To bet against Christopher Nolan is to bet against the house – which is to lose like a fool – and yet he still came into summer movie season looking like something of an underdog.
In the great Barbenheimer clash of 23, Mattel’s smiley plastic plaything had a handful of built-in advantages: it was a peppy, colorful, feel-good comedy featuring one of the brightest movie stars of her generation as a pop-culture fixture already known and loved by the general public. Its rival, Oppenheimer, started to sound like a tough sell in comparison, a historical drama about the crushing depths of all-American guilt with a three-hour runtime, long stretches of black-and-white photography, a not-quite-name-brand leading man in Cillian Murphy, and an R rating restricting its audience. And while it’s true that Greta Gerwig’s foot-tall feminist icon may have won the battle, having already crossed the billion-dollar mark in its still-building take, they’ve both won the war.
