Japan opening of 'Barbie' marred by controversy ahead of nuclear memorials

It just movie for entertainment during this summer season, however some people like to politicized it.

"This incident is really, really disappointing," she posted.

This comment shows how limited is the range of political discourse and dissent in Japan.

Disappointment is something you express when your promotional event is cancelled because of rain.

dropping out of a promotional event in Tokyo hyping its opening on Aug. 11.

If she actually does it and stands by her principles good on her.

Warner Bros Japan has been pretty clueless with the timing of the release Japanside and that the Barbie movie would be linked with a movie with a topic like Oppenheimer.

I won't be going to see either of these trash movies .

and the U.S. ambassador caught flack for promoting the film online.

LOL

Our US Ambassador is useless. What was he doing before this? Running Chicago down the drain. Not surprising he'd promote this idiocracy of a movie when there are MUCH better movie Te-Ma's to check out.

I've actually heard good things about "Oppenheimer" from friends in the US.

"Barbie" sounds fit for an audience below a certain age or intellectual level.

Much ado about nothing. Boo hoo.

I used to go to see movies because of their intelligent titles.

Today I do not go to see movies because of their stupid titles.

So I save money!

And do not become stupid!

I won't be going to see either of these trash movies .

What a courageous position.

Both movies are vastly outperforming expectations - Barbie and Oppenheimer are getting good critic and audience scores:

88% & 84% - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/barbie

93% & 91% - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/oppenheimer_2023

CinemaScores - both A's!

https://www.cinemascore.com/

So this dashes my hopes of seeing Oppenheimer in theaters here. I guess I’ll see it next month in Taiwan then. From what I’ve read the movie addresses why they thought the bomb was necessary, without need to show its horrific destruction. I’d love to see a Japanese movie that explains why the Americans used it without playing the victim card. Tokyo fire bombings killed more than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined but nobody in this country talks about because they probably feel it was justified.

"Barbie", which stars Margot Robbie in the title role, recently grossed $800 million in global box office, helped in part by a viral "Barbenheimer" meme that paired the film with a biopic of nuclear bomb scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer that opened at the same time

Am I reading this right? Did the author suggest that this “Barbenheimer” meme was a significant reason that the Barbie movie grossed over three quarters of a billion dollars? And if so, why? I saw the rather weak meme…Barbie in the car with a guy against a background of fire….and while I figured out the reference (I am old and know some history), I doubt many young Japanese people could and certainly do not understand how it would compel people to see what is most likely going to be a silly movie…

What a disgrace, if Warner Bros has any since of how the Japanese people feel about this mess they would cancel or at least delay the release.

GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEED is UGLY. that's all.

"Barbie" producer Warner Bros initially latched on to fan-produced memes that depicted Robbie's Barbie with actor Cillian Murphy's Oppenheimer alongside images of nuclear blasts.

Imagine the reaction in the US of fan-produced memes of a joint release of Hello Kitty and 9/11 movies. Images of Hello Kitty dancing alongside the twin towers collapsing, in early September.

The uproar would be enough to spark congressional hearings.

Gaijinland, American did not think much of Japanese at this time,how they treated American Japanese, should of been a warning,the US would bring on them

@Peter Neil

I think you're on to something there. Twin Kitty's or Kitty Seven maybe ?

"No Japan release date has been announced for "Oppenheimer", which chronicles the creation of the atomic bomb. The film has been criticised for largely ignoring the weapon's destruction in Japan towards the end of World War Two, obliterating two major cities and accounting for more than 200,000 deaths."

Surprise, surprise. If it doesn't paint Japan in a good light (and Japan is painted in it) a movie won't see the light of day here for some time, despite Academy Awards or profits, etc. People railed about Indiana Jones 4 -- not because it was garbage, but because the opening scene "made light of nuclear bombs and it is not funny!". How They See Us on Netflix was almost blocked in Japan due to one officer in the interrogation of one of boys saying, "I'll go Nagasaki on your backside" (I paraphrased the last word). Outrage all around, but any other culture's sensitivities and it becomes deer-in-headlight here and complaints about backlash. "Hamada doing blackface? What's wrong with that? We don't see that as a racial issue," etc.

Lighten up. Let people who want to see the movie see it, or the fame it gets while Japan shuns it will show all the more how things in the movie were probably right.

Mitsuki Takahata, who voices Barbie in the dubbed Japanese version, posted on Instagram on Wednesday that she was dismayed upon learning of the memes marketing campaign and considered dropping out of a promotional event in Tokyo hyping its opening on Aug. 11.

Off you go then, you talentless twerp

I won't be going to see either of these trash movies .

No, me neither.

Oppenheimer doesn't even have a release date in Japan, so the Barbenheimer meme won't work here

Barbenheimer only works when both films are launched at the same time - the dichotomy gets to play off each other, and the whole thing becomes a cultural event that brings people to the theater

Warner Bros JUNK movies in many cases do a lot better overseas than in the main land, and these two are just some of that JUNK.

Well, I expect the Japanese likewise to be sensitive to those countries they terrorised in their alliance with Hitler and the Nazis during World War 2 by depicting accurately what their armed forces did especially in Manchuria, other parts of China and Singapore to name only three.

