Barbenheimer, for as fun as it was, wasn’t just a fun silly trend. It was a sizable, seismic shift in the history of cinema… I’m being dead serious.
At my very own cineplex, I saw a sixty-year-old woman in her Zimmer frame decked out in her fluorescent shimmery pinks in the same queue as a boy who couldn’t have been more than 15, in a tuxedo T-shirt with a bowler hat. The uniqueness of it all is something I’ve never witnessed in a theatre and fear I never will again.
Sure, we’ve had big moments before. I went dressed as Captain America for my Avengers: Endgame midnight screening, but never before has such a breadth of excitement been so overwhelming it knocked out that familiar sickly-sweet popcorn cinema smell. That’s because, well, EVERYONE was excited… and everyone was included.
Your mom was excited, your mom’s mom was excited. That annoying kid down the street on the tricycle was suddenly interested in cinematography and camera framing. Maybe that’s the power of the Nolan/Gerwig team-up, or maybe it’s just the first time men and women had a cinematic event to look forward to together. A cinematic event where, for the first time, both films were taken seriously and respected… shocker, I know.
Because yes… we’d seen the Barbenheimer formula before. A female, joyful comedy with a serious, dark, and machismo-dense Nolan flick paired together. I’m of course talking about the iconic showdown of summer 2008… MammaKnight… The Dark Mia? OK, maybe it doesn’t quite have the ring of Barbenheimer, but Mamma Mia! and The Dark Knight was a pretty formidable prelude to the summer of ’23. A singing dungaree’d Meryl Streep went up against a caped Christian Bale to pretty sizable results.
Mamma Mia!, a female-directed film, thank you very much, made a whopping $610 million dollars at the box office, and the Christopher Nolan-directed The Dark Knight made over a billion dollars. Both were iconic, both legendary in their own right. Yet only one is heralded in the pantheon of great American movies…. Two guesses which one it was.
Yes, The Dark Knight from great auteur Christopher Nolan was heralded as the savior of cinema, famed film critic Roger Ebert framing it as, “one of the finest films ever made.” It was dark, it was brooding, it was full of enough “that’s so me” moments for men to fist pump to and talk about with their boys once the credits rolled. It even includes one of the most iconic fridging of a female love interest in film history… so basically the perfect cocktail, or should I say beer chug, to be the perfect “serious” film.
Now listen, I know Mamma Mia! was not intended to be the Oscar bait film of the century. Once Christine Baranski was singing about being a cougar on the beach, the gold may have just slipped out of reach. However, it was equally as successful in achieving its desired effect as The Dark Knight… but the gatekeepers of cinema at the time did not want to give it its flowers for achieving that.
Mamma Mia! was a punchline. A scoff and an eye roll at anyone who dared to clap along and appreciate the magic of what director Phyllida Lloyd was able to achieve. The same Roger Ebert wrote in his review of Mamma Mia!, “The plot is a clothesline on which to hang the songs; the movie doesn’t much sparkle when nobody is singing or dancing, but that’s rarely.” The reference of clotheslines in a review squarely framed Mamma Mia! as nothing more than a sexist punchline and the definition of a “chick flick,” despite far superseding that narrowly minded label.
Mamma Mia! was the dancing queen of the box office, truly, the highest-grossing female-directed film ever (until Wonder Woman surpassed it in 2017). Also, to have a cast largely over 60 pirouetting around a Greek island be the fifth highest-grossing movie of 2008 is no small feat. But still, it was to be giggled at from behind the prestige sunglasses of Hollywood and, frankly, men.
The most disheartening part is that the supposed triumph of The Dark Knight, critically, resulted in a very clear MammaKnight (no, still doesn’t work) takeaway: audiences yearn for machismo.
50% Moustache
Right, maybe I’m giving Christopher Nolan too much credit. Machismo has been around since men with faces 50% taken up by mustaches were riding around on horseback. Heck, Nolan didn’t even directly influence the superhero takeover; Tobey Maguire was not bursting blood vessels hanging upside down for years to be disrespected like that. But in the superhero renaissance pie, Nolan did bake in a rather healthy dosing of brooding masculinity that became an essential ingredient to all future blockbusters in the genre.
It’s no coincidence that the same year that Christian Bale was moping about Gotham City for the second time, Iron Man was birthed into the MCU with that same playboy gritty machismo. Both Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark share in their reclusive, playboy attitudes, with a frivolous relationship to the women in their lives… I mean… very much 50% mustache, machismo movie stars to me.
