"I hate that word, but the perfect storm"- Martin Scorsese puts forward his opinion about the Barbenheimer trend

Ahead of his upcoming epic, Killers of the Flower Moon, which has already garnered exceptional praise across the world, Martin Scorsese recently shared his opinion about Barbie and Oppenheimer, two of the most commercially acclaimed and anticipated films of the year.

The clashing release dates of Greta Gerwig's offbeat adaptation of a Mattel toy and Christopher Nolan's epic study of Robert J. Oppenheimer's life and work clashed to create one of the greatest box-office phenomenons ever seen. It also saw the entire globe jump on the trend, labeled Barbenheimer by most.

The intriguing time of the year surely brought most out of their homes and into the theaters, and its appeal has even touched veteran filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, who recently spoke out about his distaste towards franchise and comic adaptation movies, raising many eyebrows across the world.

When addressing the same topic, Martin Scorsese admitted that Barbie and Oppenheimer did pave the way, even if it was a little, towards retrieving cinema as he would like it. He said in the interview with the Hindustan Times:

"I do think that the combination of Oppenheimer and Barbie was something special. It seemed to be, I hate that word, but the perfect storm. It came about at the right time. And the most important thing is that people went to watch these in a theatre. And I think that's wonderful."

Martin Scorsese went on to lay down his opinion about the two films and reveal how close he was to many of the people involved in the projects.

---

"So it's all in the family"- Martin Scorsese on Barbie and Oppenheimer

Barbie and Oppenheimer may have just created the biggest cinema trend in history, with so many on board the Barbenheimer trend. In fact, for months, it was the only topic of conversation in so many online forums.

But the films also managed to provide both entertainment value and storytelling brilliance, making them quite the package. Martin Scorsese elaborated on this, saying:

"I haven't seen the films yet. I love Chris Nolan's work. Margot Robbie, I must say, started with me from The Wolf of Wall Street. Rodrigo Prieto (cinematographer), after finishing Killers of the Flower Moon, went on to shoot Barbie. So it's all in the family (laughs)."

He continued:

"The way it fit perfectly - a film with such entertainment value, purely with the bright colours - and a film with such severity and strength, and pretty much about the danger of the end to our civilisation - you couldn't have more opposite films to work together. It does offer some hope for a different cinema to emerge, different from what's been happening in the last 20 years, aside from the great work being done in independent cinema. I always get upset by that, the independent films being relegated to ‘indies.’ Films that only a certain kind of people would like. Just show them on a tiny screen somewhere."

While some films are attempting to bring back the kind of cinema that dominated the world during the peak times of Scorsese, Coppola, or de Palma, it is still stuck in quite an intermingled market space, which is still driven by franchise-based filmmaking.

Killers of the Flower Moon will be released in theaters on December 20, 2023.