I have never heard of a mainstream Japanese movie being honest about Japan's well earned reputation for war crimes as an active policy. The Fall of Singapore's sheer evil murder of patients in their beds not to mention doctors and nurses is just one notorious example.

Japanese war movies insult their victims so when a major Japanese director decides to be honest and educate the lost generations who were given the extreme right revisionist history lessons under Koizumi, Mori and Abe, I'll be sympathetic over the Oppenheimer movie. This ignorance is astonishing with so many students I have taught being very surprised to find out that Japan was allied with Nazi Germany.

I guess I'll be waiting some time as Japanese society still by and large embraces the Japan as victime myth.

Bottom line it shows the movie studios will go to any length for marketing their movies to increase profits.

In my opinion this particular decision shows an unacceptable lack of respect for those who perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs and the many more who perished afterwards in horrific suffering.

Peter NeilAug. 3 07:42 pm JST

"Barbie" producer Warner Bros initially latched on to fan-produced memes that depicted Robbie's Barbie with actor Cillian Murphy's Oppenheimer alongside images of nuclear blasts.

Imagine the reaction in the US of fan-produced memes of a joint release of Hello Kitty and 9/11 movies. Images of Hello Kitty dancing alongside the twin towers collapsing, in early September.

The uproar would be enough to spark congressional hearings.

If you don't think there are 9-11 memes all over the internet, you don't browse much.

@smithinjapan

If it doesn't paint Japan in a good light

Which is sad, because Oppenheimer is being called Nolan's best film to date.

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/oppenheimer-best-film-century-paul-schrader-1235672941/

‘Oppenheimer’ Is the ‘Best’ and ‘Most Important Film of This Century,’ Raves Paul Schrader: ‘This One Blows the Door Off the Hinges’

https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/oppenheimer-review-the-best-film-christopher-nolans-ever-made

‘Oppenheimer’ Review: Christopher Nolan’s Devastating, Explosive Magnum Opus

The three-hour biopic about the so-called father of the atomic bomb is a technical, visual, and storytelling achievement. It’s also the best film of both Nolan’s career and 2023.

TaiwanIsNotChinaToday  12:20 am JST

If you don't think there are 9-11 memes all over the internet, you don't browse much.

Oh, I have. Have you seen the one with Barbie overlaying the twin towers, and the uproar about it?

There seem to be more people coming here from ihateeverythingaboutjapan.com

What a bizarre, irresponsible, insensitive, UNPRODUCTIVE comment to make something as serious as Oppenheimer having zero to do with Barbie - zero to do with each other...except their release dates are "similar"...

Sort of like when Oprah said the Holocaust had nothing to do with racism - "it was white people killing white people..." mind bogglingly stupid

Oops...no Oprah...Whoopi Goldberg (sorry Oprah)

I think it is clear that Warner Bros (and everyone else involved) misjudged the sensitivity associated with this post. It was obviously not meant for Japanese consumption. But still hurtful and insulting.

If we’re going to throw stones, has anyone realized how easy it is find TV segments with Japanese people in blackface? Very insulting to many people outside of Japan. Every time it happens someone realizes it was a misjudgment. But it is not meant for US consumption.

This movie Oppenheimer, seems to be a remake of a 2 part TV series screened in the UK in the mid 1970's. The series concentrated on the development of the atomic bomb, and the decision to use it. The was sa clip at the end (using original footage) showing injuries people being treated. This movie seems to be a remake.

Just checked IMDB on the above. It was actually 1980.

To OssanAmerica, Barbie is very much a feminist movie. Listening to a review of it, I was stunned how similar the story's content and themes was to the 1970's novel "Leviathan's Deep" by Jayge Carr (She's a feminist in case you're wondering). I had to drop the book halfway through because of how disgusting and evil-minded the "Good Girls" of the story were.

Oppenheimer is a film about the science and the life of a man who made a terrifying weapon.

It is not per se a film about Japan

It is worth noting the difference

I’m going to see Oppenheimer tomorrow on iMax. There were only 12 other people with seats when I just made the reservation just now. My butt will probably reach critical mass after sitting for three hours.

Intermissions not allowed anymore? What’s with that?

Japan will go see Barbie when it opens here. It's too much pink for the young set not to go see it.

Oppenheimer probably won't play in Japan. Which is hard to believe, as Christopher Nolan is a great director and his films are well done, but Japan is Japan.

I've tried to have discourse on the war and bomb with the Japanese and inevitably they have a narrative and emotion, which leads to a talk that goes nowhere. I'd like the Japanese to critically think the issues of their role in war crimes, to give their words credibility, but avoiding truths and then arguing victimization is so hypocritical in nature, and it limits Japan greatly to cry when they made others cry much more.

That's terrible, all you have to do is go back in time and NOT start the war.

That should fix the situation.

If one of the insulting posters showed a beautiful young Japanese woman on Op'S shoulders I bet it would not have gotten so much flack, and if there were pink petals raining down it would have passed by.

Just my thoughts.

Both movies are negative with respect to humans and what we do to each other.