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How the ‘Barbie’ vs ‘Oppenheimer’ online discourse is helping both films: It’s no longer a case of “Either/or” that it first appeared to be but rather “Which one first?”
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- Title
- Blonde v bombshell: get set for the Barbie-Oppenheimer smackdown
- Authors
- Ryan Gilbey
- Published
- Jun 29 2023
- Word count
- 1575 words
Pretty cool to have two big blockbusters this summer.
I’ve seen memes about Oppenheimer advertising being plastered everywhere but hadn’t actually seen any real info about it until now (finally made myself watch the trailer). Normally I’d be all over a movie like this — but I really dislike Nolan’s films. Definitely not sitting through a 3 hour long one.
Super stoked for Barbie, though.
I feel the same way, honestly. I like the idea of Oppenheimer, but Tenant really soured my opinion of Nolan so I would have honestly preferred it if this movie was made by a no-name indie director.
It helps that Oppenheimer is a biography. One of the things about Nolan films that bugged me was being unable to handle the tech magic dealie that enables the plot - the Batman water vaporiser and later nuclear reactor, the Inception subconscious mechanics - which then came to a head in Tenet's time reversal. This on the other hand promises to be a character study, where the atom bomb is already sufficiently understood by the public not to need exposition.
I'm definitely waiting on reviews for Oppenheimer since Nolan is kinda hit-or-miss for me. But I am so hype for Barbie it's not even funny.
Weirdly enough though, I haven't seen any ads for Oppenheimer. Maybe it's a regional thing (I live in Germany) but I was visiting the states this past month so you think I'd have seen something then. I haven't really seen ads for Barbie either tbf, but Tumblr has been collectively freaking out about it (in a good way) since before the trailer even released so I've been getting on the hype train that way.
I for one just love how the internet has decided to merge the two just because of the release date and how different they are. It reminds me of the DOOM and Animal Crossing "crossover". I doubt Oppenheimer would be nearly as talked-about otherwise, that one feels a bit more "niche" given the subject matter. It's the heavier of the two, and the longer (almost three hours?? Wow), so not sure many casual movie goers would want to watch it. It's one I feel you'd go out of your way to watch, not something you'd pick on a whim after showing up at the theater.
Funny thing is, I don't recall really hearing about any marketing for Oppenheimer outside the jokes about it and Barbie. Only thing I really recall was the poster on Reddit.
I definitely think the content of Oppenheimer is interesting, but in general I just can't do the 3 hour+ movies. Back in the day when long ass movies were popular you would get an intermission, but now you're expected to sit there uninterrupted for 3+ hours and I can't do it. I also feel that a lot of 3+ hour movies now have a lot of unnecessary filler or scenes that are unnecessarily slow. Some of them are justified in their time, which this one may be it has a lot to cover, but it's going to have to have gleaming reviews for me to consider watching it.
Yeah, agreed. I wish intermissions were a thing if directors are going to insist on all these long movies. Even if it extends the time spent at the theater, it would be nice to step out, get refills, use the bathroom, just stretch your legs...
It's a Christopher Nolan film, it was going to get talked about regardless.
From the article
Who cares? It's not a competition. If they're good, they'll both triumph at the box office.
This could end up echoing the weekend The Dark Knight and Mama Mia released. Both went on to set various box-office records.
Honestly I am not a big fan of Oppenheimer as a person. Might be a bit off base but he seems like a self centered dramatist. You work for years developing a bomb and are upset that you developed a bomb? It's not like you were doing something else that got co-opted into something violent.
And then to go whine to the guy who actually had to make the decision to drop it that you have "blood on your hands"? The guy who had been elected VP only 3 months before the longest serving, most influential president died. A man who had to take over during the largest war the nation had seen and make the hard decisions about things he was not privy to until the president died. Also one of only 2 Presidents without a college degree.
I would rather watch a movie on Truman's life than Mr. "I am become Whiny".
At least Nobel made the awards to cover for his inventions. Here is an interesting thought experiment: what invention killed more people, the nuke or smokeless gunpowder?
