Mamma Mia! vs The Dark Knight was the original Barbenheimer

Next week comes the strangest pairing at the multiplex we've seen in years. We're talking, of course, about Greta Gerwig's Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer — together dubbed Barbenheimer — set to go toe-to-toe for box office dominance on 21 July. The former is a hot pink franchise comedy inspired by the iconic line of Mattel dolls, the latter a stylistically austere biopic about the invention of the atomic bomb. Such is the striking contrast at play, of course the internet (read: Twitter) was going to do what the internet does and meme the shit out of it: now, all anyone can talk about online is Barbenheimer, sucking attention away from other major summer releases like Mission: Impossible 7 and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Though this clash of cinematic titans might've been elevated to event prominence by the internet's collective love of ironic memedom, it's hardly the first example of diametrically opposed movies dropping on the same day. Fifteen years ago in the US, on 18 July 2008, cinemas were similarly split into two queues: the Batman enthusiasts on one side, clamouring to get into The Dark Knight and usher in a new superhero movie age; on the other, ABBA stans awaited a trip to the sunny isles of a fictional Greek island in Mamma Mia!. Had the internet grown beyond its cringey 9gag nascency by then, it might've been the original Barbenheimer. The Dark Mamma, if you will.

After all, there are huge parallels between the duelling duos. The Dark Knight was the dark and dreary, terminally serious Christopher Nolan movie. Mamma Mia!, the fun-loving “chick flick”, a jukebox musical for the gays and girlies to let their hair down with campy, sun-kissed escapism. Say you did the double bill back then: you could spend two-and-a-half hours with Christian Bale growling gravely under the cape and cowl, then it'd be time for cocktails on the beach with Amanda Seyfried and Pierce Brosnan. With Barbenheimer, it's another pitch-black Nolan flick where its male lead does a lot of broody staring into the middle distance, contemplating the deep evils now ushered unto the world, paired against Barbie, where men are Just Ken. For both Mamma Mia! and Barbie, it's hard to think of more colourful chasers to stave off Post-Nolan Depression.

The Dark Mamma, alas, never took off as Barbenheimer has. Indeed most people online, anecdotally, simply forgot that the two released on the same day, such was the broad surprise when viral tweets prompted by Barbenheimer brought new attention to the OG. (Here in the UK, they came out eleven days apart.) Little media coverage at the time pointed to the contrast, the most prominent article available on Google search being a Vulture piece from the week of release, the headline of which jokingly announced Mamma Mia! and The Dark Knight as battling “for the very soul of America.” Strikingly similar contrasts were zeroed in on: “Are you a happy person, or a sad one? Do you see the glass as half-full, or half-empty? Do you prefer your toast with strawberry jam, or do you like it sprinkled with shards of broken glass?” All ring true of Barbenheimer, too, only the question now isn't which, so much as which first. Shard sarnies, nevertheless, remain ill-advised.

Hollywood studios know exactly what they're doing with such stark counter-programming: the lack of demographic crossover suggests, on paper, that the movies won't eat into each other's profits, giving audiences a variety of options. In 2003, for example, X-2 was released into US cinemas on the same day as The Lizzie McGuire Movie, and in 2015, Mad Max: Fury Road roared onto screens simultaneous to Pitch Perfect 2. Barbenheimer is distinct in that we seldom get such a major clash of two big-budget summer blockbusters, nor a meme-propelled online movement spawning Etsy merch and Twitter stan rivalries. But that's the key thing, and the true movie-loving spirit of Barbenheimer: while we might joke about Nolan nuking Barbie's Malibu Dreamhouse, these aren't warring parties battling for audience supremacy. Much like The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia! — which went on to be the first and fifth-highest grossing movies of 2008 — early projections suggest that both Barbie and Oppenheimer will both do pretty well for themselves. And there's only one winner when that happens: the movies.

Barbie and Oppenheimer come to UK cinemas on 21 July.