Even a Dog in a Pink Bandanna Did Barbenheimer

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Warner Brothers, Universal Pictures

At the corner of 68th Street and Broadway, Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One is serving only one purpose: being my decoy ticket as I enter the world of Barbenheimer. After a successful opening weekend of his own, Tom Cruise just might be flopping in the face of these unlikely twin movies, officially born on July 21, that are ushering in a palpably exciting cinematic moment. Before arriving, I had a stray thought that maybe Barbenheimer exists only in the hearts of the terminally online, hyped up by media people such as myself but not really going to make as much noise IRL. Like, fine, the National Association of Theatre Owners is projecting that more than 200,000 moviegoers will do the double feature, per the Wrap, but that doesn’t mean much to someone who hasn’t taken a math class since 12th grade. Cruise may be under the impression that he’s cinema’s one true savior, brought to this earth to base-jump off cliffs and scale the Burj Khalifa to atone for our sins and sell seats to people who don’t really go to the movies anymore. But today, based on the neon-pink evidence at Manhattan’s AMC Lincoln Square, moviegoers don’t want to be saved. They want to be Barbenheimed.

It’s July 20, around 5:45 p.m., and everyone’s here for Greta Gerwig’s pink psychedelics or Christopher Nolan’s movie about a man in a porkpie hat. Kathleen Mukamal is doing the double feature alone. “I’m the same age as Barbie, you know,” she explains to me, wearing head-to-toe pink. “They say she was born months after me. I’m late in ’58. She’s ’59.” Mukamal’s fit matches the bandanna worn by her slayful Yorkshire terrier, Ruby, who’s attending the screening with her owner. It’s Oppenheimer first and then Barbie for her “because it was just what was available,” she says. “I got the front seat in each row. You know, the last seats that were available.”

Ruby and her owner, Kathleen Mukamal. Photo: Zoe Guy

While loitering in the lobby, I’m confronted by an invasion of every shade of pink — fuchsia and coral and bubblegum and ballet slipper — all marching in lockstep up the escalators leading to the second and third floors. The sea of pink makes me happy I wore my magenta short-sleeved button-down, even if the sweat I emitted on the MTA’s saunalike platform is so bad that it’s gonna rudely manipulate me into finally taking the 100 percent silk shirt to the dry cleaner, a task I’ve managed to dodge since stealing it from my sister. If I hadn’t dressed for the occasion, I would simply look bitter and unpatriotic in the face of everyone else who adhered to the dress code. No one’s really dressing for Oppenheimer, as far as I can tell — except for the pair of men in blue shirts and briefcases who are running across the place at great speed, late for their screening, I suppose — but a third of the nearly two dozen people I speak with later are here for both. Maybe my pink is a force field against anyone who’s just seeing Oppenheimer, unclear, but not a soul I speak to tells me they’re here solely for a screening of that film. In the idle din at the moment, I overhear someone ask, “When’s the last time you had fun at the movies?” I can see this is the experience Cruise is probably horny for.

I join the long line of people waiting to get inside the theater until I do a double take after seeing a young couple in matching Barbenheimer T-shirts. One shirt is pink and the other is black, but both share graphics with the movies in question and have Barbenheimer emblazoned in the Barbie font … or is it the Oppenheimer font? I get their attention. “We would love to talk, but we’re late for our Barbie showing,” the man says before I can get a good look. Being late is not an option, knowing that moviegoers paid upwards of $40 for the double feature tonight, not including their outfits, popcorn, and a drink.

Taking in the scene, you don’t need to be a nuclear physicist to see that Barbie is winning this theater’s marketing battle and is even doing enough heavy lifting for Oppenheimer to benefit. There’s a massive Barbie ad on the escalator landing. A Barbie step-and-repeat with a matching pink carpet. A life-size Barbie-doll box. Each photo opportunity offers moviegoers the chance to take commemorative pictures with their dates holding pink Barbie Corvettes and dolls purchased at the concession stand (a $64.99 bundle) in one hand and free Barbie posters in the other. Though there’s nothing Oppenheimer-themed save for a poster in the dark first-floor lobby, a few people I chat with think Barbie’s 18-month marketing strategy has had a Reaganomics trickle-down effect on why they’re here for the bomb movie, too. “I am here to see Barbenheimer,” Matt tells me, wearing his ultrahigh platform heels and baby-pink Barbie tank while waiting to take pics in one of the photo ops. Why? “Well, Barbie ’cause Barbie’s everything, and Oppenheimer ’cause I need to know what the hype’s for.” Willyan Ferreira, for their part, adds that “pink is a very powerful color, and so is an atomic bomb.” A pink-and-blue virus has taken root here.

Chris, wearing a DayGlo Ken outfit, also thinks the Barbenheimer alliance is a joint slay. “I actually see it as a truce,” he says. His partner, Omar, sports yet another baby-pink tank, accessorized with a fuchsia bandanna around his neck. Chris continues, “I think anything that encourages people to go to the movies, like, great, do more double giant releases to get people back.” He’s optimistic about how this model could work in cinema’s favor: “I feel like this is the first time since the pandemic people are really flooding the movie theaters. I was laughing, saying I feel like the staff today is going to be like, ‘I don’t even remember how to do this!’”

After a bit of a dustup with an usher who’s confused about why I bought a ticket for a movie I’m not seeing, I’m standing in the concessions area. Nearly every register is occupied to feed the masses, and the lines snake around the stanchions like a busy airport-security check. A screening of Barbie just let out, and I catch two college students from it sporting unofficial merch. Arnav Das is in a shirt featuring Ryan Gosling’s Ken, and Sofia Cedeño is wearing a shirt decorated with Margot Robbie’s Barbie; they tell me more merch should include T-shirts of the memes. “Have you seen the picture where it’s like Barbie and Oppenheimer shaking hands and then it’s blowing up in the background?” Cadeño asks me. I haven’t seen the meme. “They are, like, facing each other. Yeah, that’s the one I would want.”

Photo: Zoe Guy

They leave, and I wait in line with Luna Rahzel, a cosplayer who tells me she purchased two rows — that’s 22 tickets — for her and her cohort when tickets first went on sale. We make our way to the front of the line and Rahzel nabs the Corvette popcorn bucket and the Barbie-doll bundle on sale. Luckily, she’s here two hours early to grab some of the clearly dwindling supply. “Mattel is making hand over fist on this,” she jokes. “Woo, late-stage capitalism!”

Some still seem to think Barbenheimer shouldn’t have declared a truce. Beth Slade, Hayden Murphy, and Caileigh Potter are “absolutely not” here for Nolan. “What are you going to wear to it? Black?” Potter wonders. “I don’t want to watch people get blown up. The world is dark enough as it is. I want to watch some joy, some pink, something silly, maybe cry a little bit, but in a fun, lighthearted way that’s nostalgic.” Skylar Theis, who will actually see both films, nails it: “She’s everything; he’s just Oppenheimer.”