If you take a stroll into any online space populated by an emerging cinema-head (pejorative), you’ll often hear some grotesquely pessimistic soundbyte about the death of cinema. And look, I get it; the pandemic wasn’t particularly kind to movie theaters, and seeing any amount of anti-creative glut make it to the big screen is wickedly disheartening.
But folks, cinema is far from dead; the fact that the Barbenheimer phenomenon took off the way it did is a testament to that. And while there’s something to be said about seeing a movie for the movie rather than seeing it for the memes or the FOMO that it dangles over your head, the boundless success of movies like Barbie and Oppenheimer are cultural boons whose value should not be discounted.
With that being said, key to the charm and mileage of Barbenheimer was how organic the whole event was. There was no studio push, and there were no actors urging this particular double-feature; Barbenheimer was entirely a product of the zeitgeist and the internet’s dedication to the subsequent memes, and the self-sufficient joy of it all was evident.
That’s why no one is well and truly responding to any of the Barbenheimer-coded trends that have popped up in the months since. September of that same year saw a woefully misguided push for Saw Patrol (comprised of a Saw X and Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie double-feature), and now Q4 of this year is coming at us with the likes of Glicked (Gladiator II and Wicked), Babyratu (A24’s erotic thriller Babygirl and Robert Eggers’ gothic horror tentpole Nosferatu), and Wolfington (Wolf Man and Paddington in Peru).
But let’s break this down a bit. Of these four Barbenheimer imitators, only half of them can claim to work, and that half admittedly have particularly strong claims. But, it should be noted right up front that even the best double-feature memes fundamentally cannot compete with the organic roots of Barbenheimer.
This is because Barbenheimer set a precedent that will always be considered the gold standard of these double-feature memes. Even if Glicked, for example, had been coined by someone who was completely unaware of the Barbenheimer phenomenon, the comparison would be unavoidable, thereby negating the novelty of Glicked as an event and losing a large portion of the thrust it would need to get anywhere near Barbenheimer’s level.
But here’s the other thing; it wasn’t Barbie and Oppenheimer‘s differences that made them such a good pairing, but rather the similarities within those heavy contrasts. Both are major blockbusters from powerhouse filmmakers with loads of talent and backing behind them, and both films are rooted in existential anxiety experienced by the eponymous protagonist of either picture. And despite Barbie being technically based on an IP, it’s an original, standalone film in every way that matters, and despite Oppenheimer‘s R-rating, it’s not so viscerally graphic that it would alienate too many people. Both films, then, are perfect as complete and utter protagonists of cinema; that’s key.
Saw Patrol and Wolfington have no such merits together. Both are merely instances of films that happen to have a same-day release, and happen to contrast with each other in cheeky and ironic ways. Wolfington lacks the creative star power and inter-film chemistry (Paddington in Peru only works precisely because of its all-ages, wholesome sincerity, which an association with a Blumhouse horror flick like Wolf Man would undermine), and Saw Patrol doubles down on both of those things while also occupying two different extremes of filmmaking (a very young children’s film, and a horrifying gorefest) that simply can’t anchor audiences.
Glicked and Babyratu do not have these problems. Babyratu’s clunky name loses it a few points, as does Babygirl‘s lack of blockbuster energy, but intimate and unnerving power dynamics are the name of the game for both Babygirl and Nosferatu; it just so happens that one has a CEO Nicole Kidman romancing a handsome young intern, and one has a legendary vampire Bill Skarsgård obsessing over a haunted young woman.
Glicked, meanwhile, is an out-and-out worthy successor to Barbenheimer, with only its unavoidably stiff engineering among its faults. Both Gladiator II and Wicked are massive blockbusters with powerhouse credits that, on paper, couldn’t be more different; one is a fantasy musical set in the bubbly Land of Oz, the other is a historical action film set amidst the dusty industrialism of ancient Rome. In practice, though, they’re one in the same, as the corresponding heroes battle against the oppressive and corrupt systems that rule the land. Moreover, Gladiator II‘s status as a sequel and Wicked‘s status as an adaptation puts it on equal but separate footing in the realm of creativity, and equal-but-separate is the crux of good double-features.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you properly honor the Barbenheimer phenomenon going forward; not by grabbing the first too goofily incompatible films that happen to fall on the same release date, but by finding the same-day releases who would find kinship and respect in one another at the behest of their shared values, artistic prestige, and confidence to stylistically contrast one another.
Gladiator II and Wicked hack, slash, glide, and incant their way into cinemas on Nov. 27. Babygirl and Nosferatu, meanwhile, will chillingly court us all on Christmas Day.