What to make of Barbenheimer?

The only director I can think of lately to make a smooth transition from advertising to commercial cinema would probably be R Balki He was formerly chairman with Lowe LintasBeing a man of marketing himself a key issue he notices with the film industry he tells me is they regurgitate conventional methods to advertise movies Fully aware that itrsquos been failing for so long Surely that same thing canrsquot produce a success stillTake his own last release Balki tells me during a conversation before a live audience The film Chup 2022 was about a serialkiller mass murdering movie criticsGoing by its theme Balki suggested hosting preview screenings well before release for regular public to watch the film in cinemas for freemdashjust the way press shows are heldBut why would you give away so many free tickets to a potential audiencemdashitrsquos a loss no To create a unique buzz what else What would it cost anyway About Rs 15 lakh ldquoThatrsquos how much Irsquod spend on a hoarding in Bandrardquo his producer said and rightly went aheadThe point isnrsquot whether the film Chup benefited from it hugely or became a huge hit The biggest challenge is reaching out to people distracted by personal screens to even inform them about a new theatrical release Balki saidBalki of course is a director in Bollywood That operates at a minor fraction of the scale of Hollywood which is run by five studios Warner Paramount Universal Disney Sony Those in turn produce movies for the world allowing for unmatched budgetsWhatrsquos Hollywood been up to over the past almost two decades They first went about placing their own superstar system with a builtin boxoffice draw into a near coma Hardly investing in certain kinda films let alone newer stars the same way as heroes of the rsquo90s ThenThey put all their might behind massive spectaclesmdashfrom scifi disaster porn replicable action series Bourne Bond MI to superheroes amp multiple superheroes for the price of a movie ticketProgressively gravitating towards sequels spinoffs crossovers instead of ideasAs if franchises are the only captive audience to care for But there are so many audiences and growable nichesmdashif only one applied original ways to capture them stillWhere did Christopher Nolan a filmmaker with relatively dense untested ideas yet scalemoney to access global mass markets figure in all of this As an anomaly on the giant IMAXDecidedly a geekcriticrsquos director with commercial appeal The former reputation can be burdening surely I still havenrsquot watched Nolanrsquos Tenet 2020 perennially frightened that it might feel like a textbooktask Got no love for school Of course my bad and will catch it eventuallyNolanrsquos Oppenheimer is a biopic And that just felt more mentally reassuringmdashenough to enter sozzled the second time on The only thing Indians wonrsquot get about Oppenheimer is the huge scroll in allcaps lsquoSmoking Killsrsquo each time someone lights up a cigarette on screenThatrsquos Indiarsquos health ministry repeatedly defiling a piece of precious art as a result In a movie about dropping the atom bomb that killed hundreds of lakhsHow about a warning scroll lsquoHumans Killrsquo throughout No smoking in Greta Gerwigrsquos Barbie of course It starts instead with a fullfat Baskin Robbins labelled as lsquodessert partnerrsquoNolan has traditionally released his films with Warner Reportedly they had a spat during the pandemic once the Hollywood studio announced it would go directtostreaming with the 17 films on its slate then Nolan switched over to UniversalBarbie was a Warner release on the same date as Nolanrsquos film July 21 2023 Hence the talk of clash and rivalry Which is a notion that belongs more to the singlescreen era when primetime in a theatre could only be cornered by one filmOppenheimer vs Barbie seems more like the marketing term lsquocounterprogrammingrsquo in a multiplexmdashcatering to a type of demographic that may not care as much for the other type of film Venn diagram between them nearing two separate circlesI watched Nolanrsquos sensory experience surely with a bunch of people expecting the cinema to blow off with the dropping of Abombmdashmaybe some were disappointed that there is not a shot of Hiroshima NagasakiI watched Oscarnominated Gerwigrsquos pic with a hall full of females adorably dressed for Instagram in lsquoBarbie pinkrsquo which is equally ironic for the filmrsquos pointThatrsquos about the real world that lsquoBarbie dollrsquo slips intomdashto realise how women are still getting treated like the lsquoStereotypical Barbiersquo while boyfriend Ken discovers pleasures of patriarchyNeither is a franchise film nor spectacle for spectaclersquos sake Both are inventive creative leaps of faith with nothing in common otherwise to earn the portmanteau BarbenheimerWhether by design or sheer marketing genius something happened with Reels GIFs videos memes cooler talk to spread the word that itrsquos not one film over the otherYou gotta watch bothmdashwhich one first Peer pressure popculture I felt the idea of the doublebill getting rebornmdashwatching pictures backtoback that those of my vintage always did Just hope it becomes the norm So much for cinemas getting outta fashion Some might wanna look at newer ways to get blokes in firstMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper