When is a movie no longer just a movie? It's when it becomes an event, or even a cultural phenomenon. What happens when two of those movies drop at the same time? You have the collision that was "Barbenheimer."
This past week saw the opening of two films that are polar opposites: Greta Gerwig's playful comedy "Barbie" that brings the doll to life and Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheiemer," the biographical drama depicting the development of the atomic bomb under J. Robert Oppenheimer.
The films should presumably appeal to vastly different audiences, but buzz around both films had moviegoers swarming to both — often on the same day — and each delivered in a big way.
"Barbie" brought in more than $162 million domestically on opening weekend and "Oppenheimer" had more than $82 million in sales to take the top two box office spots this past week. And while that seems like a distant No. 2 for the latter, don't forget that "Barbie" is more than an hour shorter and appeared on more screens.
Co-hosts Bruce Miller and Terry Lipshetz discuss seeing both films, including Terry's experience seeing "Oppenheimer" in an IMAX theater. Plus, learn why both films will surely be in the running for multiple Academy Awards when Oscar season approaches.
Next week: We discuss the upcoming final season of "High School Musical: The Musical: The Series" on Disney+ and have interviews with cast members Frankie A. Rodriguez, Julia Lester and Dara Reneé, plus the creator of the series Tim Federle.
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Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller, a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin.
Episode transcript
Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically:
Welcome everyone to another episode of Screamed and Screamed in Entertainment Podcasts about movies and TV from Lee Enterprises. I'm Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer at Lee and co-host of the program with the King of this podcast’s mojo dojo casa house Bruce Miller, editor of the City Journal and a longtime entertainment reporter. So Mr. Mojo Dojo Casa House ruler, see any good movies this weekend.
Was it a Brucedom? Yeah.
Are you are you leading the patriarchy? Are you in charge of that?
That's right. I can hardly wait there with the patriarchy is coming to Barbie land. That'll be so cool. Actually, this was like, I swear, this will have been the best week of movies of the year. It's incredible to really big ones. And I saw a lot of people who were trying to do both of them in the same day when I went.
And they all an awful lot of people dressed up like Barbie, basically a lot of pink. And then they would their choice was to go to Barbie first in Oppenheimer's second, which I don't know if was because they felt that they could relax or something. I don't know. But they did like doing the double feature like that. But I would have savored a little bit of it so that I wouldn't add all the goodness at once, because I think it was it was interesting.
Now you've got girls who would probably be of a Barbie age, right?
E their they've outgrown Barbie as a toy or a thing. So they're past the Barbie stage. And this is an interesting movie, too, because this Barbie, this isn't a kids movie. This is all sort of an adult themed. Yeah.
Yeah. I think that if parents were thinking they're going to send their kids to see Barbie, it might be a bad idea because I don't think that there's anything in there that's subversive or anything that they shouldn't see, but I don't think they would think it was like past Barbie films where it was, you know, just kind of magic unicorns and cars and God knows what Barbie did back in the past.
But it's a spoof in a way of the Barbie motif. I thought it was brilliant the way they were able to make Barbie relevant today. And where you don't dismiss her as just that. Oh, that's that kind of obnoxious doll, you know, because Barbie has always been seen as why are little girls playing with anything but a baby doll?
And Barbie came around. It was like, you know, maybe we like to play with dolls like that. So it's very interesting how they do that. And then they make Mattel look good, which I was shocked about that. I thought Mattel, you know, they had these kind of mean guys who are all male staff at Mattel running the thing.
And then they introduce you to the the woman who created Barbie. And a very fascinating to show how Mattel doesn't come off as a bad guy in this whole thing, I think. But I do think that a lot of people have been leaning in far too much to the end. Everybody talks about it as the best final line of any movie.
And I think, okay, it's interesting, but let's not all get so excited that we lose sight of what came before that.
Right? I really loved it. I didn't know what to expect because I. I tried to stay away from so many reviews and everything. I wanted to go in with it with a very fresh mind. I obviously read enough of it to know, you know, obviously this is a little bit of a spoof of Barbie. This isn't like some of the Barbie movies that the cartoon is.
