In its own way, Barbenheimer is the best Best Picture contender to come around in a while. The two films combined have ignited and awakened the public in a way we’ve not felt in a long while. It feels good to share in something with so many people because both of these movies seem to have something for everyone. Oppenheimer is important, while Barbie is fun.
They used to say about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, he gave her class and she gave him sex. Probably the same could be said about Barbenheimer. It worked because of the traditional pairing of masculine and feminine (IMO). I said once on this site, and was roundly mocked in the comments, that people will now start to crave more traditional kinds of movies and I think that’s true. Both Barbie and Oppenheimer seem, to me, traditional in their optics at least. Very feminine woman, and a masculine story on Oppenheimer (even if calling him traditionally masculine is a stretch).
The marketing for Barbie was expensive but has paid of in a big way, as Barbie is showing no signs of slowing down. It has now entered the TikTok phase and that means there will be repeat viewers. It’s a movement by now, and we haven’t seen a movie really do that since back in the early days of Jaws and Star Wars. I personally find that kind of exciting. Like Barbie, Jaws had the same kind of EVERYWHERE style of marketing so that people were familiar with it long before it opened:
But none of that would have mattered if the film itself hadn’t been such a surprise. For fans of Greta Gerwig it likely wasn’t a surprise but to people like me who always thought that she was overpraised (as in, women can’t make really great movies so let’s grade them on a curve) will be impressed by her work here, at least I was. The movie wins several Oscars walking in the door, like Production Design, Costumes, Hair & Makeup. It probably wins Best Song for Billie Eilish, or if they run the Ken song which I hope they do. So what would prevent it from becoming the first film to really sweep in the era of the expanded ballot?
Before we get to the negatives, let’s look at the positives. The first of these is that Greta Gerwig directed it. With two Best Picture nominees under her belt and zero Oscar wins, the wunderkind that Gerwig has become seems, by now, overdue for a win. I mean, Sian Heder has an Oscar and Greta Gerwig doesn’t. So I’m betting there will be enthusiasm for her the same way there was for Top Gun Maverick last year, as the movie that “saved Hollywood.”
There are also above the line nominations likely, certainly for Ryan Gosling and America Ferrera but also perhaps for Margot Robbie. Are we looking at a SAG ensemble win here? Are we looking at a PGA or DGA win for Gerwig? Maybe.
Now, the negatives. There is no getting around the core of the film: it’s based on a toy. The Barbie franchise. It doesn’t matter how good the movie is, and it is — I think — very good, at the end of the day it’s a glorified product placement. Maybe the nominations would be Kenough.
I would personally think that Oppenheimer should win (of the two of them) because it is far more accomplished across the board but I know the Academy by now and I know what they want from their awards — hint: it isn’t to find the “best” of anything. Not anymore.
There is also the matter of the film’s no holds barred kick in the balls. Remember how Promising Young Woman was a “kick them in the balls” kind of movie? Well, so is Barbie. With a smile, perhaps. Dressed up in pretty pink. But in the end, it’s very much a movie that celebrates girl power and diminishes “the patriarchy.” On the other hand, and to the movie’s credit, it does make the Kens the scene stealers. Ryan Gosling practically walks away with the movie and that dance number the Kens do has made me a Gerwig fan for life, it’s so good – there is empathy there for the Kens. So I don’t know that it’s entirely so easy to condemn as such a binary…I do like that it has sparked debate and so many people have wildly differing views on it. That makes it a zeitgeist movie and that means it could very easily win.
The reason Barbie could win also has to do with the new members the Academy has invited in since 2016. The old rules simply don’t apply.
From 2016-2019 they invited a large number of new members based mostly on gender and skin color, but they also invited a disproportionate number of international voters. The categories they landed in range from acting to score to directing, but all of them vote on Best Picture, and the rest of the categories when it comes to choosing winners.
That’s likely why last year’s record number of wins for Everything, Everywhere All At Once did not hold in any other year in Oscar’s entire 95 year-old history. They used to only invite people who had accomplished something of note – like a nomination, or a long career in the business. But they had to change their demographics and they had to change them fast so they skipped over that part. That means that the tastes are going to be very different, with many new voters who are outsiders rather than insiders of the film and awards industry.
And last year, same thing, much smaller number:
The past two years, they slowed their membership but there are enough new members to have fundamentally altered the demographic and the tastes of the Academy. They are younger, hipper, and cosmopolitan. You might think that’s good, you might think that’s bad but you can’t deny the reality. Therefore, the painstaking tracking of stats that I do every year probably means nothing. It might be interesting to compare how things have changed but they can’t help predict how people will vote. Following the tastes of, say, the Spirit Award voters or Film Twitter is probably a better indicator of where the race might be headed.
If this group thinks the movie should win, then it will win. They don’t really have the same kind of standards as the “old Academy” might have. Getting 10,000 people to vote for a brilliant but more challenging movie like Oppenheimer is a big ask. This crowd wants to feel GOOD. This crowd wants to feel a united sense of purpose. This crowd wants to make change. This crowd wants to feel “the rapture” of making history. Barbie can do that.
Then again, beware the “scrappy underdog” coming up from the outside. The big movies might have to step aside for a “little” movie. Maybe that movie is Past Lives. Maybe it’s something else we have not yet seen. The Oscar race is fluid, not static. Managing expectations, and surfing the wave of euphoria is how you predict the Oscars now. Barbie seems like it could be too big to ignore, but we’re just getting started. We’ll have to wait and see.
