There are a lot of people talking about lessons lately when it comes to movies. Specifically, what we’ve seen from the combined box office strength of both Barbie (a movie that’s now made over a billion dollars) and Oppenheimer. There are the right lessons. Oh, then there are those wrong lessons. And who or what is going to learn a lesson. And if it will be one of those aforementioned right lessons or wrong lessons. Lessons! Wading through all the lessons, the conventional wisdom of “right lessons” seems to be somewhere along the side of more original films by great filmmakers. And, I guess, technically, those labels could be used for both Barbie and Oppenheimer, though, you know, Barbie isn’t exactly a brand new character but, for the sake of all this, sure. The wrong lessons seem to fall into the category of making clones of both movies or more sequels and doubling down on IP. Though, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that if there’s any lesson to be taken from the success of both Barbie and Oppenheimer, it’s that there is no lesson.
Last week I saw Meg 2: The Trench at a theater on the Lower East Side that I had only been to once before in my life. (But one I’ll never forget: Seeing an early screening of A Quiet Place Part II there on March 5, 2020. The next movie I’d see in a theater of any kind would be May 6, 2021.) As I was in the lobby, waiting to see Jason Statham do battle with a massive prehistoric shark (again), a woman came into the theater by herself wearing a bedazzled “Barbenheimer” t-shirt. She stopped near a Barbie poster, took a selfie, then went on her way. For whatever reason, this knocked me out of my “movie bubble” a bit. No matter what profession you’re in, when it comes to something that involves that profession, you’re only going to come to think of it in terms from that profession. That it must be something that can be controlled or harnessed by the forces of the companies that make this product. That customers for this product are telling something to those companies with their wallets. But, what if they’re not? I started thinking about this from outside the movie bubble.
Remember being “Iced”? If you don’t remember (oh, and lucky you, by the way), back in 2010, basically on command, someone would hand an unsuspecting person a Smirnoff Ice. The person now in possession of the Smirnoff Ice had to kneel and drink the whole thing. Pictures and videos of someone being iced would then be posted on social media. This caused a big spike in people buying Smirnoff Ice. This is what’s happening with Barbie and Oppenheimer. It’s become a cool thing to do on social media and it just happens, this time, to involve movies. Sometimes it does! Like when people started dressing up in suits to see Minions: The Rise of Gru. But it’s too unpredictable and almost impossible to replicate. It’s like trying to predict the phenomenon of planking. (Ken would no doubt be good at planking. And Icing, actually.) Or when people were dumping buckets of cold water over their heads for charity. Chasing trends rarely works out.
I’m sure every liquor company had meetings on how they could replicate “being iced.” I can see, say, a suit at Mike’s Hard Lemonade being like, “Hey, what if instead of being Iced, we tell people they should be Miked instead!” And I’m sure this was met with a lot of pleased executives who all went to work on this project that of course never happened. I promise every nonprofit had meetings about how they, too, could create their own version of the ice bucket challenge. “Wouldn’t it be great if our charity went viral?” Yes, that certainly would be great. But it didn’t happen. And the thing is, most people who work at studios know this. They know the combination of these two movies became a social media sensation and there’s no real way to replicate that. But that doesn’t mean they won’t get orders from some executive who doesn’t understand the randomness of the trends that become popular on social media. Someone, right now, is being told, “Make it happen again” fully knowing that it’s impossible. Like videos of the Harlem Shake, people will eventually find something new. There will be no “Strays Turismo” coming later this month.
Have you ever had a tweet (I’m sorry, an X) in mind you just know will take off, but then you post it (“that’s gold!”) and it gets maybe 15 likes and dies a humiliating death, while something fairly benign that you post later actually does go viral? (To this day, one of my most popular tweets was a picture of a Han Solo bookmark I got off eBay, mailed inside a DVD case for Halle Berry’s Catwoman. No clue why.) My point is that what’s happening right now is almost impossible to actually manufacture. And that’s not to even imply either of these movies wouldn’t have done well on their own without the added plus of becoming a social media phenomenon. And both of these movies being actually good and getting great reviews probably did help extend what’s happening. But people who never go to the movies are going to the movies right now because they want to be part of an online event. With this specific phenomenon, there really aren’t any lessons. It’s like trying to explain why planking was such a huge deal that it became an entire cold open for an episode of The Office. If you love that people are going back to theaters in droves to see Barbie and Oppenheimer, just be happy this time it doesn’t involve having to chug a bottle of a citrus-flavored malt beverage.
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