You're the very Barbie Barbie type of movies that have been there. This is obviously poking fun at Barbie to a degree. I mean, even in the trailers says if you love Barbie, you're going to love this movie. If you hate Barbie, hate Barbie, love this movie. And I you know, I'm not a a Barbie person, but I went into it thinking like, okay, I want to check this out.
It has the pedigree of people in it that, you know, I should like it. I mean, Will Ferrell is as the head of Mattel and I thought he was brilliant in that part is normal. Will Ferrell Nice. I don't always love him in movies, but I thought he played this role very well. And then I thought, you know, Rhea Perlman in that role, as you know, the creator of Barbie, did did a wonderful job.
It was fun to see her. My wife was excited when Kate McKinnon came on screen as Weird Barbie. She loves Kate McKinnon. I love Kate McKinnon. And so it was it was kind of fun from that perspective.
She's like three Barbie that every girl, like, did her hair. I mean, heard anybody who owned a Barbie. I cut her hair. Oh, yeah. Barbie was always getting her hair cut. And this is how she turns out. And then she becomes the one who sits in the box without shoes and kind of the wrong outfit put on together.
And maybe the makeup got smeared. That is Kate McKinnon in a heartbeat. And she did a beautiful job of kind of left over Barbie.
Yeah, I was just overall surprised at how much I enjoyed it. I thought I would like it. You know, Greta Gerwig is attached to it. She's becoming a very brilliant filmmaker. And I just thought that, okay, we have enough components here where I'm probably going to like it and it's fine. I can be a dad and go into this movie.
There were very few kids in the theater when we went. We went in the afternoon on a Saturday. I only brought one of the two daughters. One wanted absolutely nothing to do with the movie because she hates Barbie, she hates pink things, she hates being a girly girl. I showed her the trailer and I said like, No, no, no, it makes fun of that stuff.
And she still didn't want to see it. I guarantee you, as soon as it's on TV, she'll watch it and she'll probably love it. But I'm not going to force a 12 year old to go see a movie that she doesn't want. So we we went my wife and one of my daughters went and we enjoyed it. There were one other family I want to say that was there.
They had kind of like a tween ish daughter. And then there was a really little younger sister with her, which probably was too young for the movie. After that, it was all adults. It was all like older Gen-X, younger baby boomers.
You know, It was like Women's Night Out. Yeah. And they were dressed in pink. I saw two guys come in wearing pink shirts and pink shorts and blazers. So interesting crowd. And they were all of from teenage to, you know, middle aged. I think it was a yeah, a fascinating mix. And I thought it had a real big opening day crowd.
I was surprised that on opening day it would be that big. But it was and it was the number one film of the week.
So they did like by like a mile, I mean 162 million in 4200 plus theaters. That is insane. And it was I don't know if you picked up on this, but it actually shattered a record for a film directed by a woman, 162 million. The next best was Captain Marvel, which was co-directed by Anna Boden, and that did 153 million in 2019.
And then the Wonder Woman film by Patty Jenkins in 2017 that just did just a little over 103 million. So this this was a just a huge movie on so many different levels. The number of screens it was showing on just at my little AMC Theater in town, it was it was like 10 a.m. 1030, 12, 12 3130.
It was just nonstop in my theater. It wasn't packed when I went kind of early in the afternoon, but it was constant. I mean, it was the most full. I've seen that parking lot in a very long time.
You know, the thing that the success will cause them to want to do a sequel.
Yep.
And to me. Okay. But go into those other Barbies because there's a whole lineup of different kinds of Barbies. You don't have to have Margot Robbie come back and go through some other kind of life affirming mission or whatever. You could have a Supreme Court Barbie. You could have President Barbie, you could have astronaut Barbie. You could go with all those different ones, and same with cans.
You could have different cans. So then it's not the same thing, because I think that's what they're just too eager for is an and my favorite of all was Allen Allen.
I was just going to bring Allen up.
