Without getting into the politics of it all, no one can deny that the COVID lockdowns changed things in many aspects of our lives, and by “many aspects,” I mean movies. Streaming services like Netflix and Disney+ were already ascendant, but the inability of fans to go to movie theaters to watch new films drove movies earmarked for theaters right to digital, and for many people, there’s been no looking back. In fact, as theaters everywhere are struggling, it’s becoming a cause for celebration when ANY movie convinces audiences to put down the remote and drive to the theater. Last year’s golden calf was the long-gestating and often-delayed Top Gun: Maverick, a movie any cinemagoer could be forgiven for dismissing as a cheap money grab, but which wound up garnering both audience and critical acclaim. In fact, no less a personage than Steven Spielberg made a video for Tom Cruise thanking him for “saving Hollywood’s ass.”

But it’s been a minute since Top Gun, and this summer’s “blockbuster” season has proven to be anything but. Tentpole movies have collapsed as families choose to skip the theater and wait for streaming, as the erratic behavior of certain stars turn off audiences, and as people in a dismal economy look for excuses to cut corners. To put it simply, movies need their ass saved again already.

Is it possible that this salvation may come in the unlikely team-up of Robert Oppenheimer and Barbara Millicent Roberts?

Let’s pretend for a minute that you know nothing about movies so I can explain “counter programming” to you. This is when one studio, network, or content provider puts out some form of content (a movie, a TV show, a licensed breakfast cereal) and their competitor – realizing they are unlikely to sway the audience for that work – instead schedule a work intended to appeal to a totally different audience at the same time. It’s the reason they do things like the Puppy Bowl on Super Bowl Sunday, or why Vegans hold a Sproutfest every time McDonald’s brings back the McRib.

While counter programming is a normal business practice and happens all the time, every so often the two properties are so diametrically opposed to one another that they become oddly, bafflingly, intrinsically intertwined. Hence the Barbenheimer phenomenon. Universal Studios scheduled the release of Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s grim film about the creation of the atomic bomb, for July 21st, which the more astute among you will recognize as being today. Warner Bros. looked at this and thought, “You know what? Ain’t nobody who goes to see Oppenheimer is gonna be interested in Greta Gerwig’s surrealist comedy Barbie adaptation. Let’s do it on the same day.”

(There is also a theory that Warner Bros. may have chosen the date intentionally to stick it to Nolan, who – ironically – left the studio over frustrations with how they were treating their films in terms of theatrical versus streaming presentation, and jumped to Universal. I can neither confirm nor deny these rumors, but I bring them up now before some smarty-pants does so in the comments.)

On the surface, these films could not possibly be more different. One is a harrowing, bleak story about a chilling technology that, if placed in the wrong hands, has the potential to end all life on Earth, and the other stars Cillian Murphy. And once the release dates were announced, people on the internet did what people on the internet always do and tried to turn it into a stupid pissing contest. The question, as presented, became one of “Which movie are YOU going to see?” There is a loud and moronic contingent of social media who views literally every interaction as an opportunity to rank something as better than something else, to transform the entire world into a competition, and who are incapable of drawing joy from anything unless it means something else is being declared a failure. The French, with their beautiful and elegant command of language, have a word that perfectly describes people like this: buttwads. 

But to everyone’s surprise, something glorious happened. Rather than drawing lines in the sand and choosing one film over the other, the internet as a whole looked Les Buttwads directly in the eye and said, “Why not both?”

It’s only a mild exaggeration to say that “Barbenheimer” has become a an actual movement. People are making memes, t-shirts, and posters mashing the two films together, sharing them online, and building an unlikely but delightfully wholesome community. Perhaps most importantly, people are also buying tickets. Gerwig and Barbie herself, Margot Robbie, have shared a picture of their tickets to see Oppenheimer, and Cillian Murphy has said he absolutely intends to see Barbie in the theater, encouraging people to do both films in the same day, adding, “Spend a whole day in the cinema — what’s better than that?” 

Most interesting to me, though, is that AMC Theaters has announced that over 40,000 of their “Stubs” members have bought tickets for both movies. Rather than being a question of which movie you’re going to see, the question has become which one do you see first. (The consensus, by the way, seems to be that you go with Oppenheimer first, then see Barbie as a sort of emotional therapy.) 

I couldn’t agree more with what Murphy said. I’ve spoken before about how much I love the experience of going to the movies, and every time I see a story about theaters being in trouble it gets me anxious. (Don’t feel too special, Movies, “anxious” is my default mode. They recently redesigned the box for Velveeta Shells and Cheese and I’m struggling with it.) Something like this, though, is an EVENT. It’s something that makes people WANT to go to a movie theater. This is EXACTLY the kind of double feature I would have done back in the days before I had a five-year-old child and limited babysitting options. Both movies, independent of one another, looked interesting. This phenomenon has made it look like so. Much. Fun.

And ultimately, it’s fun that has to save movie theaters. Barbenheimer won’t do it alone, it would be naive to really believe that it could, but finding ways to make going to the movies FUN again ABSOLUTELY WILL. Turn movies into EVENTS, meaning an experience, rather than “something that costs $50 before you even get to the concession stand.” Have costume contests or trivia nights. Make theater exclusive giveaways and collectibles. Don’t just show us a clip of Nicole Kidman thanking us for choosing to go to a theater, give us a REASON TO MAKE THAT CHOICE, something that can’t be duplicated by a streamer. 

The best movie experiences of my life have all revolved around events. When Avengers: Infinity War came out, I saw it at a special screening hosted by my local comic shop. Everyone got a poster, a comic grab bag, and a lapel pin of the Infinity Gauntlet, which was cool, but most importantly you were seeing the film with a packed room full of like-minded people. When Batman and Robin came out…well, the movie was dismal. But I’ll never forget how the theater had a temporary art installation in the lobby shared by a local collector who spent decades commissioning artwork of Batman from the greatest artists in comics. There were interpretations of the Dark Knight by everyone from legends like Neal Adams and George Perez to wacky contributors like Sergio Aragones. As much as I hated that movie, I loved that mini-event.

Hey, studios. I know you all want theaters to survive. So do I. So this is what you do:

Step 1: Pay your damn writers and artists what they deserve and kill the AI debacle so you can get back to making things.

Step 2: Make good movies.

Step 3: Look at what the fans have done for Barbenheimer WITHOUT your help, and find ways to make going to a theater fun again. 

Sure, it’ll cost a little money to do so, but how much is it going to cost – both monetarily and culturally – if the entire movie theater experience collapses and disappears forever?

Come back some other time and I’ll tell you how to fix streaming. Spoiler: it involves paying your writers and actors what they deserve.

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His current writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, a new episode of which is available every Wednesday on Amazon’s Kindle Vella platform. He’s sadly probably going to have to wait for both Barbie and Oppenheimer to hit VOD before he can do the double feature, so nobody spoil them for him.