invitation to one last party before fasting begins. It certainly seemed like that when the London premiere of Oppenheimer was brought forward by an hour so that the actors could pose on the red carpet in the final minutes before the SAG-AFRA strike came into effect. Buffeted by the Covid-19 pandemic and by the current writers’ and actors’ strikes, the film industry is in a shaky state. Barbenheimer feels more like a celebration of the past than the dawn of a bright new future.
Nolan, after all, is known for championing analogue film and resisting the advance of digital technology, while Barbie relies on the nostalgic appeal of a doll that has been around for decades. The toy company behind the doll, Mattel, is trumpeting a raft of films based on its products, but just this week it was revealed that an eye-watering $30m had been spent on developing Mattel’s Masters of The Universe, only for Netflix to drop the project.
As for the Barbenheimer phenomenon, all the talk of dressing up and buying cocktails suggests that going to the cinema with friends has become a rare special occasion rather than a regular activity – something you put in the diary and plan ahead for, rather than something you just do. Maybe such gloomy thoughts are prompted because both Barbie and Oppenheimer ponder life and death, but you have to ask: what does it say about the movie business if it takes a meme as unique and absurd as Barbenheimer to get customers into their local multiplex?
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