I wish Leah the best of luck here. I’ve always found the adoration for Tom Cruise to be weird, especially since it’s broadly known how integral he is to Scientology. People on Reddit love him and will do all sorts of mental gymnastics to excuse him. “Scientology bad, but the new Mission Impossible was amazing!”

kind of the holy Trinity of internet commenters, eh?

I mean, it’s not Schindler’s List, but no—not a kids movie. It’s rated PG-13, directed by a critically-acclaimed director with multiple Oscar noms under her belt, and unambiguously directed at an older audience. Hell, its first teaser was a riff on 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

Man, this thing really blew up.

For the record, the nazis though Unit 731 was too much, and that’s not a legend.

exactly, they gave away the last purple heart printed in anticipation of the casualties from operation downfall (the invasion of the Japanese home islands) in **Afghanistan**.  it took over 70 years to use them all and we anticipated those casualties in 2 years.

Yeah a lot of people don’t seem to realize what not dropping the bombs meant. Conservative estimates would have put the fighting in the Pacific theater lasting 1-2 more years and an expected loss of human life greater than 3 million compared to an estimated 300,000 for the two bombings. 

“We find the reaction to this fan-driven movement from the official American account for the movie Barbie to be extremely regrettable,” Warner Bros. Japan’s statement read in part. “We take this very seriously and are asking the American head office to take appropriate action.”

Barbie’s director, Greta Gerwig, also put an incredible feather in her cap: Barbie was the biggest opening weekend ever for a film directed by a woman.

The brand helped Barbie — but I think the trailers are what made this a phenomenon. (Even the early leaks of the costumes.)

Oh for sure. I just meant that the marketing campaign 100% worked on me to the point where I was waiting to see what Margot Robbie was going to wear next despite knowing nothing about any of the looks she was referencing because I’ve never owned a Barbie.

I’d rather have one on Richard Feynman.

And I’m a man who never played with Barbies (well, ok, not fully true, I had a lot of close female cousins I visited often and we did play Barbie from time to time, to my dad’s eternal frustration), and I was there opening day too. And next to me was two 20-something guys who fit into the “neckbeard gamer“ stereotype…

Not entirely though. I am a woman who never played with Barbies and I was there on opening day. It just looked *good*. The story, the actors, the director — I knew as soon as I heard “Closer to fine” in the trailer, it was going to have exactly the right sense of humour about itself. At this point it’s also a word of…

Marvel movies have more colour but they are not colourful. If you want an example look at the opening shot of kill bill vol 1. That is colour. Peacemaker has colour. Asteroid city is colour.

Nobody wants the “Manhattan Project Cinematic Universe”

I went and saw Barbie because it looked good 🤷🏻‍♂️

I mean honestly if they take the lesson “Audiences want brightly coloured films” from the success of Barbie and the Mario movie then I am 100% all for it after 25 fucking years of “saving Private Ryan Sepia” films. It’s like all but three directors forgot how to fucking use colour in the last decade.

The studios will absolutely learn all the wrong lessons from this, least among them being that Greta Gerwig or Christopher Nolan are not easily replicable.

I mean, it’s abundantly clear that Barbie and Oppeheimer are not succesful because these are brands people feel the need to keep up with, but because these are good movies made by talented people.  Nobody wants the “Manhattan Project Cinematic Universe” and the less the various “Mattel brand movies” have to do with…