By Charles Lundman
In line with the 80’s, 90’s– and 00’s nostalgia of recent years, Hollywood’s current era is defined by the countless reboots and sequels produced by film studios. Banking on brands familiar to audiences and pouring billions into larger-than-life franchises such as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) guarantees safe profits – at the expense of new, original ideas. The strategy, if somewhat repetitive, is understandable, given that numerous entries for Avatar and The Avengers appear on the list of all-time highest-grossing films.
Despite this, the two most talked about movies of the year have been original stories. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer both released on July 21st, leading to a storm of memes and hype surrounding the two films colloquially dubbed Barbenheimer. The reason for the shared release date was Warner Bros. trying to get revenge on Christopher Nolan for jumping ship to Universal Pictures by scheduling Barbie on the same day as his biographical epic.
From the universes the movies are set in, to the subject matter, the audience demographic, the artistic credibility associated with them, down to the styles of the directors and actors, the two films’ are in many ways each other’s polar opposites. Nonetheless, what on the surface might seem like a two-sided war between the films, became a unique celebration of cinema. Audiences ended up watching both films back-to-back – a prime topic of conversation this summer being in what order to watch the movies – in addition to dressing up to see Barbie, similar to going to Beyoncé’s Renaissance tour or a James Bond-premiere.
The best of the two films? According to most people, they’re both equally great pieces of art that cannot be compared. To me, it’s Barbie.
After swiftly learning about the daily routine of Margot Robbie‘s character and the universe in which the film takes place, director and co-writer Gerwig does not waste time to present the ambitious layers Barbie attempts to unpack. In the middle of a dance scene in the Barbie Dreamhouse early in the film Robbie’s character asks “Do you guys ever think about dying?”, abruptly interrupting the party with a cartoonish radio silence. With its characters exploring both the patriarchal United States and the matriarchal Barbieland, as well as the expectations they encounter, the film is full of serious moments like this, unafraid to play on the contentious nature of Barbie dolls in the context of gender norms while remaining lighthearted. Featuring clever commentary on feminism, the patriarchy, stereotypes and consumerism, to put it simply, Barbie distils everything 2023 into a self-conscious meta-advertisement of a film. It is post-capitalist. Almost post-consumerist. In its introductory scene it even appears conscious of the Barbenheimer phenomenon when it references the monolith scene in Stanley Kubrick’s
2001: A Space Odyssey. It almost comes off as a jab toward Nolan fans, who are often stereotyped as the demographic Barbie is not made for – male movie nerds who love Kubrick.
In an era where massive superhero movies and franchise sequeling seem to be the only way to safely produce profitable films, Barbenheimer is a breath of fresh air. The rest of the top ten highest grossing films of 2023 consist of assembly-line franchise entries: the tenth Fast and Furious entry, The Little Mermaid and of course more Marvel: with the acclaimed Across the Spiderverse from the animated Spiderman reboot likely set to enter the top of the list as the year comes to a close. In any case, the most memorable moment of the year for cinema is Barbenheimer, both as an internet meme and as a historical moment for cinema-goers.
All this begs the question: is Barbenheimer the early sign of a counter-paradigm? The beginning of the end of the franchise era and the beginning of the return of great original stories in Hollywood? Judging by the quality of Barbenheimer, I hope so.
