QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: Does Oppenheimer’s Golden Globes win herald a troubling return to Hollywood’s macho ‘dad movie’ days?
It may be Oppenheimer’s race to lose. After a compelling five-win sweep of the Golden Globes on Sunday, Christopher Nolan’s propulsive three-hour drama has ossified as the frontrunner for this year’s awards season, pipping competitors such as Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro and colourful doll-based comedy Barbie. If 2024 is indeed to be Oppenheimer’s year, the film would be a deserving victor. It’s a meaty, intelligent and wonderfully crafted piece of work – a career high for Nolan and its lead Cillian Murphy, who plays atomic bomb creator J Robert Oppenheimer. And yet, there’s something about the idea of an Oppenheimer win that feels strangely backwards-facing.
Oppenheimer, so the argument goes, is a film for men. Perhaps intensified by its strange and ubiquitous juxtaposition with the women-led Barbie, Nolan’s film has been scrutinised extensively through the lens of gender. No matter how reductive this assertion may be – that Nolan’s film is simply “one for the boys” – it’s hard to deny there’s a degree of truth to it.
Oppenheimer’s plot, about genius physicists racing for time to build a powerful weapon before the Axis possibly complete theirs hardly seems like the stuff of ’80s and ‘90s era buddy cop movies and most action movies. But those films made money, and made superstars who can be remembered with just one name – such as Arnold, Sly, Harrison. In the post-pandemic world, shouldn’t Hollywood be concentrating on what puts butts in seats?
But, you know what else put butts in seats?
Don't be an ass. This is just opening weekend, and it out-earned Oppenheimer by a lot. As it did in total B.O.
"Siri, why newspapers are dying?" https://t.co/izwc8gzvxc pic.twitter.com/KE1Ayw17ms
— Joel Engel (@joelengel) January 25, 2024
Which of course makes perfect sense; linking to a Tweet from July which exclaimed, “The Patriarchy is back bros,” Glenn wrote, “In Trying To Make Barbie A Feminist Hero, They Made Ken A Chad Idol. “Call it the Gordon Gekko effect, where the villain gets the most memorable lines. Or maybe the Colonel Jessup effect.”
But in any case, the ‘80s could survive with both Top Gun and antiwar films such as Platoon and Cruise’s own Born on the Fourth of July. The ’90s Hollywood box office did just fine with both the feminist-oriented Thelma & Louise, and all those macho buddy cop and action movies. In an effort to regain its footing, why can’t the industry produce multiple styles of films for a varied audience in the not-so-roaring 2020s?