Christopher Nolan’s film Oppenheimer (2023) had a formidable rival during the summer blockbuster season. The quiet story of J Robert Oppenheimer’s team developing the atomic bomb, his ‘after the fact’ horror of its use on two Japanese cities, and the scandalous hearings around his security clearance faced off with a bubbly blonde doll having an existential crisis and her beachy boyfriend Ken. Barbie, centered around the Mattel doll’s visit to the ‘real world,’ splashed across theaters in a beachy, pink wave. In three weeks, it earned $1.03 billion. Nolan’s science epic flew past $500 million in the same period. For two weeks it grossed only behind Barbie‘s unexpectedly profound tale. Nolan’s film offered a series of moments in Oppenheimer’s life and scandals. But three hours isn’t enough to fully encompass the complicated theoretical physicist whose work quite literally changed the world. There is much more to Oppenheimer’s story.
