I saw Barbenheimer the weekend it came out. Oppie is overrated as shit. I liked it but Barbie was 3x better. It’s apparent in the way women are written and the fact that Greta, Margot and Barbie are being snubbed for Nolan is a disgrace.
Oppie isn’t even his best work and it sure as shit doesn’t deserve a dozen fucking Oscar noms.
Whatever criticisms you have of Barbie being white/pop feminism are absolutely tossed aside when fucking OPPENHEIMER is the one winning shit. Cmon.
They’re giving noms to Poor Things instead of it as the “feminist” film cuz they’re cowards scared of women succeeding behind the camera in addition to in front of it and in the box office, and they’re horny teens horned up by Emma Stone and enraged Margot didn’t do that.
Edit- And before you come at me, I saw Oppie on proper film. Don’t tell me I didn’t get it or didn’t have a good experience or whatever. I liked it. But Barbie was better.
It's 2024 and a supposedly radical left wing website near you is discussing worthy/unworthy oscars
Oh I’m sorry I didn’t realize people were trying to form the n+1th international here
And before you come at me, I saw Oppie on proper film. Don’t tell me I didn’t get it or didn’t have a good experience or whatever. I liked it.
I am coming at you for liking it.
The movie was one hour of magical realism physics and wishy-washy centrist political bullshit, one hour of "Y'all know about how my boy Julie Bob O. got mad pussy?", and one hour of the worst West Wing episode you've ever seen. They could have cut that turd in half and it would have still been too long.
The acting was mid. The history was fictional. The cinematography was amateurish. The sound design just made my ears bleed.
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Not only was Barbie better, but Barbie was actually a good fucking movie. Had I known what I was getting in for I'd have just gone back and watched the highlight reels from "A Beautiful Mind" and taken a refund on the balance of my time.
oppenheimer was dogshit that leaned into the idiotic "you don't need to learn stinky math to know physics, you just have to hear the music" bullshit in like three separate scenes and I was over it
His job in the gulag should be sound editing. He stays there until he gets it right.
The sound design just made my ears bleed.
I liked the sound design specifically for this - the soundscape really supported oppenheimer's moral conflict about his work by sounding conflicted and anxiety inducing.
Yeah that’s fair lol. I haven’t seen it since Barbenheimer and my opinion might be similar to yours if I rewatch it. It didn’t need to be 3hrs long and I felt like a fool falling for the “gotta see it in 70mm imax” bs. Half of it is in a small white room for fucks sake.
Barbie was genuinely a good time and then people i was with and i talked for hours after it ended. And the atmosphere at the cinema that entire weekend was magical. Everyone wearing pink, saying “hi Barbie”…that’s real movie magic.
I felt like a fool falling for the “gotta see it in 70mm imax” bs.
In so far as they were going for this very immersive experience, I don't think it was BS on its face. Yes, sitting in that chair I practically vibrated with that opening scene. When they were launching the Trinity tests and he was hallucinating Hiroshima and they were doing the weird "Lets have Cillian Murphy nut in the middle of a board room" scene, it was much more pervasive an experience than if I was watching it on a 7" airplane screen with earbuds.
But the content of the movie itself was dogshit. They just kinda slapped me around with the aesthetics when there was nothing underneath.
I actually had the misfortune of doing the 5D movie experience to watch the Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves movie and I had the opposite experience. Amazing film, great acting, excellent screenplay, totally underrated action/comedy film. But the movie theater was ruining the experience because I felt like it was constantly trying to give me a concussion. Would have loved to see that in 70mm IMAX, on the condition that the seats stayed still and a nozzle wasn't randomly spraying shit at me during action sequences.
Barbie was genuinely a good time and then people i was with and i talked for hours after it ended. And the atmosphere at the cinema that entire weekend was magical. Everyone wearing pink, saying “hi Barbie”…that’s real movie magic.
They walked the tightrope between Oscar Bait historical setpiece and genuinely compelling dramady. Lots of good musical numbers, everyone left in a good mood, shameless excuse to cosplay. Literally everything a good movie should be.
I'm not even mad if the lesson the studios take from this is to do a dozen 80s-era action figure throw back films, so long as they get folks as talented as Gerwig, Robbie, and Gosling in it.
D&D was so good! I didn’t see it in theatres because WoTC, the company behind D&D, made some terrible decisions in the months leading up to the movie and I didn’t want to support them. But I did see it later on and I absolutely loved it.
Give me one hour of magic realism physics and one hour of "Y'all know about how my boy Julie Bob O. got mad pussy" anytime. Best 2 hours of movies last year.
The final hour didnt really do it for me to be fair.
I’m not going to argue feminism here. You could argue Barbie and slutty Halloween dresses and fucking bikinis are pro-feminism or anti-feminism till the sun envelopes the earth.
