The End of the Superhero-Movie Phenomenon

I’m so delighted to be joining you, and happy that we got to the elephant in the room—a big pink elephant singing an up-tempo pop song while ignoring the mushroom cloud behind it—in Round 1. As Stanley Kowalski said in A Streetcar Named Desire—I’ll leave out the iffy context in which he said it, at least until we get to May December—we’ve had this date from the beginning. Or at least since midsummer, when it became clear that Barbenheimer was going to be a singular, year-defining movie event. I won’t delay in saying that I am firmly Team Both. Like you, Dana, I spent that opening weekend finally, emotionally, giving in to the belief that yes, movies are back, maybe! Like you, Bilge, I was wowed by Oppenheimer—its headlong pace, the confidence of its artistry, and the ferocious hubris of its conviction that uncompromised, challenging popular art could be made out of that cursed moment of our history. And like you, Esther, I was unexpectedly moved by Barbie; mainly, though, I was dazzled by the playful tension between its candy-coated surface and its vibrant, interrogatory, nonstop cultural and political imagination.