Barbenheimer was a beautiful thing. We talked a lot about Barbie vs. Oppenheimer in the months leading up to those two summer blockbuster behemoth’s releases, but in the end, the scheduling quirk spawned a mutually beneficial phenomenon that aided the box office performances of both movies and became a cultural milestone of 2023. Movie fans are desperate for another similar situation, then, and for a while there, it looked like we had one in the form of Dune: Part Two vs. The Marvels.
Unfortunately for Warner Bros. and fortunately for Marvel Studios, Barbenheimer 2.0 has been wiped from the slate as the epic sci-fi sequel has been pushed back to next spring amid the ongoing strikes, which leaves The Marvels with a clean shot to dominate the charts this fall, not to mention claiming back IMAX screens after Dune: Part Two initially hogged them all. So, instead of the peaceful ceasefire that Barbie vs. Oppenheimer brought, the Dune and MCU crews are going for each other necks instead.
Following the news of Dune 2‘s delay, the gloves immediately came off as embittered House of Atreides loyalists lashed out at The Marvels. “What a waste of IMAX screens,” one wrote, which naturally did not go without retaliation.
You can’t expect Marvel fans to take that kind of attack lying down.
But the hits kept coming…
And coming…
And yet The Marvels defenders gave as good as they got, with this snarky inversion of an old tweet from when Dune: Part Two originally locked down control of IMAX.
Dune fans seem weirdly insistent that no one’s looking forward to The Marvels, which is a bit of a weird take when Captain Marvel earned over $1 billion worldwide in 2019.
Let’s just agree that there’s toxicity flowing in all directions.
Thinking about it, maybe the reason Barbenheimer turned out to be so wholesome was because neither film was a Marvel or DC flick, as we know that nothing gets people as defensive or critical than superhero cinema. Somehow, the movies about nuclear annihilation and the societal corruption of the patriarchy are less incendiary than films about giant sand-snakes and a glowy Brie Larson punching things.