Barbie vs Oppenheimer: Which was better? Who won?
By Dan Selcke
Barbie and Oppenheimer both came out this weekend, earning hundreds of millions of dollars at the box office and making Hollywood executives deliriously happy…and it may be the last time they get to be happy for a while, considering that both actors and writers are currently on strike in Hollywood.
I saw both movies over the weekend (not on the same day, I’m not that hardcore). So which was better? Who won?
Well, the movies are so different — one a grimly serious historical biopic, the other a fleetly funny merchandisable fantasy spectacular — that comparing them is kind of silly, but I’m going to do it anyway because fighting is fun. Let the Barbie vs Oppenheimer smackdown begin!
Box Office
This one’s easy: both Oppenheimer and Barbie cleaned up during their first weekend at the box office, but Barbie was the clear winner. It made $162 million at the domestic box office and $182 internationally, for a grand total of $344 million. That’s a lotta cheddar. And odds are it’ll keep making money for a long while to come.
Oppenheimer, meanwhile, made $80 million domestically and $93 million internationally, for a total of $174 million. Not shabby in the least.
You have to consider their budgets, too. Barbie was made for a reported $145 million, Oppenheimer for $100 million. Both have earned back their budgets and maybe even their marketing spends right out of the gate, but it seems clear that Barbie will outpace Oppenheimer at the box office in the long run.
Winner: Barbie
Run time
Barbie runs 114 minutes long, just shy of two hours. Oppenheimer, meanwhile, is a meaty 180 minutes, or exactly three hours.
How do you “win” in a run time category? By making the best use of the time you have. I have nothing against three-hour movies, but Oppenheimer is long and feels long. Director Christopher Nolan flits between things I found very interesting — like the detonation of the atomic bomb, the thing J. Robert Oppenheimer is known for — and things I didn’t, like the details of his love life. My attention wandered, especially in the first half.
Barbie, on the other hand, packs each of 114 minutes with jokes, satire, and character development that I wanted to see. There is some fluff in it — the Mattel side plot with Will Ferrell is a little superfluous — but it’s still funny, and it’s easier to get away with a bit of fluff when your movie isn’t that long to begin with.