‘What’s the correct viewing order for Barbenheimer?’ is the wrong question

We now know where Greta Gerwig's Barbie Land would be located in the real world – and science says it wouldn't be California.

In 2018, an interview with Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan went viral — possibly because it was the first time he’d ever appeared relatable. In that conversation, he said his children sometimes jokingly call him Reynolds Woodcock, after the aloof, reserved protagonist of Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread. Though Nolan’s scripts often feature signature, repeated (and often mocked) tropes, including time manipulation, dead spouses, and protagonists who face complex moral decisions, he injects very little of his own personality into his movies. Characters like Leonardo DiCaprio’s troubled team leader in Inception and Robert Pattinson’s equally troubled handler in Tenet are clearly styled after Nolan himself. But viewers rarely come away from Nolan movies with a greater understanding of his worldview, at least compared to the way directors like Martin Scorsese or Quentin Tarantino put their personalities on screen in every movie they make.

A little way into the movie Gran Turismo, the unlikely brand extension of Sony’s sim racing games accidentally satirizes itself. “This whole thing is a marketing extravaganza!” excitable auto executive Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom) shouts at salty racing coach Jack Salter (David Harbour). They’re aboard a helicopter wheeling above a racetrack, where Salter’s students in the GT Academy — a real-life program intended to turn players of Sony’s Gran Turismo games into actual racing drivers — are being put through their paces. The helicopter is an absurd bit of theater for the TV cameras, and Salter knows it. But he’s powerless to resist the marketing apparatus around him.

Barbie has now made $1 billion at the box office – and there's no sequel on the horizon. Neither writer-director Greta Gerwig nor her co-writer (and real-life partner) Noah Baumbach has a contract for Barbie 2, but that doesn't mean the studio hasn't tried to convince Gerwig. 

Every character in Greta Gerwig’s Barbieis perfectly crafted perfection. The dolls — Stereotypical Barbie, Beach Ken, and dorky Allan, among others — steal the spotlight, but Gerwig considers her human characters, the ones who give these toys ideas and conflicts, too. There’s the goofy Mattel CEO (Will Ferrell) and abrasive teenager Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt).

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Christopher Nolan loves the big screen. Oppenheimeris proving, once again, that it loves him right back. But long before anyone had actually seen Nolan’s fantastic biopic, the director and his fans alike were talking about its biggest (literally) selling point: IMAX 70mm film projection.

Even before I got to the theater, I saw the pink.

Christopher Nolan seemingly included a horrifying detail in Florence Pugh’s Oppenheimer scenes. The actor plays Jean Tatlock in the movie, who was J. Robert Oppenheimer’s (Cillian Murphy) partner before his marriage to Kitty Oppenheimer (Emily Blunt). 

Christopher Nolan said it himself: Watching his movie Oppenheimerwill basically ruin your life, and might even make you feel like you’re being blown up. If Nolan fans really want that kind of overwhelming experience, they likely want to watch the film in Nolan’s preferred format. His biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who spearheaded the development of the atomic bomb, asks the audience to stare the destroyer of worlds right in the face, and Nolan thinks the best way to do that is in 70mm IMAX film — or as some die-hards call it, “true IMAX.”

The upcoming Fallout TV show has seen another leak, as we get a look at the world of the Bethesda RPG game including Vault-Tec, retro-futuristic cars and suits, and some taped-up guns. If you wanted to see more Fallout, we’ve got you covered.

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is finally upon us, and audiences love it. The comedy starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as the eponymous doll and her maybe-boyfriend Ken has made big money at the box office, with audiences and critics both effusively praising the film’s extravagant production design and pitch-perfect soundtrack alongside Robbie’s and Gosling’s sensational performances.