Sure, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow showed up as a strong support in 2010’s Iron Man 2, and Anne Hathaway two years later in The Dark Knight Rises… but that’s all they were… assists. A clear sign that women weren’t just being relegated to supporting roles… they were being pushed out of cinemas altogether.
2017’s Wonder Woman and 2019’s Captain Marvel dared to challenge this norm, but they were seen as “happy accidents” rather than a shifting tide toward including women in this new regime. Both of their sequels severely underperformed at the box office and came in dead last in their respective franchises’ box office earnings signalling a clear message being that Carol Danvers and Diana Prince could play at the boys’ table, but wouldn’t be treated with the same respect.
But this uncovers a deeper problem in that whilst these movies were female-led and by no means indulged in the male gaze, they were not able to capture that same joyous, female-empowering narratives that encouraged women to the multiplexes as Mamma Mia! once did. They were unfortunately just women playing in a men’s box office sandbox.
The Plastic Doll Who Saved It All
Then in 2023, a blonde-haired, high-heeled plastic woman came strutting into theaters and gave female audiences the first film to be excited for since Meryl Streep hung up her dungarees in ’08. Ok, maybe that’s a bit extreme. Pitch Perfect, The Hunger Games and other female-led films of the 10’s got women excited, for sure, but the deafening screams of young girls meeting Margot Robbie at premiere’s was something that would power up Monsters Incorporated. Yes, finally there was a film that had the same fervent tenor of pitch and excitement as The Dark Knight or Spiderman: No Way Home. A worthy opponent to Nolan’s Oppenheimer so formidable that it was able to reverse the fortunes of Mamma Knight! With the female centric film victorious this time
Greta Gerwig achieved the seemingly unachievable, centering women’s joy and movie-going habits, whilst also encouraging the Nolan-led machismo moviegoers to join hand in hand in Barbie-strutting into the cinema.
The best part of it all is that Barbie didn’t just kick down the door and close it behind her. Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie left a roadmap for Hollywood to permanently welcome women back to the theaters. Adaptations like It Ends With Us and The Housemaid were not just big financial successes but created big MOMENTS like the superhero films before. Women flocked to the theaters in their florals, their Barbie pinks, or with their big group of girlfriends to affirm that this is the type of film that they want to see more of, that they’ve been deprived of for so long.
This phenomenon doesn’t just end with Blake Lively and Sydney Sweeney though. Margot Robbie is reheating her nachos, as the kids say, and creating another event in this week’s Wuthering Heights. From the natural appeal Margot Robbie has with women since Barbie, to the razor-hot inclusion of a more popular-than-ever Jacob Elordi and the inclusion of the pop sensation Charli XCX on the soundtrack. Now, THIS, THIS is the cocktail of excellence that is sure to become another event.
Then to top off an already incredible run, here comes Meryl Streep again, replacing her dungarees with Gucci fur coats to deliver another iconic, joyful, female-friendly flick with The Devil Wears Prada 2. The perfect feather in the cap of cementing that female-led films aimed at female audiences are here to stay.
What’s most assuring of all is that this doesn’t feel like a fluke, or women playing in the men’s sandbox, but a true turning, confident turning point. These films are not being marketed or presented to audiences as secondary, but the big cinematic events they deserve to be.
Simply put… We’re so back!
Sweeney, Streep, and Seyfried (Oh My!)
It feels different this time though, no? Well, because this time there’s a pattern, and a pattern that is being recognized by Hollywood for its success. With the Icarus demise of the superhero genre, we’ve all recognized that female audiences have been stuck on the sidelines for too long, and now… Mr. Hollywood, they’re ready for their close-up!
Barbie’s legacy, beyond spawning Oscar wins, an iconic soundtrack, and some even more iconic performances, is that it made the powers that be question themselves. It’s no longer “will women show up?” but rather, a more affirmative, “women will show up if we recognize their tastes.”
So now, twelve years on from the success of Amanda Seyfried and Meryl Streep (two pivotal turning points in this renaissance, thank you very much), Hollywood has righted a very serious wrong. Women’s stories, as Ariana and Cynthia so adeptly put it, can hold space (in the multiplex), but more than that, they are not just be treated as just “chick flicks” anymore… but a valuable part of Hollywood securing its longtime future.
— Darragh Evans