The Barbenheimer Dichotomy

[@BradsPitts.]

I saw Barbie today in a small venue with only two theaters and could hear a lot of the Oppenheimer soundtrack from the other theater while watching Barbie. Truly peak Barbenheimer

[@jmwilliams88]

One film was a social commentary on the dangers that are unleashed in a world run by men and the other was Oppenheimer. Appreciated the the horse motif that carried across both films though.

[@juliannaagoncillo6090]

Time segments: Barbie (3:17) 🎀 Oppenheimer (12:20) 🌧️ Conclusion (21:21) 🐴

[@niamhl6964]

Great video! I did the whole double feature thing (Oppenheimer first, then Barbie), then a few days later went to see Oppenheimer again. As a gen z person outside of the US, some of the references in Oppenheimer went over my head, and I definitely needed a second viewing to secure my thoughts. I enjoyed both movies (though enjoyed feels like the wrong word for Oppenheimer), and seeing them both in the cinema was definitely the way to go. I think the levels of pure spectacle alone (and the fact they both have polar opposite kinds of spectacle - Barbie being purposefully artificial and Oppenheimer's being intensely authentic feeling) made the movies stand out to me, and I think the experience of going to see them both will stick out in my mind for a long time.

[@conorvansise1872]

Can’t help but disagree about your take on Oppenheimer. Nuclear wars arent analogous. It depends on powerful people in rooms making decisions on behalf of all of humanity, while also depending on implicit public confidence in these authorities. They are motivated by ideological mistrust, which makes it more difficult to build relationships based on diplomacy or trust. They both have a propensity for eradicating people and moving quickly to the worst case circumstances while our heaving indecisive bureaucratic structures trail them in the rear view mirror.

[@michaelandrews117]

I think my least favourite thing about Oppenheimer was the lack of reconciliation of his deeds from a character-driven perspective. Yes he has some spooky hallucinations, but its like Nolan wasn't focused on 'Oppenheimer' as a person, and more 'Oppenheimer' as an event. As ever with Nolan, he really struggles to create emotional engagement with any of these characters, because he instead prefers the people in his films to be vehicles for the plot; devices that stitch one big scene with soaring music to the next. Nolan has demonstrated to me with his last few films that he's no longer interested in writing good characters, but instead wants his films to dabble in spectacle first and foremost. Which is why, like Dunkirk & Tenet, Oppenheimer felt like it was a film with all the scope in the world, but none of the depth of person & place that it desperately needs.

[@2025Productions]

I think Dunkirk is criminally underrated, but good write up.

[@wilsondrayton8490]

I mean if you want to get historically accurate within the character of Oppenheimer, he actually never explicitly apologised for the bomb. He in fact never said anything about how he regretted it publicly which I’m assuming is what Nolan was going for. The closest we get to remorse from the character is his change in views in the meetings with rdj in black and white. He doesn’t want to go ahead with the aec. At this point without yelling it at the audience he feels remorse as he doesn’t want to continue with the production of A-bombs. But that’s just my take with a bit of history sprinkled in.

[@cornpopisabaddude]

I think it would be difficult to emotionally engage with the father of the atomic bomb anyway

[@michaelandrews117]

@@2025Productions I actually like Dunkirk a lot, but I also usually prefer films that have strong characters. It's why I like Dunkirk... But I *love* Insomnia, The Prestige & The Dark Knight. They just leave more of an impression. I think the best way I've seen Nolan described, is that he sees cinema as a science, not as an emotive language.

[@jaimeerindy4573]

Great video. TBH I felt very meh about both of them, but I did like them. Like they both accomplished their goals but I wanted to feel more personally connected with them. Of the two I definitely felt Oppenheimer did a better job with its message, but at the same time I expected that film to nail it. I was prepared for Barbie to sort of flounder with its messaging because, as you say, it's a product first and foremost and it can only go so far.

[@lonellfletcher]

i don't know why everyone jumps on the JFK line. It was a part of the history. It happened and considering JFK's cultural significance later on, it works in showing what was coming in the future from that point.

[@jmalmsten]

I really feel that the best Nolan films are those where he gets out of his own way, so to speak. I think he can direct great things. But he just has a tendency to over explain things simultaneously while he adds distracting complexity. Is it possible to shoot and cut an IMAX epic like a made for MTV montage of closeups of men in rooms? Weaving the narrative back and forth through the years. Yes. Of course you can. But does it serve the story he's telling? Not really. I really think this film work much better as two full length 2 hour features. No intercutting. Just a straight two parter. First, the Manhattan project from the first atom split announcement (him poisoning his teacher msy be "cute" but very much not needed. Especially as he repeats the story verbally anyway) up to the Hiroshima bombing. Part two.... The fallout. Hand writing and directing of it to Sorkin. He would direct the fudge out of that hearing. By doing it like that. Nolan could let both halfs hit fully. As it is. They kind of just distract from each other. Never letting things breath. Never giving the audience a chance to awe in terror of what they witness.

