The world’s most highly anticipated box office cage match of 2023 is set to kick off in a week and a half, but at this point, it’s safe to say that Barbie has the upper hand on Oppenheimer. Awards season may spell a different story, but between Oppenheimer‘s R-rating and Barbie‘s eye-popping, mysterious premise that will no doubt mutate into great word-of-mouth, Greta Gerwig’s fantasy comedy has this one in the bag.
That’s assuming, of course, that the public doesn’t take this unforgivable betrayal by one Margot Robbie to heart; in an interview with ComicBook, the face of Barbie herself admitted that her childhood was entirely void of any trace of the iconic doll, immediately calling her worthiness as Barbie‘s eponymous lead into question.
I called my mom before this press tour, and I was like, ‘Are there any pictures of me, like with Barbie, playing with Barbie, opening a Barbie on Christmas or anything?’ And she was like, ‘I couldn’t get you to wear a dress!’ And I was like, ‘That’s not helpful.’ So I don’t have a photo like that, but I love how many people have shown me things like that.
What’s real? What isn’t? How can we possibly know anymore? In any case, Robbie’s newfound status as a Barbie fraud just may give Oppenheimer more of an edge in their duel, as there’s no way the Barbie faithful will stand for being lied to like this. Then again, we have our doubts that Cillian Murphy has much of a background in theoretical physics, so perhaps the two films are exactly as even on that front as we’d now expect.
For now, then, we’ll let Robbie’s inexperience with Barbie dolls slide, but if we find out that Ryan Gosling never played with Ken dolls at any point in his life, a boycott will surely be in order.
Barbie flutters into theaters on July 21.