I have this policy of never watching two different animes on the same day (to gave it time for it to "settle") but I broke this rule after watching Angel's egg. The atmosphere in that movie was so dark I decided I need to watch something colorful and light so I watched Ponyo, but I was still under the influence of the Angel's egg and I came up with alternative explanation of Ponyo where everybody dies (sea fish dies when it is put in a bucket of fresh water, kids dies in flood and go through the "tunnel" to the "other side" where everybody else is already waiting)
Angels egg was extremely overrated. I watched it all and felt like my time was wasted. Was recommended to me cus my favorite anime is serial experiments lain. They aren't even comparable.
Texhnolyze, paranoia agent, mind game, shinsekai yori... I'd recommend many anime to someone who likes lain, but probably not angel's egg. I don't agree that it's bad, but it's far more arthouse and understated than most anime, which is meaningful compared to the era it emerged from.
I can't imagine taking your kids to both of those. But maybe the way the 1980's explains Gen X behavior (read: trauma), that double feature explains something about 1990's Japan.
“The response was different depending on which film was shown first. My Neighbor Totoro would make them happy, then this Grave of the Fireflies… Those who saw Totoro first didn’t want to see Fireflies to the end. Those who saw Fireflies first didn’t have that problem, and stayed to the end. The double featuring was a problem, I’d say.”
Exactly! I need something hilarious and hot pink, and Barbie looks like it'll deliver both. And I say this as someone that once moderated a large community dedicated to superhero media...
The talent on this film is stacked. I was interested the second I saw who was attached.
Greta Gerwig was an indie darling for a decade before she went on to make two highly praised, award-winning films back-to-back.
Noah Baumbach is known for mumblecore indie dramedies like The Squid and the Whale and recently got an Oscar nomination for Marriage Story. The irony of him working on a Barbie movie is intriguing enough.
Margot Robbie has brilliant charisma on screen and this role seems tailor-made for her.
And if you've seen The Nice Guys, you know how hilarious Ryan Gosling can be.
I think Ryan is the only one who actually won an Oscar, but the whole team has something like double digit nominations across their projects... so if the execution is there, as it is hoped w/ Oppenheimer, these are going to the frontrunners for a boatload of awards. One has to imagine the spirit on the set was high on making such a subversive, stylized piece of filmmaking.
I was deeply skeptical that I would be interested in a movie of Barbie IP. But the opening seconds of the trailer piqued my interest, and then the title card introduced Gerwig's name. I was instantly intrigued.
I hope it's good. (Though I've got a suspicion that a lot of HN users will hate it, and not because of it's girl-coded intellectual property.)
Because of who wrote/directed and is starring in it... as silly as the subject might be on the surface (which makes it interesting because it's super against type for the creative team), chances are it will be an award circuit darling.
I couldn't care less about Barbie as a brand... don't watch Transformers movies or most superhero movies. This one? Looking forward to it. It's going to be peppered with all sorts of weird and interesting cultural critique and humor.
Barbie seems to be in that brilliantly satirical self-aware position. It plays on our expectation of what the material should be and gives it to us in a way that is simultaneously sincere and flippant.
Everyone involved seem to be able to walk that line and have the comedic skill necessary to come across as sincere in absurd situations.
As to the meme. That's just from the hilarity of this and Oppenheimer opening the same weekend. Similar openings happen all the time. Because it's a way for studios to not fight for the same dollar. At first people were laughing at the idea of Barbie crushing Oppenheimer at the box office, but that slowly morphed into the idea of just seeing both.
And since no company is never going to say no to more money, of course they got behind the idea.
As far as the "meme" of the two movies being together, I think it's the "battle of the sexes" turned on its head. Barbie looks feminine and colorful, full of fantasy, and Oppenheimer looks cold and stark, with the masculine and realist elements of wartime - watching both the movies together would be a blissful whiplash between extremes. It's produced a lot of funny content including that fake trailer that implies Barbie constructed Los Alamos and created the weapon, which made me laugh my head off. People just want to be silly and enjoy something.
It's because it's Greta Gerwig's third movie and her first two were both nominated for Best Picture. She's not quite Christopher Nolan yet, but Hollywood is aching for some semblance of the era when people cared about filmmakers and one-off projects by auteurs that were not part of a franchise could get big-time funding and a hot cast.
I’d say that’s almost giving the studios too much credit. No doubt once they saw the meme online they leaned into it, but there is genuine hype for both films, and Barbie esp. seems to be hitting the women demographic particularly strongly. I hadn’t thought of watching both the same day, but now I genuine would like to, just to say I did.
The Lego movie was awesome, and there's a good chance this brand will also put some perspective on certain childhood memories. Even down to having Will Ferrell in it.
Most people I know decide to go to the theater at the last minute. Maybe they got three interns to sign up for the double feature and this counts as a yuge spike.
