Barbie vs Oppenheimer: Which was better? Who won?

Star Power

Both of these movies are stacked back to front with big-name talent. Barbie comes out the gate strong with leads Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, two big stars who are perfectly suited for these roles. They bring tons of comic firepower.

But look at who’s around them: Will Farrell as the CEO of Mattel, Sima Liu and Kingsley Ben-Adir as alternate Kens, Issa Rae and Kate McKinnon as alternate Barbies. Michael Cera is there as Ken’s buddy Allen, America Ferrera plays our touchstone in the human world, Cheers legend Rhea Perlman shows up as Barbie creator Ruth Handler and Helen Mirren plays the narrator!

Also John Cena plays a merman for a few seconds. Sure, why not? It’s a deep cast with a lot of star wattage, even though several of them essentially play walk-on roles.

Oppenheimer brings the heat too. Cillian Murphy is in the title tole, and while he’s not as big a name as Robbie or Gosling, he’s been a regular on screens big and small for years, and may well take home an Oscar for his work here. And the cast around him is crazy: Florence Pugh as Oppenheimer’s first love Jean Tatlock, Emily Blunt as his wife Kitty, Matt Damon as general Leslie Groves, Kenneth Branagh as physicist Niels Bohr, and of course Robert Downey Jr. as Oppenheimer’s bureaucrat nemesis Lewis Strauss. He’s fantastic; I can see an Oscar in his future, too.

There are also lots of stars in smaller roles, including Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, David Dastmalchian, Matthew Modine, Jack Quaid and Gary Oldman in a cameo as President Harry Truman.

There are stars aplenty in these movies, and they’re all doing good work. Barbie leans a little more into new Hollywood and Oppenheimer a bit more into old, but there’s crossover both ways. It’s a close call, but I think I’m going to give the point to Oppenheimer, if for no other reason than that these folks are more likely to win little gold statues come awards season.

Winner: Oppenheimer

Purity of spirit

Let’s state the obvious: as fun as Barbie is, it’s essentially a commercial. Yes, it’s a commercial with great performances and a lot of heart and some timely messages about gender roles, but it’s an ad. It wants you to buy Barbies and Barbie accessories. It spotlights several during the movie, and the credits show you the real-life dolls behind some of the characters.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I think director Greta Gerwig masterfully threaded the needle, making a movie that has something interesting to say about an icon of consumerism while still enthusiastically participating in consumerist culture. It might be the smartest melding of art and commerce I’ve ever seen.

But will the inevitable sequels and spinoffs be as subtle and open-hearted? Or are we in for a lot of Barbie movies that swap out nuance for schmaltz and joy for cynicism? We’ll see, but I’m nervous.

On the other hand, there’s no danger of Oppenheimer starting any kind of cinematic universe. This is cinema for cinema’s sake. And a story about humanity sowing the seeds of its own destruction is pretty relevant as we hear about climate change creating more heat waves and destructive storms.

Winner: Oppenheimer

And the winner is…

This was a closer decision than I thought it would be when I started writing this, but the winner is still pretty clear to me: Barbie takes it home.

I believe that a movie should be judged on the standards it sets for itself, and I think Barbie is better at what it tries to do — be a fun comedy that comments on 60 years of culture in a cheeky, heartfelt way — than Oppenheimer is at what it tries to do. This is a biopic about a major historical figure, but my problem was that I found Oppenheimer’s invention far more interesting than he was, so my attention wandered when the movie focused on, say, the details of his love life or how he lost his security clearance under trumped up charges of communism. And it spent a lot of time on those thing. I feel like the focus was off from the start, and the movie tried to compensate by becoming longer rather than better.

But that’s just me; everybody gets different things out of movies. But I definitely felt more satisfied coming out of Barbie than Oppenheimer.

Winner: Barbie

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