‘What’s the correct viewing order for Barbenheimer?’ is the wrong question

polygon.com:

Barbenheimer is a certifiable cultural phenomenon. The tongue-in-cheek name social media granted to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer when people first noticed they were releasing on the same day has metastasized into a kind of participatory cultural rite, with jokesters creating fake posters and real merch for the release, not to mention endless memes.

Tens of thousands of people have already certifiably bought back-to-back tickets for their own Barbie/Oppenheimer double features. But there’s been a weird sort of angst about the double feature online, with people asking social media outlets — or, according to Google Trends, asking search engines — what the proper Barbenheimer watch order is. Which should come first, the father of the atomic bomb, or the mother of all fashion-doll trends?

Plenty of the people responding to the “Which order should I watch Barbenheimer in?” question online are exasperated that it’s even a question, but their “obvious answers” depend on their personal tastes. Your mileage may vary as well. Fortunately, there’s an easy way to navigate this. The important thing about Barbenheimer isn’t the watch order. It’s giving both movies enough space to breathe, and giving yourself a break between them.

Look, anybody can do the basic math. Oppenheimer is a heavy, complicated historical film about scientific progress, mass destruction, and the inevitability that someone is standing by to weaponize every new step we take toward understanding the universe we live in. Barbie is a cheeky satire that examines the conflicting cultural feelings we have about the world’s most famous doll brand, and what she represents. They go together surprisingly well, it turns out — they both explore