But here’s what I know.
Nearly every woman I know was super excited to see the film. They couldn’t stop talking about it in a way they didn’t about other movies. We were planning out what to wear and if it would match and there was a genuine sense of excitement and camaraderie there even before the movie came out.
Then, on the day, fucking everyone wore pink. Everyone said “hi Barbie” in the theatre. During the film, the entire crowd, which was filled with women in a way I found so comforting and reassuring, laughed and whooped along with the movie.
Afterwards too we couldn’t stop buzzing about it. Anyone we met on the street who was wearing pink? Hi Barbie!
Was it basic? Yes. Was its feminism and (lack of ) criticism of capitalism a bit safe? Of course. But literally everyone I went with knew that going in. We are all leftists of different flavours and we still enjoyed the moment and the communal sense the movie was able to create in a community that often lacks such spaces in cinema.
And we fucking felt that lack when we went and saw Oppie next. The difference was fucking stark. I may not have even caught on it had I not seen Barbie first but I’m glad I did. Watching Barbie and Oppenheimer back to back forces you to see the way women are portrayed on screen by women and by other men. People talk about the “Male Gaze” but this is how you really experience it. It’s not just women’s bodies being looked at.
No, I could feel the camera in Oppenheimer look at its women, especially during certain scenes, like a predator would on a prey. It made me feel disgusted and unsafe.
It’s hard to even explain it properly.
Anyways, what I’m trying to say - there’s a lot more to life, and there’s a lot more to leftism, than just debating theory and whether or not something is good or bad. It’s important to cultivate a sense of community and recognize the things that do it and why they are able to do it. Of course Mattel is a horrible company. Everyone knows it. That doesn’t mean the sense of community we felt during Barbie was not genuine. You’ve got to be able to understand that if you want to take your politics into the real world.
I’ve read your replies to mine and other’s comments in the thread. I’m sorry for coming across as defensive and attacking.
Even if I think Barbie does have redeeming parts and is not as bad as you make it out to be, the point you raised here is extremely important and one I hadn’t thought of. So thanks for bringing it up.
Much love and solidarity.
barbie is a CHILDREN's movie,
This is one bit I'd definitely disagree on - Barbie is a children's brand, but this specific movie is directed squarely at adults (at the very least, older teens who are over Barbie). The movie was meant to recapture part of an older market that has outgrown the dolls, but could be convinced to buy for their kids or, with declining birth rates limiting future profits, to buy other merchandise.
Making Mattel bumbling fools allows them to acknowledge previous controversies without taking responsibility by pretending everything was just a big mistake by people trying to do their best.So did Deadpool - I'm not saying no kids were taken to see it, but it wasn't made for them.
You're right about Barbie (I haven't seen Oppenheimer). The jokes were good but even an uncritical reading of its message fails. It needed to articulate a real theory of change through collective action, not vague "trick the men somehow", but it couldn't be revolutionary because it was at its core an ad for Mattel toys (and GM electric vehicles lol). I was honestly amazed to hear arguments about how it's impossible for women to meet the contradictory feminine ideal applied in genuine defense of a DOLL. Extremely clever, pernicious co-optation. Punching left with the wokescold caricature girl to attack radical feminism seals the deal for me. Pink bloc and Hi Barbies! are important; the movie intends to bring "feminism" to everyone by having it mean nothing (and by enormous advertising spend).
However we need to put this in the site header carousel messages right away:
I probably am in the top 20% of grass touchers on this site
they added it !!!!! uncritical support to peoples revolutionary site tagline mods
I probably am in the top 20% of grass touchers on this site.
this should be a tagline
how anyone could call themselves a leftist and think that this toy ad is feminist is beyond me.
Woman in real life literally told me “this is the first movie I’ve watched that makes me feel seen”
I guess i just read it as a “wow gen z is so real #slay” bit joking about kids roasting adults, I can understand reading it that way though and it makes more sense to
with that context it makes sense you would hate it, there isn’t really any actual intersectional solidarity or analysis in the film or anything. I’m sorry for invalidating you like that
I saw Ghostbusters. I am thinking Barbie was probbaly the same. It was just refreshing to see a movie where women are treated as humans. It is so rare that it is wild and refreshing to see. Especially with an audience of women who are enjoying that for the first time in living memory.
Films don't need to have a certain political valence or whatever to be good, but I have a hard to imaging what kind of leftist is enjoying Barbie, a film of shrill liberal Détournement. And, boring didacticism aside, it was very ugly and outside of Ryan Gosling (who carried) I didn't find it very fun or funny. (I loved Greta's Little Women adaptation and enjoyed Lady Bird, so def disappointed.)