Same reason Oppenheimer is: because of who is making it. Like, otherwise why would I care to see a biopic about a guy from 70-80 years ago in the theater?
Oppenheimer is a tragic figure likened to the Greek myth of Prometheus and the nuclear bomb was both the culmination of hundreds of years of physics research and deployed to commit some of the most destructive war crimes in history. Oppenheimer’s story best illustrates the whiplash of the culture of fear and the mutual distrust between the American people and its government taking hold in the years following the war.
The national lab system formed to create the bomb quickly pivoted to HPC which drove funding and research to the computing industry for decades - anyone working in the tech industry, which I’d assume describes most people on this site, really should be interested in his story.
They are rarely hits people watch a lot. They tend to be a niche interest. I think that was OP point. He is not going for biopic normally, but this one has a star in it.
Was there a Barbie submersible bath tub toy? If not, they should make one. They can make it a companion to the Barbie yacht. You can even put a back story that she bought it from an auction from a sanctioned russian oligarch
> Join Barbie on the ultimate underwater adventure as she snorkels through three unexplored marine environments on a hunt for priceless treasures of the deep. Along the way, she’ll visit colorful coral reefs and mysterious sunken cities. As Barbie explores the undersea world, she’ll uncover nine unique mini-games that test her puzzle-solving and memory skills. One game will test Barbie’s navigation skills as she helps Sandy the dolphin through a perplexing maze. Another game offers the brain-twisting task of finding matching items under clam shells. When Barbie beats a challenge, she’ll receive part of a key that, when complete, opens a new undersea landscape to explore.
I doubt this is what you meant but what came to mind was Super Slide Kelly! Barbie wasn’t necessarily my first choice toy (I usually defaulted to LEGO), but I vividly remember Kelly because my mom bought her for me when I was six years old and sick with the chicken pox. She was my one bright spot from that awful week. She had a bitchin slide that (I think?) suction-cupped to the wall and you could make her slide into the tub.
There’s a Philip K Dick novel where the decay of Earth has led to the colonization of the solar system, but most people on the colonies are barely surviving in hostile living conditions. Their main form of entertainment is to do drugs that allow them to group hallucinate and insert themselves into their Barbie play sets.
I'm entirely serious. Indy V was ok (went in with low expectations, and the movie exceeded them). But MI7 I'm really looking forward to. Best franchise currently out there, the RottenTomatoes scores for the last few ones (and the new one) are all 90%+ from critics and audience alike!
I went to see "Past Lives" (highly recommend) and of all the previews Barbie and Oppenheimer were the two I resolved to see. On separate days, though, I can't imagine doubling these two up. Do people do this to save money?
I'm not doing a "double feature", but I am seeing both opening weekend, which is something I haven't done in a long time.
My local film society got a 35mm print of Oppenheimer, which I have tickets to see opening night. Barbie on the other hand I'm happy seeing on a digital screen closer to home.
In our multiplex (US) I could go from theater to theater since the seats aren't assigned but I've never done that, even though I complain about high ticket prices. It's not "legal", of course, but I doubt the bored teenagers would go around hunting down cheaters.
That was my first instinct too as I was unaware of the Barbie movie. Reminds me of the "Barbie" museum in the movie Rat Race, which to the family's shock was actually a Nazi museum.
The Barbie movie had one of the best marketing campaigns I have ever seen dating back to the initial announcements. But I think they lost the plot with this contrived connection to Oppenheimer. It feels forced and kind of turns me off to both movies. I try to be a good sport and enjoy the whole marketing production for these kind of cultural events (meaning the Barbie movie), but then they come in hot with this absurd upsell and it just rubs me wrong.
I don't really see them as forcing it. I think people just enjoy the crossover idea of Barbie having constructed the atomic bomb, and they think that's funny.
I'm sure there's at least some but barbieheimer has been a meme since the first dates got announced so I think it's pretty safe to say that a lot of it is people seeing both. My local theater even has the posters right next to each other.
My fiance and 10 of our friends already got tickets to both and can't wait. We're seeing Oppenheimer first, then a quick break for smoking weed, then back in for barbie
Wow, how did you get 12 people to commit for 5h simultaneously? Not facetious, genuinely curious. I don’t think I could do that even for a shorter birthday party
This is my thought. I have to believe there’s a solid inverse relationship of interest. But everyone is interested in one of them. Parents/kids or men/women seem like sensible cohorts for Oppenheimer/Barbie.
Would be interesting to see the data and if showtimes overlap. Or if it’s truly back to back.
I think you have a too narrow view of people’s interests.
I would describe the overlap as “people into films that are with a relatively high likelihood interesting”. Given who is directing and who is involved with both of those films that’s a relatively safe bet.
Fast & Furious in a double feature with Trolls. That’s what I would describe as double feature with little overlap. Both films have probably relatively distinct demographics that like them and the films are unlikely to be in any way interesting.
https://www.tor.com/2017/06/07/studio-ghibli-shows-their-ran...