Men Angry About ‘Barbie’ but Loving ‘Oppenheimer’ Are Missing the Point of Both

It’s easy to look at Barbie and Oppenheimer on paper and think they have nothing in common. Now, after the success that was Barbenheimer opening weekend, it has been made clear that these movies actually pair quite well. Their themes are not that different from each other. What ends up being an interesting look into film criticism and how people approach movies is that there are certain people online who seem to hate the message of Barbie but are praising Christopher Nolan’s work on Oppenheimer.

Sure, it isn’t cut and dried. I haven’t seen a man outright saying, “Barbie sucks, Oppenheimer rules,” but it is the pervasive idea that they should see Oppenheimer and not Barbie that says a lot. There’s been a sea of guys on Twitter saying they were “happy” they didn’t go to Barbie but instead went to Nolan’s tale of man’s fragile ego, which is what is fascinating to me as a film viewer. When you break down both movies, it is very much just about male ego and the effects of that on the world at large.

Barbie is a lot more obvious in its theme. The film highlights how men affect women in the “real world” but also doesn’t shy away from what happens when women stifle the men in their lives. Oppenheimer’s theme is a bit different in its approach but is rooted in how men can destroy the lives of others. So, when men log on to social media to declare their allegiance to Oppenheimer and their hatred of Barbie, it shows a bigger problem with the same message and whether or not you’re willing to hear it from a man vs. a woman.

It’s a red flag when a woman says the same thing and people have a problem with it

Yes, Barbie as a film is “girly” given the IP it is leveraging. I wouldn’t necessarily consider Oppenheimer to be more “male centric” for its audience, given the subject matter, but there are some men in the world who think they love Christopher Nolan more than anyone and need to make it a gendered competition. To me, it’s very telling that Nolan’s film, which says that man’s ego can destroy the world, has the respect of men online, but Barbie, which has Greta Gerwig behind the lens and a similar message, is being raked across the coals. Lots of red flags there.

These movies are very different from each other in tone, but it is their overall message that has similar undertones. Men being receptive to Nolan’s message and not Gerwig’s similar message in Barbie is rooted in sexism, plain and simple, and it requires a complete lack of understanding of the point made by both movies to fall into this “boys vs. girls” trap with them.

(featured image: Universal Pictures/Warner Bros.)