What do the films Barbie and Oppenheimer have in common? Yes, they were both released in the summer of 2023 and did blockbuster business. The joke at the time was that the two movies were huge cultural events despite being totally different. Barbie explores the meaning of a doll. Oppenheimer reveals the mind and soul of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man who developed the atomic bomb.
And yet both Barbie and Oppenheimer have one important thing in common: neither film is underwritten. Characters are fleshed out, history examined, probing philosophical questions given the time to flower.
There have been a lot of discussions in the entertainment press and on social media about how to fix Hollywood’s lackluster 2024 box office. People are not going to the movies. Critics are blaming everything from cellphones to noisy and dirty theaters.
My solution is simple: let great writers…