Michael's Nero was so good as Allen and you know what I loved is at the end during the credits you got to see what that doll looked like and there was it says I can wear Ken's clothes or something like that. And that was one of his lines. And yet she was able to grab all those things from costumes that Barbie wore or the different kinds of Barbies there were.
She I mean, if you were a Barbie fan, she did her homework. And I think that really shows with this. I wanted to see a little more image. I got to be honest and Skipper, because those two were, you know, how they traded. Let's make every dime we can get out of the franchise. It would have been fun to see those.
But they again, they could be potential for a sequel. But I laughed so much and I do think if I'm going to predict anything, Ryan Gosling could get a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Cat.
He was good. He played kind of that dopey sidekick kind of. But then when he comes into the real world and sees that, you know, it's not like Barbie Land in, and he starts kind of asserting himself and then comes back and creates the mojo dojo casa house, which is my favorite line of the whole thing.
And then he's wearing this fur coat all the time, like he's some rapper or something, you.
Know, And the battle, the battle at the end, I don't you know, we don't need you, but you're going to be you mentioned that beating each other off. I think he did a really nice job of toeing the line with some of the referencing and that kind of thing to keep the adults happy, but they never really crossed the line where I don't think it was at any point, you know, concerning to have kids in there other than maybe a few adult ish things a little bit here and there.
I mean, they got a little anatomical a couple of times, but that was it. But it was it was funny.
If anything, kids would be bored, right, Because they wouldn't get the lines or they wouldn't get the reference. But if you've lived through Barbie and I think that's most of us, we've seen the kind of things they've done with her and where it was like beauty queen Barbie and all these things where it was promoting a different image than maybe most people thought of Barbie because I think when it started, she kind of looked Marilyn Monroe ish.
No, I mean, then she became kind of this Miss America ideal. And I think that didn't really play well with people who were looking for a doll who was adult.
Right.
But they never they never lay on all of that so that it's a bad thing, like when they make fun of Barbie being these is just that she could do anything.
Yeah.
And I love the concept that she could dream to be Barbie, could be whatever she wants to be. Exactly. That's what I think the movie talks about, is that women should have the right to be whatever they want to be.
You know, you brought up Ryan Gosling in this for a possible award season thing. You don't normally see comedies enter into that level of discussion. Could you see this film, though, because of the messaging and the way they approached it, the direction, the screenwriting? Could you see this maybe getting in being their 10th film to get a best Picture nominee to get, you know, best director nominee for Greta Gerwig, Best Original Screenplay, maybe.
Okay. It's definitely going to be a contender, if not the winner already for best sets and best costumes, because those are just brilliant. And then you start looking down the road and you think, Well, she's going to get a writing nomination because here's a way that you can reward. They want to give Greta something over all these years where they like past her by.
And I think writing could be the one that she could win. I don't know that directing is one that she could win because you've got those heavy dramas that are in there, but she can certainly be nominated. Yeah. And then and it'll be I think it'll be nominated for best Picture because it's just goofy enough that there is room for it.
Yep. You know, and it was one of those things and we'll talk about it too, as we move on to Oppenheimer. But it was a film that I felt like I really wanted to see it in the theater and it was funny because I looked at my purchase history in my AMC app because I watched I saw that on a on Saturday.
I couldn't get to Oppenheimer until Monday afternoon, which is July 24th, July 24th of last year. I saw Top Gun Maverick. I saw that in my history. That was the first movie I went to in the theater since the pandemic. I mean, the last thing I saw before that in the theater was going to the last Star Wars movie twice in December of 2019.
So I went to Top Gun Maverick in July of last year. I went to Avatar. That was the next movie I saw in the theater was Avatar in December. But since then, it's been, you know, is Barbie movie. It's Oppenheimer, it's Indiana Jones. It was elemental. It was The Flash, It was Super Mario Brothers. I've been to, you know, like a half dozen movies now, and it feels like we're back.
We're back with all right. Movies, event level movies where I don't even want to wait until it's on streaming or anything like that. I have to be there.
Well, and didn't you feel that the crowd reaction helped?
