The biggest weekend foes of summer 2023 continued their drag-out fight into Oscar nominations this morning, with Universal’s Christopher Nolan 3-hour physicist drama, Oppenheimer, beating Warner Bros.’ highest grossing movie ever, Barbie, 13 to 8 in Oscar nominations.
Never before in Oscar history have two summer blockbusters that opened on the same weekend, shown up at the Oscars in the Best Picture category.
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Oppenheimer scored noms for Best Picture, Best Director (Christopher Nolan), Best Actor (Cillian Murphy), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Emily Blunt), Best Supporting Actor (Robert Downey Jr), Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Original Score, Hair & Makeup, Production Design, Sound and Adapted Screenplay.
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Barbie counted noms for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Ryan Gosling), Best Supporting Actress (America Ferrara), Costume Design, Two Original Song noms — “I’m Just Ken” and Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell’s “What Was I Made For?”, Production Design and Adapted Screenplay.
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That said, there have been years when two big summer movies have duked it out for Best Picture. Those years were 1995 when Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 went up against Mel Gibson’s Braveheart (the latter won). 2009 counted three big summer movies which were up for Best Pic at the Oscars: Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, District 9, and Pixar’s Up — that’s when the Academy expanded the category to 10 titles. 2010 saw Pixar’s Toy Story 3 and Nolan’s Inception. Last year saw summer tentpoles Elvis and Top Gun: Maverick as two of the top 10 Best Picture noms; A24’s spring arthouse hit Everything, Everywhere All at Once won.
That said, Barbie didn’t have the second most amount of noms this morning behind Oppenheimer. Ahead of the feature take of the Mattel doll was Searchlight’s Poor Things with 11 Oscar noms and Apple Original Films’ Killers of the Flower Moon with 10.
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Barbie is wildly popular for a reason: it’s a visually stunning coming-of-age story with heart that manages to also be very funny and playful. The Oscars are about “cinematic excellence,” and it meets the mark. Movies don’t have to be dark, brooding dramas to deserve recognition.
If Barbie is the best we can do then the motion picture industry is in serious trouble. Barbie? Really? How sad.
Actually, Barbie was pretty funny. It was a good movie.
I’m not sure “good movie” is the bar for best picture.
So True!
Seriously… Barbie for best picture?
If you didn’t realize the Oscars are a joke, you should now
Barbenheimer was never about a rivalry between the two films, the phenomenon was about the unlikely pairing of a dark historical film against the bright pink world of Barbie. The whole thing was about watching both films back to back, and cast and crew for both were encouraging fans to do both (as much as they could amid the strikes, at least).
No one ever doubted that Barbie would win the box office against Oppenheimer, but the phenomenon helped push both films to unexpected box office highs