Sam Amico
Barbie, or Oppenheimer? Which movie will you see?
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Why not see them both? Maybe even back-to-back?
In the event you haven’t heard, this idea is actually making the rounds on the Internet ahead of the movies’ July 21 release date. It’s known as “Barbenheimer.”
What makes this so intriguing is that the plotlines for the films couldn’t be more different. They’re just supposed to be big deals and they’re coming out on the same day. Barbie from Warner Bros., Oppenheimer from Universal.
Barbie stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling and is a fantasy/comedy directed by Greta Gerwig about the famous fashion doll.
Oppenheimer comes from writer and director Christopher Nolan and is a biographical thriller written about physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific director of the Manhattan Project — which developed the first nuclear weapons during World War II. It has an amazing all-star cast that includes Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, Rami Malek and Kenneth Branagh.
Barbie is fun; Oppenheimer is dark. They are polar opposites.
So naturally, movie fans across the Internet are having some fun. And it’s not just movie fans. Actors in each movie have taken a liking to the whole “Barbenheimer” concept and are encouraging people to watch both on the same day.
Then there’s Tom Cruise, who revealed he bought tickets to see both Barbie and Oppenheimer while his own movie, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, hits theaters.
Now the question is, which should you see first if you do decide to see both on the same night?
That’s a hard call. Chris Farnell of Den of Geek detailed the benefits of seeing them in either order, concluding that seeing both on the same night “will leave you upset, confused, and more aware than ever that your existence could be snatched away at any moment by forces totally outside of your control.”
Sounds about right. Just know that if you see Oppenheimer first, you know longer can refer it to it as “Barbenheimer.” You instead will have experienced “Oppenbarbie.”