Yes.
You know, if you were sitting at home, you wouldn't really have those good belly laughs that you got out of some of these things. And I don't feel any of them. But there were moments when I was just snorting. Yeah, they were so funny.
Yeah. And, you know, it is interesting too, for me, before I went to see the movie Friday night, we had tickets to to a pro baseball game. It was kind of one of these. It's not an affiliated minor league team. It's kind of, you know, it's where the players go to keep their careers going. And so we go to this game and we're watching it and there's a family behind us.
And the family includes a few daughters that were, you know, like late teens, early 20 kind of age. And they're talking about Barb and Heimer for a couple of innings. And they're giving their critique of, you know, yeah, I love the Barbie movie. Oppenheimer It was pretty good. We were surprised. It was a little slow at first, but it and there I'm thinking it's like we're we're at a baseball game and people are talking about urban Heimer there it's almost because it's entered into this this cultural it's a cultural phenomenon in the moment.
And, you know, no matter where you are, people are talking about it.
And you go, la la la la la. Don't tell me anything about that.
But I was luckily my hearing's a little off, so whatever else, they kept on yapping about it. Yeah, I missed it, but I picked up on that.
You got to see Oppenheimer. How I wish I had, which is on IMAX screens. I did. I wasn't really. I would think that when they they now hear it's going to sound like I'm spoiling it but when they test the bomb. Yeah, that that would have been really, really cool in IMAX.
Oh yeah. Oh yes.
Because. All right, you've got me. And I'm jealous because I didn't see an IMAX.
Yeah. So I couldn't get to Oppenheimer over the weekend and I was looking I was I wasn't sure if I'd even be able to see it before we talked. I go and I was looking to see where it was playing and when, and I didn't even realize it. But there was an IMAX theater not too far from the office, and I saw that even even during the week, it was getting pretty filled up.
So my best chance to see it in IMAX was at 1215 on a monday afternoon. I buy my ticket, I get there and the place is absolutely packed. Other than the first couple of rows where you're going to get a stiff neck and a few seats off to the side on either end. The place was packed on a monday afternoon.
I have never in my life been to an IMAX theater. I've been to a few large format type of things in museums and that kind of thing where, you know, they try to immerse you in sound and screen. But I was never actually at an IMAX theater to see a Hollywood film as soon as I sat in, even just there going through the previews and I'm already just getting blown away, seeing all the movies that I'm expecting to see in the next few months.
But then when when the film comes up and you're seeing it and you know that Christopher Nolan filmed it with IMAX in mind and the imagery is huge and the sound I'm just swimming in sound and it's not it's it's loud, but it's not overpowering. I could just feel it around me. So again, we don't want to give away anything.
We want to be as spoiler free as possible. But it's pretty obvious that, yes, they do test the atomic bomb in a movie about the atomic bomb. So when they drop it and it kind of there's that scene where they don't they don't give you the sound right away. They just give you that flash. Right. And I'm just thinking, oh, okay, you know, that's interesting.
But then then it hits you. And I could feel like you can feel the sound pouring over you as that destructive wave just comes at you. And I was just so blown away by that that I'm so glad I was so glad I saw that in IMAX.
Did you see Sound of Metal, the one about the musician who was losing his hearing?
It's on my list of like, yeah, I know what you're speaking of. It's in my Amazon Prime. Like, I got to see it and I've been watching this for three years.
They play with sound in very, very interesting ways and that that was what I was reminded of when I saw Oppenheimer. I thought, you know, he's really he's using all of these different elements. I mean, everything cinematography, where he has black and white in color, the makeup where the makeup techniques are very subtle. They aren't ones where you go, Oh, my God, he's got a big plastic face on and he's supposed to be old.
Okay, I get that. I guess this is very, very subtle. All of the things that the elements are top drawer, top drawer with everybody. And then when you look at the cast of supporting actors, I mean, it's a it's an independent directors dream cast. And you go, Oh, my God. And they they don't even have lines. Some of those people are just kind of background.
