Barbie and Oppenheimer are more than just an internet meme that exploded into such virality that even the British PM (read: Tory scum) took part—it’s a triumphant return for cinema in a post-pandemic world obsessed with inflated budgets and diminishing returns. It came off the back of the live-action 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Little Mermaid remake, the lukewarm 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Indiana Jones legacy sequel, another in a long line of awful 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Fast and Furious movies, a pseudo-Michael Bay 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Transformers, and insulting multiversal escapade The Flash, which 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:resurrected the dead with CGI. Cinema has never felt so downtrodden and hopeless, but Barbenheimer brought a semblance of optimism back… until CEO🌸s everywhere immediately stomped it out.
Barbie is a perfect s🏅tandalone movie, with a feminist story expertly weaving its way through the garish shades of pink in what is otherwise a two-hour-long advert for dolls. It sees stereotypical Barbie grow beyond the purpose of her creation to embrace her own agency, stepping into the real world to conquer the challenges of unchecked patriarchy. It’s a poignant narrative, despite the clear limitations of being a company-mandated franchise starter, but that’s ultimately what it is. Director Greta Gerwig might not be i🎉nterested in sequels, but Mattel is. Going beyond that, it wants a cinematic universe for all its toys, greenlighting a Polly Pocket film, a “grounded and gritty” Hot Wheels movie, and a Spike Jonze-inspired Barney helmed by Daniel Kaluuya. The MCU and superheroes as a whole might seem to be on their way out, but we’re just swapping a sandbox of action figures for literal toys. I’m not sure which is worse.
Many declared Barbenheimer as the ‘return of cinema’ after 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:months of expensive box office bombs. But a movie based around a ‘50s toy making $380 million in only five days was never going to send the message to CEOs that original ideas told by talented directors are what people want. Their eyes lit up with IP and dollar signs instead, the prospect of digging through their box of intellectual property to whip out the next gem overwhelming them. This is the Iron Man of the 2020s, kickstarting the next generation of cinema, and while we enjoyed the MCU in its heyday, look at where we are now. Superheroes dominate screenings, drowning out original ideas, and routinely suck the joy out of filmmaking with an abundance of green screens, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:needless CGI, and an overwhelming number of releases.
Oppenheimer is another piece of this puzzle. On its own, it’s an ambitious biopic about the horrors of American ingenuity in World War 2. I can’t see CEOs foaming at the mouth regarding franchise potential here, but out of spite toward Christopher Nolan, Warner Bros. placed Barbie’s release on the same day, inadvertently creating cinema history. Now, Oppenheimer joins Barbie’s legacy as a trendsetter in all the worst ways. We’re already seeing the impact of this, as Saw X has moved its release date to coincideᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚဣᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ with Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie, aiming to recreate the word-of-mouth marketing that saw Barbie and Oppenheimer thrive in a Summer where nothing else was. But again, this misses the point. It&rౠsquo;s more akin to watching a meme get dragged out back on the Ellen show to be beaten with t🌺hree baseball bats like a long-dead horse.
CEOs and companies are seeing Barbenheimer’s resounding social media-driven success and hoping to replicate it by launching their films on the same day as tonally opposite competitors. Saw X and Paw Patrol couldn’t be more different, aside from the likelihood of them both being awful. And that’s the stickler. Barbenheimer was so much more than ‘Haha look at two very different movies!’ It was two completely different fil🌳ms from award-winning, beloved directors with brilliant casts and something important to say. It wasn’t just bright pink vs black and white.
People would have been excited for Barbie and Oppenheimer independent of each o🎃ther—sticking them together on the same date wasn’t what i൩gnited the match. Yet that’s what the big corps are taking from the entire situation, so expect to see far more SawPatrols in the coming years, desperately trying to convince people to watch a double bill of two awful films. Sounds really appealing, eh?
Barbenheimer was a fun break from the bleak landscape of modern cinema, but it will go down as another blow to movies as a whole. Already Paramount has sworn off all non-IP properties for animation, only committing to churning out tried and tested formulas it considers safe films, while Mattel is busy scrambling to catch up with the MCU overnight. Only it’s doing so with a dollhous𝕴e full of tat. The coming years won’t see a renaissance of cinema thanks to Barbenheimer, it will see the next step in devolving franchise slop, the endgame being burnout on an unprecedented scale.