What to make of Barbenheimer?

Hopefully what happened on July 21, 2023, becomes the norm, and double-bill at cinemas is truly reborn

The only director I can think of, lately, to make a smooth transition from advertising to commercial cinema, would probably be R Balki. He was formerly chairman with Lowe Lintas.

Being a man of marketing himself, a key issue he notices with the film industry, he tells me, is they regurgitate conventional methods to advertise movies. Fully aware that it’s been failing for so long. Surely, that same thing can’t produce a success still?

Take his own last release, Balki tells me, during a conversation, before a live audience. The film Chup (2022) was about a serial-killer, mass murdering movie critics. 

Going by its theme, Balki suggested hosting preview screenings, well before release, for regular public to watch the film in cinemas, for free—just the way press shows are held. 

But why would you give away so many free tickets to a potential audience—it’s a loss, no? To create a unique buzz, what else. What would it cost, anyway? About Rs 15 lakh. “That’s how much I’d spend on a hoarding in Bandra,” his producer said, and rightly went ahead.

The point isn’t whether the film Chup benefited from it hugely, or became a huge hit. The biggest challenge is reaching out to people (distracted by personal screens), to even inform them about a new (theatrical) release, Balki said.

Balki, of course, is a director in Bollywood. That operates at a minor fraction of the scale of Hollywood, which is run by five studios: Warner, Paramount, Universal, Disney, Sony.  Those, in turn, produce movies for the world, allowing for unmatched budgets. 

What’s Hollywood been up to over the past, almost two decades? They first went about placing their own superstar system, with a built-in box-office draw, into a near coma. Hardly investing in certain kinda films, let alone newer stars, the same way (as heroes of the ’90s). Then?

They put all their might behind massive spectacles—from sci-fi, disaster porn, replicable action series (Bourne, Bond, M:I), to super-heroes, & multiple superheroes, for the price of a movie ticket. 

Progressively gravitating towards sequels, spin-offs, crossovers, instead of ideas. 

As if franchises are the only captive audience to care for. But there are so many audiences, and growable niches—if only one applied original ways to capture them, still? 

Where did Christopher Nolan, a filmmaker with relatively dense, untested ideas, yet scale/money to access global, mass markets, figure in all of this? As an anomaly on the giant IMAX. 

Decidedly a geek/critic’s director, with commercial appeal. The former reputation can be burdening, surely. I still haven’t watched Nolan’s Tenet (2020), perennially frightened that it might feel like a textbook/task. Got no love for school. Of course, my bad, and will catch it, eventually. 

Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a biopic. And that just felt more mentally reassuring—enough to enter sozzled, the second time on. The only thing Indians won’t get about Oppenheimer is the huge scroll, in all-caps, ‘Smoking Kills’, each time someone lights up a cigarette on screen. 

That’s India’s health ministry repeatedly defiling a piece of precious art, as a result. In a movie about dropping the atom bomb, that killed hundreds of lakhs. 

How about a warning scroll, ‘Humans Kill’, throughout? No smoking in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, of course. It starts instead with a full-fat Baskin Robbins labelled as ‘dessert partner’! 

Nolan has traditionally released his films with Warner. Reportedly, they had a spat, during the pandemic, once the Hollywood studio announced it would go direct-to-streaming, with the 17 films on its slate then. Nolan switched over to Universal. 

Barbie was a Warner release, on the same date as Nolan’s film (July 21, 2023). Hence, the talk of clash and rivalry. Which is a notion that belongs more to the single-screen era, when prime-time in a theatre could only be cornered by one film.

Oppenheimer vs Barbie seems more like (the marketing term) ‘counterprogramming’ in a multiplex—catering to a type of demographic that may not care as much for the other type of film. Venn diagram between them, nearing two separate circles. 

I watched Nolan’s sensory experience, surely, with a bunch of people expecting the cinema to blow off with the dropping of A-bomb—maybe some were disappointed that there is not a shot of Hiroshima, Nagasaki. 

I watched Oscar-nominated Gerwig’s pic, with a hall full of females, adorably dressed for Instagram, in ‘Barbie pink’, which is equally ironic for the film’s point. 

That’s about the real world that ‘Barbie doll’ slips into—to realise how women are still getting treated like the ‘Stereotypical Barbie’, while boyfriend Ken discovers pleasures of patriarchy!

Neither is a franchise film, nor spectacle for spectacle’s sake. Both are inventive, creative leaps of faith, with nothing in common, otherwise, to earn the portmanteau, Barbenheimer! 

Whether by design or sheer marketing genius, something happened with Reels, GIFs, videos, memes, cooler talk, to spread the word that it’s not one film, over the other. 

You gotta watch both—which one, first? Peer pressure = pop-culture. I felt the idea of the double-bill getting reborn—watching pictures back-to-back, that those of my vintage always did. Just hope it becomes the norm. So much for cinemas getting outta fashion. Some might wanna look at newer ways to get blokes in, first.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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