2023’s “Barbenheimer” viral phenomenon encouraged us to watch Oppenheimer and Barbie back-to-back – but is this really the perfect pairing for Christopher Nolan’s epic biopic? Here are five Oppenheimer double-feature alternatives that are even better than Barbie.
5. The Wind Rises
A major theme in Oppenheimer is the naivety of brilliant people when it comes to their creations. The same is true of Studio Ghibli’s The Wind Rises, which tells the story of Jiro Horikoshi, designer of the Mitsubishi A6M Zero. Like J. Robert Oppenheimer and the atomic bomb, Horikoshi is ultimately haunted by the bloody legacy of his greatest accomplishment. That said, The Wind Rises ends on a (slightly) more upbeat note, making it a welcome chaser after Oppenheimer‘s sobering conclusion.
4. JFK
If your favorite stretch of Oppenheimer is the flick’s final hour, then JFK is the ideal double feature pick for you. Oliver Stone’s 1991 political thriller employs many of the same bravura flourishes – including switching up the film stock – to dramatize Jim Garrison’s courtroom quest to uncover the truth about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. What’s more, both movies use a major moment in history as a vehicle for discussing wider themes (although Stone plays much looser with the facts than Nolan).
Related: Oppenheimer Announces When & Where It’ll Stream
3. Godzilla Minus One
One of the few criticisms leveled at Oppenheimer is that it doesn’t depict the horror the atomic bomb inflicted on Japan. Godzilla Minus One neatly plugs this gap, serving up an allegorical portrait of the devastation visited on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Toho Studios’ overgrown lizard stands in for nuclear weapons unleashed, and, fittingly, it’s Godzilla Minus One‘s street-level characters that cop the fallout. Giant kaiju notwithstanding, it’s a poignant reminder of the human cost behind Oppenheimer, and makes Godzilla Minus One a worthwhile double feature candidate.
2. Doctor Strangelove
Oppenheimer meditates on nuclear warfare’s apocalyptic potential. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb pokes fun at its absurdity. As such, an Oppenheimer/Dr. Strangelove double feature offers the most complete big screen illustration of the mutually assured destruction doctrine you’ll find. Yes, it’s terrifying – but it’s laughably ludicrous as well. Plus, both films’ endings mirror each other perfectly.
Related: Barbie and Oppenheimer Are About Ideas Made Real
1. Thirteen Days
While Oppenheimer devotes a sizeable chunk of its 181-minute runtime to the Cold War era, it wraps up in 1959. That was several years before 1962’s Cuban Missile Crisis when the US and Soviet Union came this close to full-scale nuclear war. Fortunately, Roger Donaldson’s Thirteen Days does a bang-up job recreating this high-stakes standoff – a scenario Oppenheimer tried (and failed) to avoid. That makes it the ideal double feature partner for Oppenheimer.
Oppenheimer is available to stream on Peacock starting Feb. 16, 2024.