[@rocker00000]

Yeah, Oppenheimer is so weird from a structure and tone standpoint. How much of the unevenness is a result of specific/intentional choices Nolan made vs poor execution? I think this is a case of the total being less than the sum of its great individual parts.

[@djstarsign]

Oppenheimer confirms what I had begun to suspect with Interstellar and Dunkirk: he seems to become more in the weeds about the cinematic experience while given his characters the most elemental depth. And then we’re left with something that while technically good, feels unsatisfying and uneven.

[@cooldog3473]

Great video! I saw both movies yesterday. I definitely enjoyed the Barbie movie more and I think this is at least partly because it knew what it was and what it was saying. Oppenheimer felt like a few different movies playing in between each other. It felt like Matt Damon was in a completely different movie than everyone else; not that he did a bad job, his quips just felt so out of place. I didn't have an issue with the courtroom aspect of it necessarily but it felt like the movie stopped paying attention to his personal guilt once it started focusing on the interrogation. His wife makes the connection clear later, that he let them drag him through the mud because he felt it might be an atonement for his actions, but I didn't FEEL that during the scenes. That scene in the gym where he's speaking to everyone after the bomb was successful though... That almost makes the rest of the movie worth it. That was incredible.

[@mwkwy]

slightly unrelated, but i really would love to see a film adaptation of the green glass sea by ellen klages; i feel like it could serve as a single barbieheimer movie in the sense of synthesizing an exploration of girlhood/femininity/feminism and the development/implications of the manhattan project

[@Diana-tl8pn]

As someone who watched Oppenheimer, I think I enjoyed it more because I didn't watch it as a traditional Biopic. After a while, it felt more like a horror/thriller. For me, Murphy's character was more the medium to perceive and comprehend an important event in human history than the cinematic representation of the real life Oppenheimer. As such, Oppenheimer, in the film is necessary because he is one of the few that was witness to this event and the only who could give this perspective based on his lived experience. Ergo, Character A thinks B because he lived C experience. Therefore, what would be important events in a normal Biopic, result superfluous in Oppenheimer as they give little to the film's perspective on nuclear annihilation and the Bomb. In this way, Oppenheimer's complicated relationships with women have way less importance than his connection to Los Alamos in the overall context of the film. However, I would say that this watching experience of perceiving the film as a horror/thriller with an unreliable narrator POV character had unintentional consequences in the latter part of the film. For me, it became jarring because it was like watching another film altogether. Strauss extreme prejudice to Oppenheimer really comes like the scene/meme in Mean Girls where Regina George says "Why are you obsessed with me?". Although Oppenheimer as Regina and Strauss as Janis comes as pretty ironic in this case. The disconnection between both parts becomes so apparent, Nolan had to add another POV character for the Strauss scenes. In a weird way, I can only compare it to reading Les Miserables for the first time, where the first part crashes with the latter part. In a way, Ehrenreich is the Marius to Murphy's Vanjean. However, Hugo is a more effective and emotionally intelligent storyteller than Nolan in this regard, and the parts form a better whole in Les Miserables than in Oppenheimer. I could attest that I only started to enjoy the latter part of the Oppenheimer as I stopped seeing it as a court case of an actual person. It works better as a commentary and critique of collective memory and moral judgements on historical figures (Oppenheimer), events (The Manhattan Project), and history itself (Contemporary American History and the Cold War). Then again, the characters and their perspectives, even Strauss, work better not in relation to human beings, Oppenheimer, but to the events and their symbolic meaning, the development of Bomb. Hence, at the end, Einstein discussion with Oppenheimer, feels less about Oppenheimer himself and more about human hubris and collective memory about past events.