They wanted to be in this film so badly and you go through it, you go, Wow, this is clout, where you're able to get these people in this film. Now, I like you. I think it starts slowly. I think it's one of those things where don't be thrown off by a film that might seem a little oh, my God, it's just sluggish.
We're going to get a whole buy. Because I thought immediately of Beautiful Mind. I thought, Oh, jeez, it's going to be Beautiful Mind all over again. And then it isn't. And then you you get into that whole building process where they're creating Los Alamos and and the team is assembling and you kind of get, okay, it's like riding a train and the train keeps chugging and then it gets a high pitch.
And there's a moment again, this is another one I want to ask you about when he is greeted by everybody in the room where they again use sound as and flashes to see how he responds to the people who are cheering him on. Do you know which one I'm meaning?
Yeah. And you're kind of later after. Yeah. And did you.
Did you. Was that a real big and have seen watch.
Yeah. Yeah that and that and just the emotion and because you can see it on his face so clearly being so large but then the sound into it and the sound of kind of like him imagining the world being destroyed by right energy it just it filled the theater the whole way through. Absolutely amazing.
And then there's that kind of oh my God moment when they started talking about a vote that was taken and who was responsible for. And that is just I think that's one of that. That's one of those kind of cherries on the top that rewards you for hanging with it and also knowing the history.
Yeah, it's interesting because I, I mean, I obviously knew that Cillian Murphy was in there as Robert Oppenheimer. I knew Matt Damon was in the movie, but I, I really avoided paying too close attention to who is doing what because I just wanted to go in and see the film. I didn't realize right away that it was Robert Downey Jr in that role, but it was interesting to me.
And let me ask you this, as someone who's seen a lot of movies, like I went into it, it's a three hour film and it's a it's a drama about the Manhattan Project. And I'm thinking myself, I hope this isn't boring. You know, I know that there's going to be an hour in. I know there's a lot of story to tell as I started watching it, because obviously they give you the black and white is meant to be from the perspective of Louis Strauss's character.
Right.
Right.
And then the color is Robert Oppenheimer's perspective, right? It got me thinking a little bit to how Francis Ford Coppola directed Godfather Part two, which is also a very long movie, over 3 hours and 20 minutes. But he used the scenes where he had scenes with kind of the present day Corleone family. But then they also had Robert De Niro's the flashbacks of how Vito Corleone came to power, and they would bounce you back and forth.
And I thought with Oppenheimer how they were able to go back and forth between the black and white and the color. It helped actually move the story along. So you weren't so beaten down by just constant dialog and stuff. It was almost, you know, in both cases, both movies have very little action. It's more of a of a drama.
And they used a different jumping around in color to kind of keep you moving along. So I actually never felt like it was, you know, there was a few few moments where kind of slowly went along. But I always thought it kept me going the whole way through.
I you know, I think the your concept is that black and white means it's the past. And that wasn't how he used that. That is just perspective and so immediately you jump to that you think or these old scenes that we're watching here now is this before something and it's not it's actually more of the more contemporary scenes of some of the things that they were dealing with.
I thought it was very fascinating how Matt Damon looked like a movie star in that he was a little broader than most of the other actors. The other actors kind of pulled it back a little bit and he was kind of like, Ooh, la, where you're you're getting a little more than maybe you want out of him. And I know he'll probably be nominated for best supporting actor.
But you see that Robert Downey Jr is almost invisible as Strauss. Then he gives it away with a few little gestures of his that are typical Robert Downey Jr things. But I think it's still a good performance. Emily Blunt How exciting is she as Mrs. Oppenheimer She is like, I want to know her because that one woman would just tell people, OP and she was like, just kind of she had that bitterness that her husband didn't and she knew how to be just that other side there that she needed.
And I think Gillian Murphy pulls back enough that you can just project just about anything on his personality so that if you thought he was a nudge or you thought he was just this brilliant man who is, you know, doesn't have equals anywhere, there were a lot of things that you could play off his performance, how he modulated that.