That's a rather uncharitable (and misinformed) take on Oppenheimer, IMO. AFAIK, Oppenheimer fully understood the necessity of creating and using the bomb, even going so far as to publicly express regret that it was not ready in time for use on Germany. It was only the second one dropped on Nagasaki, after Hiroshima, that he (and many other Manhattan Project scientists) was openly critical of, for being unnecessary overkill. He also never accused Truman of having blood on his hands... the quote was specifically Oppenheimer saying he felt like he had "blood on my hands" (referring to himself).
That's also not really a thought experiment. It's a rhetorical question since the answer is obviously gunpowder. But worth pointing out is that smokeless gunpowder doesn't have the realistic chance of ever being used to wipe out all life on the planet, whereas nuclear weapons do.
The point is Oppenheimer knew, or should have known, that Truman was responsible for not only the atomic bomb, but also a good portion of the conventional strategic bombing campaign, things like Operation Starvation and other attempts to destroy the Japanese Empire's ability to feed it's population, and the tail end of the battle of Okinawa which killed about a hundred thousand civilians, and another hundred thousand soldiers on both sides. Even if he wasn't aware of details he obviously knew there was a brutal war going on in the Pacific and that Truman had been running it for the past few months.
Complaining to someone who's responsible for all of that that you have blood on your hands because you helped design one of the weapons they used is just silly.
I don't think it's silly at all to feel distress about your own invention being used for evil, even if you yourself are not the person who actually did the evil. It's called empathy.
If he had said that to pretty much anyone else on the planet other than Truman, you would have a point. But Truman had been put in a position where he was forced to be responsible for killing far more people than Oppenheimer.
There is a lot of debate over whether the bombing of Nagasaki was at all necessary, and it's totally fair to criticize Truman if you think it wasn't.
Being given the responsibility to make these calls means facing any blowback that comes from them. If Truman really believed he made the right call, then he could sleep easy regardless of what other people said.
Anyone who thinks the decision to bomb Nagasaki was incorrect is hilariously misinformed.
Potentially the decision to bomb Tokyo on March 9 was incorrect, but by August it was far too late to undo that decision. Really even by April, when Truman became president, it was already too late to change course.
And none of this has anything to do with Oppenheimer's remark to Truman being silly. Whether or not the bombings were justified it still wouldn't be pleasant to know you personally killed a few hundred thousand people.
I'm mostly just curious about how the film will cover the environment around Japan prior to the atomic bombs being dropped. Many people seem to have the impression that the atomic bombs drastically changed American policy towards bombing Japan, as opposed to simply allowing the USAAF to do the same thing it already was doing but a little faster.
I'm probably not going to see it regardless but I'm just wondering how many people on the internet are going to go running around talking about how the decision to use nukes was part of some complex plot to keep the USSR out of Japan and how American intelligence magically knew exactly when Japan would surrender.
It's a biopic about Oppenheimer himself, not really a war epic. The film is loosley based on American Prometheus, which focuses on Oppenheimer's life and relationships during the Manhattan project.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings are hardly mentioned in the film, beyond us seeing how they impacted Oppenheimers feelings towards his own work. I think the film will mostly focus on the run up to the Trinity test, and Oppenheimer's 1954 security hearing. The latter may serve as a framing device.
I doubt the movie will go into this regardless, but the influence on the Japanese surrender in comparison to the declaration of war by the Soviets incurs a lot of reasonable debate:
It's not some crackpot conspiracy that the USSR had a big influence on the Japanese high command's decisions alongside the atomic bombs.
Edit: Some more links:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/u6qqo/there_has_been_some_controversy_on_the_true/c4sthrz/
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/24gvwd/are_tsuyoshi_hasegawas_conclusions_about_the/ch71h0y/
Trying to find a single factor responsible for the surrender of Japan is silly. It wasn't just the nukes, it wasn't just the Soviets, it wasn't just the firebombing, it wasn't just the submarines, it wasn't just the aerial mining campaign, it wasn't just the fall of Okinawa, it was all of that and more combined together that brought enough pressure to force the Japanese to surrender.
That's all very agreeable. I just wished to head off the idea that the bombs were the primary reason for the surrender which is the "standard teaching" on the subject as you've pointed out it was much more complicated. Additionally, the value of demonstrating the bombs to the USSR was not lost of those involved in the decision to use the bomb and was again part of a multi-factored calculus.
With that said, Truman's understanding of the bomb and the nature of the targets involved seems rather questionable:
I never like this take because it acts like there were various competing reasons to drop or not drop the bomb, and that the rivalry with the USSR may have actually played a role in skewing a narrow debate on whether the bomb should be used. But there simply was no such debate, pretty much everyone agreed that the bomb should be used as soon as it was ready. Stimson was alone in arguing to demonstrate it in Tokyo Bay, and he let himself get persuaded to go along with everyone else, in the same way that he let himself get persuaded that the firebombing campaign was ok.
There was no logical reason to not drop the bomb if it existed, it had a chance to shorten the war and save lives, and even if it didn't instantly make the Japanese surrender, well the firebombing campaign hadn't done that either but nobody had seen a reason to call it off. Sure, the people involved in planning it did analyze how the USSR would react, because that was their job, but there wasn't any serious discussion about using the bomb or not. Even Stimson's plan would have seen one bomb tested outside of Tokyo and the next dropped on a city.
As for that stuff with Truman I think its more likely that he was just considering bullshitting the American public, rather than actually being misinformed. But even if he was, just based on this speech I don't think he would have cared too much, and he did have a lot going on at the time.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/president-truman-message-to-congress-on-driving-for-victory-against-japan-june-1945
You are correct that the conventional understanding of the Pacific war is oversimplified, but there's no real malice to it, nobody is actively trying to hide the impact of the Soviets, or the submariners, or the minelayers, or the soldiers on Okinawa, or anything else, there simply isn't enough time to teach kids all of the little details about every war, so instead you get Pearl Harbor -> Midway -> Iwo Jima -> Nukes -> Surrender. To simplify the war in the Pacific down to those 5 events is close enough for most people who don't actually care about studying its details.
I agree. If they decide to go that route it would be much more interesting, but I do not have hope.
Feels like yet another astroturfing campaign, nobody that i know really cares about barbie nor oppenheimer at all, irl or online, yet if you were to listen to random internet articles it would seem like the biggest rivalry of the year is taking place in the theaters this summer. After being made aware of all the viral marketing that takes place in social media these days i find it hard to take these headlines seriously anymore.
If you don’t care about movies and the people around you don’t care about movies then yeah, I imagine they wouldn’t care about other movies coming out
From my experience, in the film groups I'm in, the Barbie and Oppenheimer memes have been going on for like a year at this point, with the "barbie vs oppenheimer" thing being prominent as they approach release. May just be that it isn't as popular in your circles.
My wife is super excited for Barbie, as art that's about deconstructing feminity is very much in her wheelhouse, and this Barbie movie looks like it's leaning into it. I haven't heard a peep about Oppenheimer irl.
I take it the "It's Morbin Time" stuff. There probably is a fairly sized group making memes about Barbie X Oppenheimer, but they are mostly just doing it to be in on the joke. Of course, I'm not on social media, so I'm not at the zeitgeist of this stuff anymore.
I doubt even a fraction of them are even going to watch one of them, much less do a double feature.
A big difference between the Morbius memes and these memes is that the Morbius stuff was made to ridicule the movie. Where as memes being made for these are genuine in their anticipation.
You doubt wrong. Official industry tracking has these movies opening up big, and from pre-sale tracking (done by independent online people), we're looking at a 100+ opening for Barbie and a 60+ opening for Oppenheimer.
Online hype has translated to box office success twice this year (Mario, Spider-Verse) and the double successes of Barbie and Oppenheimer are gonna make it a third.
I’m in these circles, I can confirm what cloud_loud said, nobody was serious about Morbius, but Barbenheimer is legit hype.