Mission Impossible Director Named His Own Champion Movie of the Year and It's Not Barbie
Unlike most people, Christopher McQuarrie doesn’t think Gerwig’s Barbie won this year’s theatrical run — and he has quite a bit to say about Nolan’s Oppenheimer, too.
2023 is truly a massive year for cinema, and without a doubt, Christopher Nolan ’s Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig’s Barbie are the two main movies of this year. Despite being surrounded by other huge releases, these two films captured the entire world, and hardly anything was discussed as much in the industry (save for The Flash ’s failure).
While Nolan’s three-hour-long biopic about the father of the atomic bomb performed marvelously at the box office, gathering over $853.5M worldwide, Gerwig’s bright-pink adventure comedy went way further, having amassed over $1.384B at the global box office. Most people see this as an absolute win on Barbie’s part.
However, not everyone agrees: Christopher McQuarrie, the director of Mission: Impossible, has a very different opinion. McQuarrie’s own Dead Reckoning Part I came out this summer, too, but it was completely outshone by Barbie and Oppenheimer. This didn’t prevent the director from watching both these movies, though.
“Chris Nolan… You want to talk about between a rock and a hard place? You want to talk about a guy whose movie was a three-plus hour R-rated drama with nudity that leaves you feeling quote-unquote ‘devastated.’ That’s a tough sell. That’s one helluva marketing strategy. And he won. He called it like Babe Ruth and he won,” McQuarrie said on the Empire Spoiler Specials podcast.
The Mission: Impossible director thinks the crown definitely belongs to Christopher Nolan this year, and admittedly, his lead star Tom Cruise shares his opinion.
“God bless [Chris]. Congratulations. That’s fantastic. And it’s a triumph for original movies. It’s a triumph for films that are not sequels. And in the case of Oppenheimer, a drama. What movies used to be all the time. Tom and I just look at each other all the time like, ‘Man, it’s just about quality,'” the director explained.
Despite his claim that Oppenheimer is the champion of 2023’s theatrical run, Christopher McQuarrie doesn’t mind Barbie, either. The director largely praised both Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie, who he referred to as “an extraordinary talent, a mega-star.” In McQuarrie’s eyes, both these movies were great, and it’s the cinema in general that won — the sentiment he shares with Tom Cruise.
Source: Empire Spoiler Specials