On July 21, thousands of people swarmed the theaters to bear witness to the most cinematic moment of the year, when Greta Gerwig’s witty comedy Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s gritty drama Oppenheimer hit the theaters. Leading up to their release, the extreme juxtaposition between the two films piqued the public’s interest and sparked an internet sensation: Barbenheimer. Memes, T-shirts, and fanart soon flooded online spaces, pasting Barbie star Margot Robbie onto an atomic blast, or photoshopping Oppenheimer’s Cillian Murphy holding the iconic doll. Rather than asking audiences to pick between the two films, an unofficial partnership formed, with viewers discussing the best viewing order and what to wear to each film. In a sense, Barbenhiemer became the most unexpected and successful double-feature in pop culture history.
The two films blew up in the box office, leaving other franchise movies like The Little Mermaid, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and even Mission Impossible–Dead Reckoning Part I in the dust. Famous casts and highly celebrated directors were doubtlessly instrumental in this achievement. Smaller budgets (around 100 million dollars instead of Mission Impossible’s 291 million dollars) also allowed for more luck turning profits. It is clear, however, that the bulk of this success was due to the expansive reach of the online discourse surrounding it. Barbenheimer was so far-reaching and influential, U.S. senators were even asked which film they would be seeing, and some took to posting side-by-side images of themselves (one in pink, the other in black-and-white) to show their involvement.
It is also worth noting that, while J. Robert Oppenheimer and Barbie are still familiar names to viewers, neither movie is a reboot, sequel, or part of a larger cinematic universe. Audiences have been asking for new, fresh, and unexpected stories for years, and Barbenheimer was just that.
Barbenheimer has certainly sparked its share of controversy, however. Barbie was banned in Vietnam over a map seen in the trailer. The map depicts the globe (notably missing continental Europe and New Zealand) and contains a dashed line, which some believe represents the “nine-dash line,” thereby reinforcing China’s territorial claims over Vietnam and violating the country’s sovereignty. A Warner Bros. spokesperson refuted these claims, saying, “The map in Barbie Land is a child-like crayon drawing. The doodles depict Barbie’s make-believe journey from Barbie Land to the ‘real world.’ It was not intended to make any type of statement.”
The fusion of the two films has also caused debate in Japan, as many argued it trivialized the harm caused by the nuclear attacks on Nagasaki and Hiroshima by the U.S. Air Force during World War II. While no official union between the two movies exists, the Barbie marketing team had responded favorably to Barbenheimer posts, leading to a viral #NoBarbenheimer appearing on Japanese social media and the Japanese subsidiary demanding an apology from Warner Bros. Jeffrey J. Hall, a US scholar living in Tokyo, explained, “The #NoBarbenheimer controversy is a reminder of the perception gap between Japan and the US over the issue of nuclear weapons … Japanese grow up learning about the horrors of the a-bombs and every year’s memorial ceremonies are treated as national news … Although 78 years have passed, these events are far from forgotten in Japan.”
Barbenheimer has made history, but the future it points to is uncertain. The film industry is in an undeniably shaky state, with mass writer strikes and competition from streaming services. What does it say about Hollywood if a mass internet phenomenon like Barbenheimer is needed to get people to the movies? And what does such an unusual fusion tell us about pop culture and public consciousness?