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Barbie or Oppenheimer? How can one choose between two films that differ so greatly? Barbie is about a doll living her best life, in a world full of pink and friends, while Oppenheimer is about the creator of the atomic bomb that killed 220,000 people. But both of them are about fixing mistakes and the consequences of our actions.

At first glance, Barbie is a wonderful movie about a doll who couldn’t be happier: she has her friends by her side, is a leading feminist, and lives in a pink mansion. But as the movie progresses, viewers learn that Barbie is a story about womanhood, feminism, and the struggle of being a woman.

At the beginning of the movie, Barbie is excited to visit the real world, believing that she is a feminist icon for women everywhere. But once she gets to the real world, she realizes a horrifying truth: she has not helped the feminist movement at all, and young girls despise her. Barbie eventually returns to “Barbieland” with two women from the real world whom she has befriended. Together they try to save “Barbieland” and its women from the horrible men-topia that Ken has created. 

Barbie is truly a coming of age story about womanhood.

In one scene, Barbie meets Ruth Handler, her creator. They talk for a moment, before being interrupted. Ruth says to Barbie, “You look different.” Barbie responds, “I don’t usually look this way, I usually look perfect.” Ruth replies with, “I think you’re just right”. It goes without saying, that the societal standards for women are completely unfair and unjust. Society expects women to be pretty and beautiful all the time, to have the perfect face, the perfect clothes, the perfect hair, the perfect everything. But that isn’t possible. Barbie grew up believing these standards were the truth, afterall, she’s supposed to be “perfect.” But Barbie learns the truth: no woman is actually perfect, we all have our flaws. 

Oppenheimer is vastly different from Barbie. For one thing, it isn’t about womanhood, it’s about war.

When J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team first test the atomic bomb, it is a terrible, powerful sight. In that moment, he realized what danger he has released onto the world: the power to destroy. The scene is quiet for probably about 2 – 3 minutes, and it feels like time has stopped: everything is perfectly silent, everything is still. Then suddenly… Boom. The bomb goes off, shaking the mountains to the sound of resounding cheers. They can end the war. But as the people cheer, Oppenheimer begins to see the damage the bomb can create. In that moment Oppenheimer has “become Death, Destroyer of Worlds.”

Barbie and Oppenheimer may be different, but the way they tackle the portrayal of these issues is quite similar. In Oppenheimer, some scenes that occurred in the past are black and white, while others are in color. The reason for this is up to interpretation, but I would like to believe that it symbolizes the importance of events to Oppenheimer: scenes that were in black and white he either struggles to remember or has repressed those events due to guilt and trauma of creating the atomic bomb. Events in color symbolize events that he remembers vividly because they are too important to forget. 

In Barbie, when Barbie first finds out that Ken has taken control of “Barbieland,” she falls on the ground, sobbing her eyes out. Despite how sad and painful this scene is, it is still full of color: the grass is as green as ever, the buildings are still pink, Barbie’s clothes look like a watercolor painting. Barbieland is still colorful because despite how horrible it is to be a woman, you have to keep on living and soon, Barbie realizes that it is up to her to restore “Barbieland” to its former glory. 

Despite your preference for color and sunshine or darkness and mass destruction, both of these movies exemplify the struggle of our very existence. There’s no right or wrong answer as to which is better. Perhaps it’s just enough to know that they make us think differently about the world around us.