In a way, the weekend’s success was a seismic opening for both of them Barbie doll And Oppenheimer, two major studios were released during the big studio season, which is no surprise. Warner Bros. ran a non-stop marketing campaign for Barbie doll (based on a very popular toy, of course) somehow didn’t lose its welcome; The campaign both ignited the enthusiasm of the existing audience and generated a growing number of its own. Universal has been a bit more restrictive in sales Oppenheimer—if you call those giant countdown timer billboards “restricted”—but the studio smartly removed the director Christopher Nolanand sold the film as film of the year. Such persuasive advertising is often effective.
In many other ways, however, this twin blockbuster event is a welcome one. Certainly in the context of 2023, with the theater business in decline and—as we are often told—audience interest stems from television and the ephemeral internet. Movies have been killed off several times in recent years, only to have that story challenged briefly after individual successes like such Top gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Path of Water, and various Spider-Man movies. Looks like there won’t be another non-franchise blockbuster ever again. Then a living doll and the inventor of the atomic bomb appear to prove us wrong.
Well, it would be nice if apocalyptic predictions about the future of movie-watching were suddenly contradicted. In fact, we don’t know what the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon might have in the long run for the once-loved pastime (and, of course, a commercial art form). While this victory is remarkable, and means anything else, Two movies can’t solve everything. And there’s a lot to work out, perhaps most pressing being the growing corporatization of Hollywood, the whole vertical consolidation that pleases Wall Street so chilling creators that two of the industry’s major federations are now on strike at the same time – which last happened in 1960.
It’s all intertwined with the streaming problem, which has already cost quite a few participants money; probably severely eroded the linear TV and movie theater businesses; and that led in part to the continuation and franchise of nearly everything. (That trend, of course, came before streaming, because at some point at the end of the last century, studio executives began to appreciate reproducible and scalable success for anything as risky as originality.) It was a pretty big turning point to break out, which is why movie fans are eager to take in the good news. Barbie doll And Oppenheimer.
And this success is cause for celebration. Neither film is a sequel: One is an odd mix of comedy and wistful drama directed by a former indie queen, the other is a dark, lengthy, and contemplative biopic about a complex scientist. This isn’t exactly the kind of movie that usually makes hundreds of millions of dollars in the 2020s. Barbie doll obviously warping some popular IP, but the film has found a way to overcome that association in the public consciousness — perhaps because it consistently advertises the perception of its cynical origins. Oppenheimer similarly committed: There’s really never been any attempt to sell the series as anything other than a dull drama, even if some disappointed audiences are expecting more explosions.
So perhaps this will encourage more studios to make bigger changes to semi-untested material, rethink the parameters of summer cinemas, and invest in higher-budget comedies and serious, expensive, “adult” dramas as they used to be.
But all that development, if it happens, will also be stalled by strikes, caused by a bunch of selfish people, demanding more money than they deserve. I mean executives, shareholders and the like, who are hoarding profits and investing in expensive pieces, then blaming artists, craftsmen, and technicians (and audiences!) for the supposed hardships and misery of the industry. The labor conflict in Hollywood seems rather unresolved at the moment, though of course there’s always the possibility of some sort of miraculous release—the studios, for example, grasping new clarity and realizing they need to tap into and reuse the Barbenheimer ideology as soon as possible. “Give the artists whatever they want, just make me different Barbie doll!”
Lessons are learned in a strange way in Hollywood: sometimes hastily, sometimes too slowly. Too often, the completely wrong lesson is learned, regardless of speed. Will the draw from this watershed weekend — in contrast to the disappointing sales of some grueling franchises this year — have the effect of propelling studios toward an age of innovation? Few in the last 20 years led me to believe it. But perhaps we are at an inflection point severe enough that the entire model is ready for such a large reordering of priorities and values.
In a pessimistic outlook (possibly a realistic outlook?), Barbie doll spurred the development of more toy-based IP (already done), along with a few other fantasy comedies that dip into the discourse for some extra edge and social footprint. Oppenheimer guarantees that Nolan will get another blank check, and maybe the biopic genre will detour out of the music arena — where it’s most profitable — and into history. (In spite of Steven Spielberg2012 movie Lincoln, made $275 million at the worldwide box office, which isn’t much of a start.) I suppose those would be modest improvements in an industry in need of a total overhaul.