[@nestorarranz3179]

I agree with you on oppenheimer, im going to watch It again to see if i connect more with It now that i know what its doing. Overall im really happy with both movies existing and existing at the same time. I went with friends ti the double feature and we all enjoyed the whole thing Cinema is back? Yeah

[@smidlem1117]

i'm surprised you didn't mention the wind rises when talking oppenheimer, which in my opinion is the closest analogue we have, and i would actually say shows oppenheimer succeeding even further. i actually felt a profound emotional response from the movie, where the formal structure evolved with the movie and oppenheimer's life, where the first perspective which indulges a lot of romanticisation of oppenheimer is analogous to those who don't think too much about what he did and jump to defense at first. but then later on you get both principal timelines meeting and the moment when they do there's a speech strauss gives where no matter his anti-communist tendencies, he's just so god damn right about oppenheimer as a self-absorbed martyr, and i felt like i was piledriven into the ground. this is a movie built off of the sort of seething contempt and resentment that one can only see from real hope, as nolan must have in science even when he sees awful fucking tragedies and evil like this. in comparison i got nothing from barbie at all ngl. movie felt emotionally vacuous and smug as hell. i'm all for metamodernism as a concept, but the thing with metamodern art is that often if you have any objections to the artist or the material conditions the art was made in the whole thing absolutely falls apart for me, because then the mixed (in)sincerity starts to become really quite intolerable.

[@turost3034]

i still cant really detangle my thoughts on oppenheimer, i enjoyed watching it but afterwards i was left feeling somewhat cold. love the vid, keep em coming

[@kathleentatman330]

Fun fact if you take a shot every time he says pastiche you'll die

[@losisd3ad]

god youre so good at making video essays. grear video. i loved Oppenheimer tho

[@StNick119]

That's very interesting, I didn't get the impression that Truman was being depicted as evil, I read it as more of sympathising with him for "having to make a difficult choice" (i.e. doing a mass murder war crime that he didn't have to do). I'm tempted to do a rewatch at some point to look for what you described.

[@MissileGT]

Personally, Truman dismissing Oppenheimer's suggestion to return the place to the Native Americans and continue to use it to develop weapons without a second thought was enough to consider him a prick.

[@BumpySoup]

these are great takes that are communicated really well and I appreciate you getting that asexual line in there because it it good and funny. thanks taylor :)

[@santinosartoris]

Drinking game: take a shot every time you hear “pastiche”

[@noname52]

As the years go by, you look more and more like Kubrick

[@lowkee3]

Largely agree. I think I disliked Oppenheimer for the same reasons you did, but just more-so. I do not have a good faith reading of the super-hero-esque stuff. I can't imagine it was done satirically, and Nolan's films are filled with the same kind of unintentionally so-clunky-it's-funny dialogue and reveals, it's just there are usually more spinning hotel rooms to distract you from it. I was surprised that the politics were as good as they were though. I think the trinity test would have been more impressive if it weren't for Lynch's take on that in Twin Peaks the Return supplanting it for me. Barbie was very enjoyable, consistently funny and showed a lot of restraint in terms of not ranting at the audience. I found the second wave feminism stuff to be it's most disturbing aspects. "Mothers stand still so their daughters can look back and see how far they have come". Like, wtf? I thought we worked this shit out 40 years ago and were past this point, at least in terms of theory.

[@jacobmacdonagh4070]

I also found his use of IMAX much more distracting as it would switch aspect ratios really frequently with imax shots not lasting very long, on top of the colour switching which was all distracting on my first viewing. Compared to his other films where the IMAX format was only used for extended action sequences or, in the case of Dunkirk, pretty much the whole thing

[@marnilicious3353]

3hrs of build up and the reveal is it's a marvel movie 😭

[@geobrad7]

When you overlay text notes, you leave them up for far too little time. Very good, interesting analysis though. I always really enjoy your videos. Thank you.

[@helixier6629]

Pandora put a lot of Mattel toys in her box after emptying it, allegedly.

[@shenanigans96]

I feel like I’m the only person on the Internet who doesn’t have a strong opinion about either of these movies 😅

[@magraretsbane6274]

Amen

[@dances_with_incels]

Oppenheimer was not good at all. I would've rather seen Barbie in all it's woke glory.

[@davismorgan99]

@@dances_with_incelswoke us a great word because it really shortens down the time to say “film illiterate”

[@z.a.7846]

You're not alone

[@tacosarethebest7377]

@@dances_with_incelsi disagree on woke. the movie felt very simple and ironically, really regressive and says not much of anything about patriarchy that we already don’t know. fun movie, boring concepts that becomes what it critiques. woke is just being thrown around because people dont like seeing women talk about being a women.

[@han-fb9xm]

unrelated but i would love to hear your thoughts on top boy. netflix just released a third season.

[@Danyullson]

Great way of putting Oppenheimer or I just related to it a lot when u say u liked it but u were able to shrug it off. The film didn’t really stick with me after like some of his previous films.

[@hajile404]

I'm surprised you didn't comment on the incredibly awkward and out of place nude scenes in Oppenheimer. The sex scene where Oppenheimer reads his famous quote from the book about Vishnu was by far the worst part of the film and I'm shocked it wasn't cut.

