Christopher Nolan tends to make beautiful IMAX films like Inception or The Dark Knight, and he supposedly put in a lot of effort to simulate a nuclear blast using physical effects and not CG by using massive amounts of dynamite, so people are excited.
Barbie movie is made by Greta Gerwig and the trailer made it out to be a smart satire of the Barbie concept with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken. Also they used so much pink paint for the sets that it caused a nationwide shortage of that color (of that one brand only).
Both have a lot of hype and are expected to be top movies of the summer. They happen to overlap on the same opening weekend, which is amusing since they’re such different movies.
Oppenheimer is expected to be really good, mainly because it's made by Christopher Nolan. Barbie is releasing on the same day, so it probably gained some popularity off of that.
Lol I don’t think Barbie gained popularity from Oppenheimer. A lot of people are just excited for it, it’s getting advertised a lot lately and it has some crazy aesthetics/vibes.
have you seen the trailers? barbie actually looks good as shit - the first teaser was a shot for shot recreation of 2001: A Space Odyssey trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6vPuIMAOlA
I don't think you quite understand the hold on culture barbie has.
Though the two being such polar opposites of each other in vibe and tone likely did boost each other cause of them coming out at the same time.
Why is that sad? The Barbie movie looks clever and well made. For all we know, it could be great and Oppenheimer turns out to be a dud. Highly unlikely, but then again Tenet wasn't that great IMO (but at least it looked cool).