Barbie or Oppenheimer?
Which one do you think I’d prefer?
No I mean which one do you want to watch first?
You are pulling my leg?
Every so often, movie studios do this weird thing where two almost identical movies come
out more or less at the same time.
We’re talking about Deep Impact and Armageddon, Antz and A Bug’s Life, White House Down
and Olympus Has Fallen.
This list goes on and on.
They’re called Twin Films, and they’re usually the result of two studios investing
in similar scripts at a similar time, then racing to get theirs to market first.
But what is far less common is when two completely different movies are released not just within
a few weeks of each other, but on the exact same day.
I am of course talking about when The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia came out on the same
day in 2008.
Wait…what?
No, hang on, that’s not what I mean.
No, I am talking about What started out life as a bit of a joke has
grown into something else entirely.
A legend…Mr Wayne.
There’s T-shirts.
There’s memes.
There’s Tiktoks and trailer mash-ups.
There’s New York Times articles.
There’s a website where you can vote for them as President.
Hell, even Tom Cruise posted about it, then Margot Robbie did as well!
It’s got it’s own Wikipedia page and people are asking the stars about it on the red carpet.
I mean I’ll be going to see Barbie 100%, I can’t wait to see it.
I think it’s just great for the industry and for audiences that we have two amazing
films by amazing filmmakers coming out on the same day.
It’s the perfect double bill.
I think actually start your day with Barbie, then go straight into Oppenheimer, then Barbie
chaser.
On 21 July, tens of thousands of people worldwide are now planning what could be the weirdest
double feature in cinema history.
The first movie they will watch is massively ambitious.
A film written and directed by one of the most respected people in Hollywood.
Someone who has Oscar nominations not just for best director, but twice for best screenplay.
A passion project led by a husband-and-wife founded production company with the backing
of a major studio.
An all-star cast in front of the camera, and a team of absolute cinematic perfectionists
behind the scenes, all working together to deliver a visual feast of exquisite production
design, cinematography, costumes and special effects, to tell a story about one of the
most influential figures in history.
The second movie is massively ambitious.
A film written and directed by one of the most respected people in Hollywood.
Someone who has Oscar nominations not just for best director, but twice for best screenplay.
A passion project led by a husband-and-wife founded production company with the backing
of a major studio.
An all-star cast in front of the camera, and a team of absolute cinematic perfectionists
behind the scenes, all working together to deliver a visual feast of exquisite production
design, cinematography, costumes and special effects, to tell a story about one of the
most influential figures in history.
Huh.
Maybe there’s more here than I thought.
Because while they couldn’t be more different in style, tone and aesthetic, I think Barbenheimer
is the perfect event to challenge what we as audiences consider to be quote unquote
serious movies, and to prove that cinematic talent does not have to express itself exclusively
through heavy historical dramas or big blockbuster action flicks which, let’s be honest, tend
to skew towards male audiences.
So let’s go beyond the memes and actually talk about Barbenheimer, because I am not
joking when I say that I think it will be the biggest cinematic event of the year.
That’s right.
In a year with a new Indiana Jones movie, a new Mission Impossible movie, a new Spiderman
movie and Michael Keaton coming back as Batman…instead the most talked about movie premiere is not
one, but two original screenplays helmed by critically acclaimed directors.
Sure, one of them is based on a very popular IP, but that is hardly a guarantee of success.
Because while that IP might be one of the most recognizable in the world, Margot Robbie
– who is a producer on the film – has noted that being recognizable isn’t the
same as being popular.
“We have to acknowledge that there are a lot of people who aren’t fans of Barbie.
And in fact, aren’t just indifferent to Barbie.
They actively hate Barbie.
And have a real issue with Barbie.
We need to find a way to acknowledge that.”
And given my audience is 95 percent male, some of you watching right now may well feel
that way.
If that’s you, I urge you to watch the rest of this video.
Hell, I urge you to watch Barbie.
Get outside your comfort zone a bit and try something a little different.
I think you might be pleasantly surprised.
But we’ll come back to that, first, let’s look at how we even got Barbenheimer in the
first place.
What on earth possessed the studios to put such completely different films up against
each other?
Well, turns out it may have been deliberate.
See, Christopher Nolan was partnered with Warner Brothers for much of his career, but
he parted ways with them before making Oppenheimer because of their pivot towards streaming around
the time he was releasing Tenet.
So Nolan shopped around and eventually partnered with Universal.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Nolan asked for the world, and they gave it to him.
A production budget of $100 million and an equal marketing budget.
A theatrical window of at least 100 days and 20 percent of the film's first-dollar gross.
You could count on one hand the number of people who have enough influence in Hollywood
to get such a lucrative contract from a studio.
But one of those people is Margot Robbie, who, besides Tom Cruise, is arguably the most
influential actor stroke producer working in Hollywood today.