But I agree, Oppenheimer was bad, and the amount of people holding it out as "serious, thematic filmmaking" is disappointing (but maybe not surprising).
That first paragraph should be a new site tagline
But I agree, Oppenheimer was bad, and the amount of people holding it out as "serious, thematic filmmaking" is disappointing (but maybe not surprising).
Couldn't agree more. Not really sure what people saying its a "masterpiece" are on about
ah yes i love the barbie movie where one himbo is able to singlehandedly convince an entire matriarchy into giving up power to men. the most libbed up second-wave feminist slop i've ever seen
edit: also what really bugs me about this movie is that it sets up the plot arc of "Stereotype Barbie is malfunctioning because her real-world owner is depressed about capitalism/patriarchy" and does nothing to actually resolve that.
Of course they can't resolve that, just like the plot line involving the CEO falls by the wayside. You can feel the warmth of the sun but you can never look at it
yup... "oh isn't it funny how all the people in charge of mattel are white men (hey just like real life!) but also the people in charge of mattel are good actually? anyways lets just leave it there no criticism just vibes"
And like the worst that comes their way is that they're made to seem a tad bumbling and foolish at times. Which, no, it's all their fault, all of it. The better ending would've been for the little girl to realize that Barbie herself isn't a fascist, she's just an unwilling arbiter of evil capitalists who sell a constrained, hobbling, heteronormative vision of femininity to women in order to make big bucks
one himbo is able to singlehandedly convince an entire matriarchy into giving up power to men
Finally, I see someone comment on this! The messaging on that was so weird. The Barie's love patriarchy actually? What is even the problem then? They love patriarchy because all they know is matriarchy? wtf?
If you want to get down to the nitty gritty of it, Barbieland doe not exist independently as everything that happens in Barbieland is a reflection of what happens to the dolls the real world, so there is no real "immune system" there to stop the misogynistic ideas from spreading like an infection once it was brought back by Ken from the real world.
This is the justification given by the film in a single line, but I find the analogy highly unsatisfying. Sure, Ken accepts patriarchy when exposed, it benefits him. The Barbies accept it because... it was a strange new idea?
Surely lack of exposure to the idea of a large societal shift increases resistance to it, rather than causes uncritical acceptance?
Are we to expect that men who live in patriarchy, unexposed to feminist matriarchy just instantly accept the idea when exposed to it by feminists? Surely not.
Here is the key point of the movie that I think you are missing: the Barbies and Kens (and Alan) are NOT human beings, but IDEAS made into shapes of human beings that funhouse mirrors the thoughts and conditions of the real world. People can choose to accept ideas, but ideas can't choose, which is why when the patriarchal ideas was brought back by Beach Ken from the real world, the entirety of Barbieland physically twisted itself to match these ideas.
You could say that the whole movie was about Stereotypical Barbie's transition from an ideal as a "Barbie" to a real independent human being, capable of making choices on her own.
That's a good explanation. It doesn't quite work for me but that's my fault.
The Barie's love patriarchy actually? What is even the problem then?
u have to understand that they only love patriarchy because they were "brainwashed" even though the only thing Ken does (according to the movie) is utilize the power of persuasion and the marketplace of ideas to convince the president, the supreme court, and every other authority figure in the Barbie Matriarchy that being ogled at is better than being in charge.
Wake me up when Super Mario Bros 2 gets GAME OF THE YEAR at the Oscars.
I thought Barbie was underwhelming. You have Dua Lipa in there and you don't even mention Hoxha once? C'mon
When the map of the real world was shown and they used the 9 dash line for China, they should've also had greater Albania in there so they couldn't show the movie in Serbia
Silly Hexbear, you're telling me that somebody out there actually made a Barbie movie? Then how come I've never heard of it?
Barbie won the popular vote if that makes you feel better.
another january, another unwarranted argument where we pretend that the oscars matter
i enjoyed both movies, but found the cynicism of the toy ad distasteful.
I didn't like oppenheimer. I thought barbie was fun enough for the watch, while keeping my head empty, but yeah its definitely cynical and not feminist in the slightest.
I couldn't care less who they give oscars to. Shitty movies and performances no one remembers get oscars all the time, so why should this year be any different?
Absolutely. To me its worse than mid because every moment is so self important. I felt like it was screaming "this is le serious movie! for le serious adult gentlesirs!"
I don't care about some idiot savants and even less about an asshole vindictive senator. Give me more communist spies!
Give me more communist spies!
Totally! That moment when they reveal that one of the scientists had been a spy for the USSR, i was like "damn, can we see more of that guy!" I couldn't remember which of the 80 physists they introduced us to for like 2 seconds a piece he was, but
Is this a bit? Barbie has 8 nominations including best picture and best adapted screenplay lol.
sorry again
