Where I come down on Barbenheimer

Greta and Margot got Oscar snubbed -- big time!

Not my usual lane, but hear me out. Besides being a geostrategist, I have dabbled in the Hollywood arts, working for stints in the past (a lifetime ago …) as a sort of series doctor/“world builder” (as I was dubbed by executives) for a prime cable network (all of it lost to development hell, but still, it was a creative blast and it paid well!). I’ll also have you know I belong to the Writers Guild of America (East), so I couldn’t work anything during the recent strike — but only because nobody has ever shown the slightest interest in my sci-fi series pilot script.

[Deep sigh!]

Having thus established my bona wannabes … I am totally Kenergized to speak out on this subject (along with being willing to sit through the Godfather movies with any subscriber, explaining them throughout).

Oscars are ultimately about what Hollywood likes to think about itself that year. Sure, there’s always the desire to finally reward so-and-so, and clearly that’s working hard for both Robert Downey Jr. and Christopher Nolan, and I got no problem with either, but I don’t actually think history will look back on 2023 and say Oppenheimer captured it better than Barbie.

First off, let me describe my reactions to each.

Good, but very dull and repetitive in long stretches.

I’ve seen Barbie three times and Oppenheimer twice. The latter pushed me to read the Oppenheimer bio (American Prometheus) AND Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atom Bomb (by far the better book). I can’t say I’ve read anything Barbie as a result (even though it is nominated for an adapted screenplay!), but I will admit to playing with them some as a kid, primarily because my GI Joes … well, they were often lonely in a Cowboy Andy kind of way, and one makes do as Child 8th-of-9 in a house full of hand-me-down everything.

Better, by a ways.

My call? I admire both films but I really loved Barbie. It was just far more clever and — in many ways — deeper than Oppenheimer (where the speakers were cranked up to 11 ALL THE TIME!).

Understand: both movies are exercises in nostalgia, and both aspire to say something profound about today. In both instances, Barbie outperformed Oppenheimer. Its nostalgia was more heartwarming and evocative, while Oppenheimer’s delivery was more by the biopic Hollywood numbers. Point being I was transported by Barbie but caught myself looking at my watch twice during Oppenheimer.

I will declare myself to be a dyed-in-the-wool Nolan fan, with Tenet as my favorite, following closely by Interstellar and Inception (all three explore time). He is the best of his generation, but he is known for not being able to handle women characters or romance. His worlds are very guy-driven, much like Michael Mann (whom all men worship, because he keeps me sharp, on the edge, where I gotta be!).

So yeah, if Hollywood wants to finally crown Nolan, I say fabulous. But it’s one of his weaker movies, to be honest.

Here I am biased by my career: most people watch the movie and say, He created the capacity to destroy the world! Me, I look at it and say, Thank God I don’t have a Q clearance anymore!

Seriously, all the nuclear stuff I snored through; it was the clearance hearing that had me on the edge of my seat (those dirty bastards!). So yeah, I was engrossed by the film through the end, while I think most people (like my kids and spouse) mentally checked out after the big explosion and the immediate mental impact among the Los Alamos staff regarding the bombs’ wartime use. So, there’s that problem for me with the film’s structure (climax in middle, boring procedural at end — an imbalance no amount of an insanely loud soundtrack and a naked Florence Pugh could correct [see how he treats women so subtly?]).

But, as a geostrategist, I was dismayed by the general end-of-the-world fatalism that pervaded Oppenheimer, precisely because that is so contradicted by the history that followed. There’s all this angst about “I though this weapon would end war, not blow up the planet!”

Well, it did end war — among nuclear powers and world wars in general. And that’s a hugely positive thing that made the rise of globalization possible. So looking back at Trinity as some scary turning point, while correct enough at the time, is, by today’s understanding, completely wrong-headed.

Trinity marked the beginning of a world-system-level peace that has continued to this day, making all the economic progress of the past seven decades possible (while inadvertently buying us vastly accelerated climate change — but that’s another movie). Sad and tragic for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but an incredible good for humanity.

Was it a scary journey to get from there to here? Sure. But we made it and we continue to travel that path, with occasional jump scares. So, again, to me, Oppenheimer is a celebration of the end of system-level war made possible by an incredible scientific achievement — a feel good “we won” movie that, in Nolan’s hands, gets all mournful and filled with regret and blah! blah! blah!

Worse, now Nolan is some uninformed spokesperson on the dangers of AI, because the movie has triggered that fear among so many who spot end-of-humanity parallels between the bomb (not true) and AI (also not true). So, from my perspective: double-bad, as in, toned the story wrong and now you’re just feeding additional out-of-context fears.

Good movie overall? Sure. Nolan’s always great. This just wasn’t his best. But that happens all the time with Oscars: there’s just this sense of it being so-and-so’s time (like mustache-twirling Robert Downey playing the villain).

Now, by way of contrast, let me admit that I found Barbie thrilling and funny and deep and moving from start to finish. I also think it is the single most clever script I’ve come across since Casablanca. There were so many ways Gerwig and husband Noah Baumbach could have gone with that and I think they threaded too many needles to count. Honestly, the only off-tone moment was having the narrator make that stupid aside about not using a pretty actress like Robbie for a point about women feeling ugly sometimes. That was it! Other than that it was SUBLIME!

Oppenheimer will diminish with time, while Barbie will only grow into a Wizard of Oz-like classic.

How do I know? I love Nolan and am an expert on the subject of his film and I will tell you straight out that I felt more and thought more after seeing Barbie than I did after seeing Oppenheimer. If my kids and I do a Nolan movie marathon next New Year’s Eve (a tradition), Oppenheimer would not make the cut — seriously. Meanwhile, I consider Barbie perhaps the best toy/comic-translation to screen ever made, and one with a vibe and message that is far more needed today than anything Oppenheimer says.

I mean, good God! Taylor Swift is Time’s Person of the Year, while a “dream team” of women are poised to take the top spots in the EU this year! Meanwhile, Barbie reigns supreme at the global box office, and still Greta doesn’t get a director’s nod and Margot loses out on best actress (on top of producing)?

Pay more attention, Hollywood.

To me, the most thrilling scene of the year was not any bomb going off but America Fererra’s big, hopefully Oscar-winning clip speech about what women face in terms of social expectations and demands.

In my opinion, that ranks up there with George Bailey (Jimmy Steward) finally giving in and kissing Mary Hatch (Donna Reed) on the stairs of her house in It’s a Wonderful Life.

I cry every time I see that Capraesque scene and I am sure I will always cry when I see the clip stream of home-movie scenes of mothers and daughters (drawn from cast and crew) at the end of Barbie (when Billie Eilish’s song plays).

Emotional-connection-wise, there’s no competition. Adapted-screenplay-wise, also no competition (really, none at all, if you dare plow through the frequently dull-as-dishwater Prometheus). Speaking-to-the-times-wise, Barbie wins again in our DEI/ESG-challenged world. Use of women … don’t even get me started!

So yeah, a bit disappointed for both me and my four daughters. I gotta go with Ryan Gosling on this one.

Hollywood should have aimed higher. With no noms for Greta and Margot, it’s clear Oppenheimer’s grimness will be celebrated, replete with all sort of stupid, wrong-headed speeches about end-of-the-world threats represented by or suggested in, this serious work.

But frankly, I though Barbie was the more serious work — and by far more brave in its ambition. You want to talk about fixing our world and it ain’t about scrapping nuclear weapons or stopping the AI-killer-robot apocalypse. It is far more about correcting gender imbalances across the board: politically, economically, socially — you name it.

Hollywood is patting itself on the back, as always, with its Oscars. They just picked the wrong subject to celebrate.