Barbie & Oppenheimer Both certified fresh on rotten tomatoes when Barbenheimer starts -TGN

Barbie And Oppenheimer both have reached a Rotten Tomatoes milestone ahead of their simultaneous July 21 release. Barbie is a comedy starring Margot Robbie as the titular doll who travels to the real world with her devoted boyfriend Ken (Ryan Gosling). Oppenheimeron the other hand, is a suspenseful historical thriller about J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the Manhattan Project and the invention of the atomic bomb.

On Rotten tomatoesboth Barbie to film Oppenheimer are officially Certified Fresh. At the moment of writing, Barbie has claimed a strong positive score of 88 percent while Oppenheimer performed even better at 92 percent. While their scores may still rise or fall slightly as more reviews are added over the weekend, the number of critics who weighed in is statistically significant enough to officially capture the freshness of the films.

Why Barbenheimer is so important

The release weekend of Barbie And Oppenheimer, collectively referred to as “Barbenheimer,” has become the focus of a spate of recent memes. Typically, the memes celebrate how colorful and joyful Barbie feels diametrically opposed to the stiff and unsaturated Oppenheimer. The fact that both films come from celebrated directors (Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan, respectively) and feature ensemble casts full of A-listers has already led moviegoers to buy tickets for both as a double feature.

Besides the very different tones of the films, one of the reasons the Barbenheimer weekend has attracted so much attention is the fact that it is unique in the pandemic box office era. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down theaters and productions around the world in early 2020, but box office recovery is slow. Due to production delays and shutdowns, there have been fewer tentpole blockbusters over the past three years, leading to a more stable drop that usually limits weekends to one major blockbuster apiece.

Related: Barbie vs. Oppenheimer: 10 Extra Pairs of Iconic Movies That Opened on the Same Day (And Who Won)

Barbie And Oppenheimer premiering on the same weekend is a sign that theatrical distribution is showing signs of returning to normal in some ways. In the pre-pandemic era, it was not unusual for two major films in different genres to premiere on the same day (May 2019 saw Rocketman, MonAnd Godzilla: King of the Monsters all open on the same day). But after all this time, the fact that both films share a weekend and receive both critical and commercial acclaim is part of what fuels the intense excitement surrounding Barbenheimer.

Source: Rotten tomatoes

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