And, you know, they all talk about how he ate nothing and didn't mingle with the rest of them. And you think, well, if that helped the performance go for it, you know, But when I saw like Josh Hartnett sitting there on the on the couch, barely in it, Rami Malick, who has maybe one decent scene and these are and people who are like Oscar winners.
Affleck had a little bit part in there, too so.
That anybody in it's like all of a sudden he shows up.
Matthew Modine I thought, Oh, this is your tip of the hat to Ken Burns, because Matthew Modine would be the kind who would like narrate something for Ken Burns, right? Yeah, he was it was buried. But in Florence Pugh You don't recognize that. That's Florence Pugh in there as somebody in Oppenheimer's life. Albert Einstein Yeah. You know, I mean, it just it goes one after another.
So if you're a fan of movies, Oppenheimer is like the best reward we've gotten in a long time. And I'm not saying bad things about past movies that have won Best Picture or whatever, but they've been pretty middle of the road in recent years. I mean, you know, don't get me wrong, I love Coda, but I don't think Coda is high art.
I think this is something that you look at and you say, you know what, This guy did some planning. He did some thinking about this. It isn't we've just got to get this shot today and we're moving on.
This movie also. I mean, you know, it did only 82 million compared to Barbie's 162. But it was on it was on 600 fewer screens, number one. And it's 3 hours. You can only show it so many times during the course of the day. So yeah, it did half of Barbie. But in a sense, with the time and everything, we almost it almost equal that, you know, it's just like if you could have shortened up the movie and threw it on more screens, it would have been right up there.
People, people flocked to this movie.
You know, last week we talked about RAGBRAI, which was the bicycle ride across Iowa. And Saturday was when I went to it and in the theater, it was packed with with bicycle riders, because I don't know if it was because they want to get out of the heat, but they wanted have something to do or they wanted to recline in a in a comfy seat.
But they were it was wall to wall people in bicycle clothes. And they just loved it. They ate it up like crazy. And I don't think they slept if they were planning on doing that.
So overall, I mean, is Oppenheimer best picture frontrunner at this point for you?
Well, it is. But if you saw the previews, you saw that there's a martin Scorsese film that's coming out. And I think that's his biggest competition. And I think that's where we're going to see who's playing off whom in this. And it will depend how it you know, there will be some backlash. I think we already saw it today.
People were counting the stars on the flags and said use the right number of stars. And so there you go.
I read an interesting thing about that, too, that that might have actually been intentional because it was there was one scene where it had the correct number of stars and there was another scene where is incorrect. And the theory was that because it was it the split was between color in black and white. So the perspective may have been from one of their perspectives, the one where it was correct, remembering it as, you know, 48 states in the union, whereas the other one was, you have the perspective of the time where there's 50 stars.
I don't know if that's true or if somebody just, you know, in set design flubbed and grabbed the wrong one. But it was an interesting theory.
At least Clint Eastwood has done that, where he's done, you know, a period piece and then the flag is wrong. Right. You know, so it happens. It happens. But I don't that doesn't pull away from anything else. And I think, you know, he is a real stickler for not trying to recreate things in special effects. You're not going to see 10,000 names that are listed as people who did the animation for this.
So I think there's a real a love fest. And if Christopher Nolan doesn't win best director for this, it better be something good.
Absolutely. Well, next week we're going to move probably as far away from Oppenheimer and Barbara, yet we have a new show, well, I guess not a new show, but a new season of a show on Disney and yeah, ending. Do you want to just set us up on that one? What are we looking at?
Come on, High School Musical and I know you're not of that ilk. I know that you're not from that age range. 26 When it popped, it was unbelievable. I mean, nobody thought that a Disney movie would turn out to be that much of a phenomenon. And it launched careers not unlike other films and then led way to High School Musical, The musical, the series, which is ending its season.
In fact, they're going to drop all the episodes on one day. So if you are a high school musical nut, you'll find out what happened to those kids in the in the final season so that we're telling you that next weekend we've got people from the show that we are talking to as well. So come on, we're all in this together.
I can't wait to talk with you more about that. Thank you again for listening to this episode of Streamed and Screened.