dex14

Weird bit of a trivia. The third Nolan brother (Matthew) was a hitman and used the alias Oppenheimer.

dex14

Nolan left WB and made Oppenheimer with Universal. Nolan has had 4 other movies open up during this weekend and staked the claim once again. WB then set the date for Barbie. The world of social media was set ablaze by the dueling films.

rocket1312

Well that was a fascinating 12 minute Google rabbit hole I just wandered into...

DJariya

and didn't this photo of Tom Cruise and Chris McQuarrie plugging a Barbie and Oppenheimer double feature also set the Barbenheimer thing in motion too?

Twitter

kefrank

Part of it is also the extreme difference in tone between the two movies while both also carrying some level of social commentary, which makes for an interesting juxtaposition.

dex14

It had been a thing long before the actors and filmmakers did this.

rocket1312

Yeah, it's been known that these two were coming on the same day for a long time. I've heard and seen people online make reference to this for months. It's just a coincidence that two highly anticipated films with wildly divergent tones and (possibly) target audiences are coming on the same day and there's a certain shared amusement at the idea of doing a double feature. It may amount to nothing more than an annoyingly trendy meme, but if it gets people excited to go to the theater, then I'm all for it.

GoldenJCJ

If nothing else, I can appreciate that Tom Cruise is on a one-man mission to single-handedly save movie theaters.

Abob Teff

What are the chances Oppenheimer bombs?

Boba Fett

It’s fortunately a $100mil budget. I don’t think it will be a big hit beyond week one. I enjoy Nolan but only decided to go because there’s a 70mm screening near me and some friends are going. I wasn’t wowed by TENET in 70mm (I enjoyed it more at home on 4K).

The guy doesn’t use 70mm to the same effect that Tarantino did in Hateful Eight. Tarantino is an artist with the medium,
Nolan has only proven to be a gimmick so far.

Mike86

I want to see it. At least one review I watched made it sound like Nolan is coming off a bit pretentious, which is something I’ve found with the last handful of his films. I like a lot of his movies but do think he can be up his own ass at times. Still though the movie looks well made and interesting.

diesteldorf

I'll normally see at least 2 movies when I trek out to the theater, just because I like the experience.

Last week I saw MI 7 and decided, at the last minute, to see Sound of Freedom, which, to me, was the better movie.

I suspect there are many people that just like going to movies and will happily participate in Barbenheimer if they were already planning to see one of two anyway.

JeremyM

Gonna respectfully disagree--I think this thing is going to have legs. We shall see!

dex14

Spiderbite

All of Nolan's movies are pretentious but he is one of the few where it works in the favor of the movies.

For the opposite effect...see Zack Snyder.

Or if you really want to lose your mind, follow Michael Bay's career. The guy has it both ways.

rocket1312

Are Nolan's films pretentious? Humorless is not the same thing as pretentious. Maybe his views on cinema and his loyalty to celluloid is a little pretentious, but the films themselves? Interstellar and maybe Dark Knight Rises are the only ones I can think of that are really "about" anything. He's a genre craftsman. His goals don't seem all that far removed from what Tom Cruise is doing with Mission: Impossible.

Spiderbite

I feel like Tenet, Inception, Interstellar, The Prestige, Following and Memento are the very definition of pretentious. All in different ways of course and some more than others. Some show it in ways like the storytelling method, the acting, the music, the overt drama, the camera movement, etc. You could place the Dark Knight trilogy in that group as well. I haven't seen Insomnia or Dunkirk since I saw them in the theaters, so I don't remember much about them.

I am not saying it is a bad thing. They just all come across as trying to be more important, complicated or better stories than they actually are.

But just my opinion. I love Nolan's stuff and have been a big fan since Memento. I saw it 4 times in the theater and took anyone who would listen to me to it. Saw Following right after Memento and have never missed a Nolan movie in the theater since.

Mike86

I was really into Nolan for quite a while. I dunno to me he kind of fell off with Interstellar. That was his last movie until now I had genuine interest in. Dunkirk honestly kinda bored me and I had no interest in seeing Tenet.

Boba Fett

Dunkirk is the most boring, pedestrian, technically accomplished war film ever made.

Decker

I really dug Tenet and found it fascinating, even if I didn't really understand it much.

Timber

Yeah I didn't like Dunkirk at all but I loved Tenent even though I didn't understand it. I'll see pretty much anything Nolan has to offer.

RichC2

Apparently this is poised to gross $75m this weekend (domestically), so even if it does drive off a cliff, it should still be alright in the end.



Meanwhile it'll remain a headscratcher for the studios, much like Dunkirk was (which all logic dictated should not have made $500m+ worldwide)

Barbie is due for $150m+ itself

Josh-da-man

It was a really interesting concept, but the physics behind it still drive me insane.

I'm like, yeah, there's a guy with a gun moving backwards through time. He comes upon a bullet hole in a wall. He fires the gun. The bullet jumps out of the hole into the barrel of the gun and the wall is "healed" and without a bullet hole. So was the bullet hole (and the round) always in the wall in forwards time until the backwards guy came along and sucked it out with his timey-wimey gun?

And don't even get me started on the big battle at the end and the exploding building... I think I watched that scene twenty times forwards, backwards, and in slow-motion, frame-by-frame to try to puzzle that shit out.

Throwing Copper

This raked in an impressive $33 million on Friday.

that’s an incredible number for a drama

Ash Ketchum

The best thing that's happened to OPPENHEIMER is BARBIE. Who'd a' thunk it?