The first film: a piquantly pink, tongue-in-cheek, corporately branded romp through a world where everyone is Kenough. The second film: a brooding, black-and-white, esoteric biopic inspired by the creation and deployment of the world’s first nuclear bomb. What do they have in common? Very little besides the same release date. But somehow, together, they have been responsible for one of the more bizarre cinematic success stories in recent memory. 

I am, of course, referring to “Barbenheimer” — the joint summer release of Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” that spawned a thousand internet memes and Twitter threads, as well as the aforementioned (and oft-repeated) portmanteau. By virtue of its internet fame and inexplicable joint appeal, as well as each film’s individual excellence, “Barbenheimer” has grossed well over $2 billion worldwide (“Barbie”: $1.3 billion and “Oppenheimer”: $778 million), with more records expected to fall in the weeks ahead. Countless moviegoers have planned Barbenheimer double features, boosting sales for both films simultaneously and building a snowball of hype that continues to roll on even a month after each movie’s release. 

I’ll be frank: this is nuts. For a number of reasons. 

First of all, it is very rare for the theatrical release of a film to garner much sustained success to such a degree, much less for two movies to achieve commercial dominance at the same time. Yes, there are perennial smash-hits like “Avengers: Endgame,” but for every sellout there are inevitably at least two stinkers (think: “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” which lost almost $100 million at the box office). With Hollywood increasingly consolidated under a handful of massive studios, the movie business has drifted more and more towards a high-stakes game of craps, as ballooning budgets both increase the appeal of a blockbuster while simultaneously potentially setting it up for disaster. In such an environment, the Barbenheimer phenomenon is akin to rolling a snake eyes. 

Furthermore, Barbenheimer was achieved without any sort of coordinated marketing rollout — apart from the scheduling counterprogramming that started it off. Clearly, no one at Warner Brothers (the distributing company for “Barbie”) or Universal (the distributing company for “Oppenheimer”) knew what they were unleashing before the fact, which — given the sometimes-cloying coordination that seems to pervade every major film release since the interconnected nightmare that is the MCU — is supremely unexpected. 

Finally, and perhaps most insane, is the sheer difference between the two films, not only in content but in directorial style, reputation, cast, you name it. 

On the one hand, Christopher Nolan is a longtime household name, lauded for his gritty “The Dark Knight” and the mind-bending “Inception.” In “Oppenheimer,” he teams up with Cillian Murphy — who eschews social media, wears a lot of neutral colors and seems to be perpetually shell-shocked in every press appearance — and leans heavily on practical effects and slick film-school tricks to produce a creation sure to be a favorite come Oscar season. 

On the other hand, the director of  “Barbie”, Greta Gerwig, is a relative newcomer to Hollywood (at least in comparison to Nolan), following the critical and popular success of her solo debut “Lady Bird” in 2017. Alongside her? Hollywood it girl Margot Robbie and the seemingly ageless Ryan Gosling, who combine to great, campy effect in the name of feminism and good vibes. 

Evidently, Barbenheimer is not the result of some sort of overlap in content, adding to the mystique and general nonsensical power of its occurrence. How do you rationalize a multibillion-dollar aberration that is essentially just a meme? How do you find the common denominator when the two variables aren’t even on the same plane of existence? The short answer: you don’t. That’s what makes Barbenheimer so interesting — it is illogical, improbable and frighteningly effective. It is genuinely (somehow) greater than the sum of its million-dollar parts. 

So what now? Well, most obviously, one wonders whether studios will take note of Barbenheimer’s success and begin to transition towards some sort of collaborative marketing scheme where movies are released in tandem. Perhaps theaters will start to sell double-feature tickets or generate multi-film playbills centered around a particular actor or theme. Even more radical: different companies begin to coordinate across traditionally hard-fought battle lines. What if the new Star Wars movie was released alongside a Blumhouse horror flick? What if “Wonka” finds its way to theaters at the same time as “Dune: Part 2,” creating a Timothée Chalamet conglomerate fiasco? 

Truthfully, though, I’m not certain that Barbenheimer will be replicated in the foreseeable future, predominantly because the key to its success lies solely in the fact that it is unplanned. Say what you will about the average consumer, but they generally do not enjoy being marketed to when they know that they’re being marketed to. Not to mention, with the actor and writer strikes showing few signs of letting up, ticket sales are plummeting across the board, significantly decreasing the chance of another couple of movies replicating the “Barbenheimer” aberration. 

Barbenheimer became so unstoppable through grassroots advertising, not some executive in a high-rise — and if the latter were true instead, it seems likely that “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” would lose some amount of the momentum that has catapulted each respective film into the spotlight. Instead, studios should consider the individual merits of each film and elevate female directors, take risks on non-traditional subject matter, seek out well-balanced casts, support complex creative visions and just generally try to create a product that stands alone and will endure. 

So, to any L.A. muckety-muck (or future L.A. muckety-muck) reading this: 1. Please make me the next Batman, and 2. don’t make Barbenheimer Part Two a reality — it would only ruin the fun.