Stephanie Zacharek in Time Magazine:
In anticipation of the movie event of summer 2023 known as Barbenheimer, the best and wittiest unpaid advertising Universal and Warner Bros. Pictures could have hoped for wasn’t an Instagram post of a grinning Tom Cruise, along with Mission: Impossible 7 director Christopher McQuarrie, brandishing tickets for Oppenheimer and Barbie. It was a recent tweet from television writer Noah Garfinkel, built around a still from Oppenheimer featuring Tom Conti’s Albert Einstein and Cillian Murphy’s J. Robert Oppenheimer, ostensibly involved in a serious conversation about atom splitting and stuff. The caption read “‘We’re gathering a group of top scientists to go see Barbie.’”
That tweet is great because it’s a life raft of spontaneity in a sea of hype that has come to feel desperate. In the week leading up to the dual releases of Oppenheimer and Barbie, on July 21, the fever has gone off the thermometer. Christopher Nolan, with his fixation on craft (and his status as the guy who made those Batman movies), tackling the story of one of history’s most famous theoretical physicists? The idea is so antithetical to the I.P.-fixated pack-em-in mentality of the past few years that it’s no wonder anticipation among actual grownups, whether they’re Nolan fans or not, is high. The juggernaut around Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is even more formidable: Barbie pink, a hothouse hue verging on fuchsia, is everywhere. And at the film’s Los Angeles premiere, on July 9, Margot Robbie appeared in a life-size version of one of early Barbie’s most famous ensembles, a strapless sparkle evening gown accessorized with a chiffon hankie and the famous Barbie mules, known as “Solo in the Spotlight.” She looked glamorous, sexy and adorable. You’d have to be a certified funkiller not to love it.
More here.