[@2025Productions]

Just about any sex scene in any tv show or movie has people claiming similar takes, saying they're pointless and unnecessary. While that might be true for some, at some point I feel like some people just want their media to be 100% sexless. I wasn't too hot on Oppenhiemer either, but it's a personal story about him and specifically his affair with Tatlock, so showing them being intimate isn't really out of place; not to mention one of those scenes was important to the scene where his wife is overcome thinking of his infidelity.

[@hajile404]

@@2025Productions I think it doesn't work on multiple levels. The relationship isn't developped enough for the sex to feel intimate and the choice to have him read that quote during sex is just really strange. I think the only effective sex scene in the film is the vision of Oppenheimer and Tatlock having sex in the deposition room. Its a shocking visual moment and it has two very different meanings for both Oppenheimer and Kitty. The other scenes were not needed and add nothing to the film in my opinion.

[@2025Productions]

@@hajile404 That's valid. i'm sure there's some subtext Nolan was going for making his iconic quote take place during the first sex scene, I'm just not sure though.

[@esock2001]

@@2025ProductionsI think the sex scenes work great in the film. In the video, Taylor claims there wasn’t enough time to show how deep their relationship was, and I think Nolan deciding to insert sex/nude scenes ONLY for Oppy & Tatlock speaks volumes to their relationship, especially when looking at the second scene when they’re speaking while naked. For people claiming that Nolan is heavy handed, it’s wild that they can’t see the very obvious metaphor of nudity as intimacy and vulnerability. It’s like Oppy was only ever comfortable and intimate with Tatlock, which is why her death rattled him so strongly.

[@2025Productions]

@@esock2001Yeah especially with them sitting across from each other naked, that was obviously them exposing themselves in more ways then physical, and I you could say the same for their other scene which now that i think about it exactly what Nolan was going for. Would've Oppy translated his 'i am become death' quote if it wasn't Tatlock asking for him to translate it? Maybe not.

[@Jezzascmezza]

The sound for the last few minutes of this video was a bit all over the place. Was that an intentional reference to Nolan's sound mixing when it comes to dialogue?

[@esock2001]

It sounds like you wanted Oppenheimer to be a different film than what it actually was, like you didn’t meet it where it’s at and kept waiting for it to do what you wanted it to.

[@johnnygillam3975]

I mean, this is kind of a blanket response that could be applied to any negative criticism. Ultimately the critiques here are of Nolan’s writing, sequencing and editing choices, which I agree are unfocused and in some places downright poor.

[@JustinGone]

Damn all those words to say you though it was mid

[@matt00794]

I see Oppenheimer more as a misunderstood genius who's art was corrupted by others. Like how Nolan sees Warner brothers ruining tenet by releasing it on streaming during a global pandemic

[@nalday2534]

tells more about you than it does about him

[@41dn]

Damn, spoilers for Oppenheimer guess i have to skip this one/j

[@mistymoonshine897]

wow, maybe one day someone will actually make the movie that you think you saw.

[@celebalert5616]

oh boy I can't wait to find out which one is fascism and which one is anti-fascism

[@ndsmith7119]

Beyond the Nolan-isms we are trying to be ok with (dialogue vs soundtrack; making every moment a cinematic event) Oppenheimer mainly suffers from moral structure. A guy builds the bomb, risks world destruction, succeeds and then is participant to a racist genocide of a people ready to surrender at a whim of the powerful's Honeymoon...holy what?!! And then, after showing, or not showing, the actual flesh burning terror consequence by using Op to turn away from the images...Nolan expects us to give a fruzzle when Openheimer is...what? I can't remember what status is withdrawn from him by the end. And Nolan films and scores it to make it feel the big consequence of what has just happened???? Shameful. And easily fixed. Edit clips from the 'court rooms' to those showing him developing those relationships. Parallel their natural feelings and their performance in the room. But leave have the climax the Whitehouse honeymoon conversation, into the news of the nuclear bomb dropping...show the consequences...then his lecture where the foot stamping reveals itself and keep the final Einstein reveal. There will be a fan cut of Oppenheimer and that will be it.

[@Stainedglasswindowz]

Bro continues to consistently have terrible takes 🔥

[@nalday2534]

let's see your takes then

[@Stainedglasswindowz]

@@nalday2534 my take is that his takes are embarrassingly bad

[@nalday2534]

@@Stainedglasswindowz you're just an immature edgelord who's too insecure to have a real conversation

[@Stainedglasswindowz]

@@nalday2534 and you’re a sensitive meatrider. I win

[@Sandstorm3313]

@@nalday2534Taylor isn’t gonna let you hit lil bro. His takes are bad.