Barbie Oppenheimer Is A Real Person, She’s Had A Weird Summer
There’s no way around it – this summer was the summer for two movies: Barbie and Oppenheimer. From staggering box office sales to double watch parties, the films stacked up a massive following of fans around the world. While for many of us, the memory of Barbenheimer will be an amusing one, it won’t be anything like the experience of one Barbara Oppenheimer – a woman from Newton, Massachusetts.
There is a real woman named Barbie Oppenheimer who is related by marriage to the late J. Robert Oppenheimer.
That’s right, there is a woman out there living in the North Eastern United States with the full name of Barbara Oppenheimer. A proud grandmother of five and a retired professor, this has been her year of recognition with the release of Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan’s films. In a recent interview with Slate, reporter Dan Kois caught up with her to see if her summer was as much of a hit as the fan-favorite movies.
Praising the “moral dilemmas” that the film posited for the main character, she said that Christopher Nolan and the rest of his team “did a good job”.
To get to the question that likely popped into your head, yes Barbie Oppenheimer is indeed related to the father of the atomic bomb and the main character in Oppenheimer – J. Robert Oppenheimer. Related by marriage, Barbie Oppenheimer revealed that her father-in-law is a third cousin to the man played by Cillian Murphy.
Rushing to the theater along with her family and friends, the retired professor said that they were eager to see how J. Robert Oppenheimer’s story was told on the big screen.
When asked about how she and her husband liked the portrayal of their distant relative, Barbie Oppenheimer said that while the three-hour runtime was overwhelming, she knew she had to see it, noting that it didn’t feel like that long of a movie. Praising the “moral dilemmas” that the film posited for the main character, she said that Christopher Nolan and the rest of his team “did a good job”.
Despite their differences, she says that she applauded Barbie for its feminist overtones with its easygoing and laughable plot.
Next, came Barbie. Spreading out the titles and not catching them both on the same day, Barbie Oppenheimer says that she and her husband returned to the theater two weeks later to see the Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling-led film. Sharing that both she and her hubby “loved both of them in different ways,” Barbie Oppenheimer had nothing but kind words to say about each feature.
Just don’t ask Barbie Oppenheimer to pick favorites because that one’s too tough for her. “That would be really hard!” she said when the interviewer asked her to choose one over the other. Despite their differences, she says that she applauded Barbie for its feminist overtones with its easygoing and laughable plot.
For entirely different reasons, she says that she enjoyed Oppenheimer for its darker and serious undertones of how patriotism looked all those decades ago and how the findings of a handful of scientists shaped the world forever.
So, while many of us may still be recovering from that Barbenheimer whiplash and will need some extra recovery time before we head out to Saw Patrol or The Exorswift, just think of how exhausted Barbie Oppenheimer must be. In what she views as a “quick” window of fame, hopefully, Barbie Oppenheimer will, at the very least, get some sort of SteelBook or similar special freebie.