Robbie founded her own production company – LuckyChap Entertainment, in 2014 alongside
her now husband Tom Ackerley.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because Nolan’s production company Syncopy Inc was also co-founded
between him and his wife Emma Thomas, who has produced all of his films.
But although LuckyChap is producing the Barbie movie, that movie is also being financed and
distributed by – you guessed it – Warner Brothers.
And even though they seem to be making amends now, rumour has it that Warner Brothers deliberately
scheduled Barbie to release at the same time as Oppenheimer as a bit of a ‘screw you’
to Nolan for ditching the studio, hoping that it would draw crowds away and impact the film’s
profitability.
But it kind of looks like this backfired.
Because no one predicted Barbenheimer.
According to the New York Times “every time ‘Barbie’ released a trailer, ‘Oppenheimer’
would start trending.”
So ironically enough, Warner Brothers decision to screw over Christopher Nolan has actually
ended up giving him a ridiculous amount of free word of mouth advertising.
So…jokes on them, I guess.
But studio politics aside, I do want to look at the advertising of these two movies – especially
Barbie because, well it’s a lot.
As you might expect from a movie based on the most famous toy ever, Barbie’s marketing
is very much leaning into its IP, with product deals galore – from yoghurt to a full-size
Barbie house tour with AD.
By contrast, Nolan’s approach to marketing Oppenheimer has been very restricted.
See, he’s reached a point in his career where he has creative control over how his
films are marketed, and it’s clear with Oppenheimer that he doesn’t want to give
too much away.
The trailers and posters have given us only tiny hints at the tone and aesthetic of the
film, while giving away very little about the specifics.
To be honest, it’s how I wish more movies were advertised.
Get us interested, but don’t cram all the best bits of the movie into the trailer.
But the best trailer of the year – hell, the best trailer I have seen for a long time,
was not for Oppenheimer.
It was for Barbie.
The teaser released in December was sheer brilliance.
A direct parody of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey – one of the most influential
movies of all time that was directed by one of cinema’s most famous auteurs.
A director who is adored by the mostly male dominated world of online film criticism.
The Venn diagram of “people who like Stanley Kubrick films” and “target audience for
a Barbie movie” probably has a pretty narrow crossover.
But what Greta Gerwig did with this teaser was tell the world two things.
One: It told us that this movie was going to be fun as hell, and two: that it will be
completely different to what you expected from a Barbie movie.
And this is 100% deliberate.
Margot Robbie said in an interview that: “people immediately have an idea of, “Oh, Margot
is playing Barbie, I know what that is,” but our goal is to be like, “Whatever you’re
thinking, we’re going to give you something totally different — the thing you didn’t
know you wanted.”
This is exactly what this teaser promised us.
But it did more than that.
By riffing on Stanley Kubrick, it brought in a whole audience of film geeks who otherwise
would probably never have watched a trailer for the Barbie movie.
It sent a message to a group of people who are so outside what you would expect to be
the typical target market for Barbie and said to them ‘hey, why don’t you give this
a shot?’
Bringing Nolan back into this, it kind of reminds me in a weird way of how The Dark
Knight was marketed.
The advertising of that film spent a lot of time focusing on Heath Ledger’s Joker, in
an effort to convince fans that his casting was appropriate, and that they should give
the movie a chance.
Because when Heath Ledger was cast as The Joker, the internet lost its mind because
at that point in time, he was best known as the pretty boy from all those rom com chick
flicks and the one about the gay cowboys.
In other words, he was largely dismissed as an actor because the movies he had chosen
to act in were romances that were largely directed a female audience, and therefore
he wasn’t taken seriously by the mostly male audience of a Batman movie.
Hmm, that sounds familiar doesn’t it?
Christopher Nolan could see Ledger’s talent, and forged ahead with casting him.
But knowing Ledger’s reputation, the marketing spent a lot of time saying to the world: ‘trust
us, we got this.’
And of course, they did.
I think that by parodying such a famous scene from such a famous director, Greta Gerwig
is directly appealing to a similar demographic of people who might dismiss a Barbie movie
because, well, it’s a Barbie movie and it’s all pink and girly and stuff.
This trailer is saying that a movie can be artistic, well-crafted and brilliantly executed
while also being funny, satirical, and yes: pink and girly.
In other words, the tagline for Barbie should be ‘why so serious?’
This trailer told the world that Barbie is not going to be some phoned in, script-to-screen
movie designed to make a quick buck off some recognizable IP.
No, this was going to be a movie that had some genuine craft and film-making talent
behind it, while also being an IP cash grab.
But you know what?
That’s what the Dark Knight Trilogy was as well.
Movies being built around marketable IP is about as old as movies themselves – it doesn’t
automatically make them bad movies.
What makes them bad movies is when profit becomes the sole motivation, leading to cutting
corners and a general lack of craft, talent, and passion behind the production because
no one believes in it.
Barbie is both a giant corporate IP-driven blockbuster capitalising on a famous brand,
while also being a personal and artistically crafted film helmed by a character-focused
director.
