It’s almost Barbenheimer time! Some say Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer are going head-to-head at the box office this weekend, but we like to think of them as going hand-in-hand. So does the rest of the internet for that matter, with many pledging to watch both films on the same day in celebration of the greatest movie meme of our time.
But how exactly does one accomplish this? The entire experience is somewhere around five and a half hours, accounting for trailers and Nicole Kidman talking to AMC audiences twice. TikTok has the answer — and that answer is brunch.
“Bombs, brunch, Barbie” is as good a plan as we’ve heard. Since Nolan’s (apparently terrifying) biopic is three hours, viewers will definitely need to fill their stomachs afterward. While there’s no telling whether people will actually be hungry after watching a man invent the atomic bomb, the key here is the booze, which will help people forget that mankind is constantly on the brink of destroying itself.
Once everyone is five or so drinks deep, we wager those appetites will return. And after a sensible meal that is immediately undone by a bright pink dessert, it’s time for Barbie. The film clocks in at just under two hours, which hopefully is enough time to escape the dark night of the soul that Nolan has in store and replace it with immensely attractive people who live in a fantasy world without actual elements, and thus can never be destroyed by a pillar of fire a mile high.
Upon completing the Barbenheimer challenge, viewers will of course have bragging rights, but they’ll also hopefully have seen two of the best movies of the year. For those thinking of using the following day for recovery, we’d recommend that you go to the cinemas again and watch Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1, which isn’t making nearly enough at the box office considering how good it is.
Only then will you have earned the right to go back to streaming everything, much as that’s killing the industry.