As Gerwig herself said, “things can be both/and.
I’m doing the thing and subverting the thing.”
Everything we have seen so far from Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie is that it has all
the hallmarks of a film being made by people who really, really care.
Emotionally just remembering like, standing in Toys’R’Us looking at the Barbies with
the plastic sheet over it and everything and you wanted to just take it off and take everything.
Talking about Greta wanting to go inside the box, that’s actually barbie’s wardrobe.
This is the beautiful wardrobe that does open and has all the clothes.
Now, that might not mean much to you, but that’s because you probably didn’t play
with Barbie dolls when you were younger.
But there are whole pages on the internet devoted to breaking down each detail of every
item of clothing in the same way you get people combing through Star Wars trailers frame by
frame to spot every tiny easter egg or reference.
Like the fact that the outfit Barbie is wearing in the teaser is the outfit of the original
Barbie doll from 1959.
People who recognised this easter egg reacted in the same way I think a lot of the audience
of this channel would have reacted to things like this, or this scene in Batman Begins
being a throwback to the first ever Batman comic.
The point is that this attention to detail in the Barbie costumes is the same as what
we have become so used to seeing in superhero movies, and praising as evidence of the film-maker’s
knowledge of, and love for the thing they are adapting.
Barbie and Batman both mean a huge amount to millions of people, so when they get adapted
to film those people rightfully want reassurance that this character that they love will be
treated with respect.
That in particular, the feet, felt like a bit of a Bat Signal, in a way.
Even if you don’t have a personal nostalgia for Barbie, surely you can understand that
feeling, and respect the filmmakers for acknowledging those details.
And speaking of filmmakers who respect details, no one is more of a details guy than Christopher
Nolan.
Nolan has proven himself to be one of the most visionary directors working today, and
one of the reasons for this is his commitment to doing as much as he possibly can in camera.
Oppenheimer is going to look absolutely gorgeous.
What we have seen of the costuming and production design just looks pitch perfect, while Nolan’s
special effects teams – guys who worked on Fury Road and Top Gun Maverick – have
figured out a way to replicate a nuclear explosion without using CGI.
It’s going to be extraordinary.
Let's go recruit some scientists.
But believe it or not, a similar level of film-making craft is on display in Barbie,
just in a completely different way.
We’ve already talked about the level of detail in the production design and costuming,
but Greta Gerwig has also talked about her cinematic influences, and how the look of
Barbie is very much inspired by Technicolour musicals from the golden age of Hollywood.
Because Barbie was invented in 1959, it felt like we could ground everything in that look.
She describes those films as having "authentic artificiality.
You have a painted sky in a soundstage.
Which is an illusion, but it's also really there.
The painted backdrop is really there.
The tangibility of the artifice is something that we kept going back to.”
To put it another way I think the audience is always aware on some
level of the difference between things that have been animated and something that’s
been photographed.
It’s a completely different look, and they’re doing it for different artistic reasons, but
both Gerwig and Nolan are trying to achieve the same authenticity by putting their cast
in real settings, and capturing everything they can in camera as much as possible.
Both Nolan and Gerwig know that movies are not made by individuals.
They are made by teams of people, who all have to deliver their piece of the puzzle
to get it right.
A good director is one who enables the people they work with to make the best thing they
can, and to rally people behind their vision of the film.
Both Oppenheimer and Barbie have all the hallmarks of movies that have a singular vision that
every single person involved in the production absolutely understands.
Those visions just happen to be absolute polar opposites, and I cannot wait for them both.
But anyway, this video is way longer than I expected, and we still haven’t actually
answered the most important question about Barbenheimer.
The question I asked at the very start of this video.
No I mean which one do you want to watch first?
Now, you might think the obvious answer is Oppenheimer.
It’s a deep, dark, serious movie that deserves your full attention, and time to ponder it
and reflect on its themes and messages – maybe over lunch and several increasingly colourful
drinks – a before going into the bright, comedic world of Barbie as a visual and thematic
palate cleanser.
Fair enough – that’s what I am doing and it seems like you agree.
But think again.
Because Oppenheimer is a Christopher Nolan movie, after all.
And it’s actually written into the Constitution that you have to see Nolan movies in IMAX,
for the best possible cinematic experience.
And I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a Christopher Nolan movie in IMAX, but let’s
just say that sometimes the audio can be…well…
The usual, sir?
Oppenheimer is going to feature a literal nuclear explosion, so it is entirely possible
that your eardrums are no longer functioning once you leave the cinema.
So maybe it’s safer to do Barbie first.
Just saying.
But regardless, I hope this video has shown that Barbenheimer is more than just a fun
meme.
It is a showcase of not one, but two hugely influential filmmakers at the height of their
talents, proving that creativity and film-making talent can express itself in completely different
but equally valid ways.
And we have the honour, no, the privilege, of getting to witness them both on the same
day.
Happy Barbenheimer, everyone.