How does Greta Gerwig compare to Christopher Nolan?

The Hollywood heavyweight vs Tinsletown’s rising star! From Oscars to the box office, how does Greta Gerwig stack up against Christopher Nolan in the battle of Barbenheimer

Greta Gerwig is Hollywood’s rising star, so how does she compare against heavyweight Christopher Nolan who has grossed nearly $5B at the box office?
READ MORE: Christopher Nolan was ‘upset’ that Warner Bros chose to release rival blockbuster Barbie at the same as his thriller Oppenheimer

Barbenheimer is one of the most hotly anticipated cinematic events in years.

The portmanteau, created to mark the same-day release of Oppenheimer and Barbie, has taken the internet by storm, with the world’s largest cinema chain AMC Theatres reporting that more than 20,000 people have bought tickets to see both movies on the same day.

The two – both expected to be huge blockbusters – are going head to head at the box office as they are released in the US and UK on 21st July.

In the pink corner is Barbie, which is 39-year-old Greta Gerwig’s third feature length film as director.

Starring Margot Robbie, 33, as the titular Barbie, the film has been lauded as a ‘feminist romp’ and ‘masterpiece’ by critics.

Meanwhile, in the grey – and perhaps smokey corner – is Oppenheimer.

Directed by Hollywood heavyweight Christopher Nolan and starring Cillian Murphy, the film’s concept couldn’t be further from that of Barbie’s.

It tells the life story of ‘father of the atomic bomb’ J. Robert Oppenheimer – and has also picked up incredible reviews.

So just how does Tinseltown’s rising star compare to the billion-dollar box office boss? Here FEMAIL takes a look at the pair…

Barbenheimer is one of the most hotly anticipated cinematic events in years. So how does Christopher Nolan (left) compared to Greta Gerwig (right)?

Both are critically acclaimed, but neither have Oscars (yet!)

Despite phenomenal box office and critical success, both Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan have never picked up an Oscar.

Nolan has been nominated five times (for Memento, Dunkirk and Inception), while Gerwig has three nominations for Little Women and Lady Bird.

While they may have not been recognised by the Academy, both directors are hugely critically acclaimed with Gerwig picking up a Critic’s Choice Award and Nolan having nearly 200 gongs to his name.

And it’s very likely the pair could pick up nods for their upcoming films.

Despite phenomenal box office and critical success, both Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan have never picked up an Oscar. Christopher is pictured with wife Emma Thomas

With a life-long commitment to film-making, it’s perhaps no surprise that both directors are in relationships with others in the industry.

Gerwig shares two children with long-term partner Noah Baumbach, 53, and she’s also a step-mum figure to his first son Rohmer (although the pair are not married).

The pair met on the set of Greenberg in 2010, when Baumbach was married to actress Jennifer Jason Leigh, and made their red carpet debut as a couple in 2018 at the Golden Globes, after years of speculation they were an item.

Baumbach often collaborates with Gerwig, even co-writing Barbie with her.

Meanwhile, Nolan is married to film producer Emma Thomas who worked on the Dark Knight trilogy, Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk Tenet and The Prestige with her husband.

The pair, who are both London-born, met studying at UCL in the early nineties before tying the knot in 1997.

They share four children Flora, Rory, Magnus, and Oliver and live in LA.

Star turn: Christopher Nolan’s latest epic tells the story of the theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, also known as ‘father of the atomic bomb’, with Cillian Murphy nabbing the titular role, in which he delivers a chilling performance

Wasted: Among the rare negative reviews, Kristy Puchko complained for Mashable that Florence Pugh, who plays the psychiatrist and activist — and Oppenheimer’s early lover — Jean Tatloc, is ‘reduced to weeping and nudity’

Box office smash hits

While early numbers indicate Barbie might beat Oppenheimer at the box office, Nolan’s total box office gross dwarfs Gerwig’s.

The US-filmmaker’s total worldwide box office comes in at an impressive $300million, Barbie alone is expected to more than double this.

Nolan, who is 13 years older than Gerwig and has been directing for much longer, is the eighth highest grossing filmmakers of all time – with a phenomenal $4.95 billion intake worldwide.

His biggest film is Dark Knight Rises, followed by the Dark Knight – both of which grossed over $1billion.

This is closely followed by Inception, Interstellar and Dunkirk, which all were huge successes.

Greta, who found fame as an actress before making her name as a director, has only directed three films.

Her first, Nights and Weekends, grossed a mere $5,000. Her second, bildungsroman Lady Bird starring Saoirse Ronan, made $79 million, while Little Women picked up $218milliom.

Oppenheimer’s theatrical release was set for July 21 before Barbie later popped up on the same date

Publicly, Nolan has been claiming that the competitive clash between Barbie and Oppenheimer is a good thing

Creative families

While neither of the stars are particularly connected by Hollywood’s nepo-baby standards, both certainly come from creative families.

Gerwig’s late father-in-law was Jonathan Baumbach, who died in 2019.

Jonathan was an accomplished author, who co-founded the Fiction Collective, a publishing house run by authors.

The house was an effort to give avant-garde works a clearer path to publication.

Although she grew up in California, Gerwig’s parents are far from glitzy Hollywood types.

Her mother Christine is a nurse, and her father Gordon worked for a credit union.

Gerwig went to her local Catholic school, before heading to Barnard College in New York to study.

Meanwhile, Nolan – who was also raised Catholic – went to Haileybury and Imperial Service College, a public school in Hertfordshire before heading to University College, London.

The son of a British advertising executive and an American flight attendant, Nolan also didn’t come from a creative family.

However his uncle John Nolan is an actor – who later starred in the Dark Knight films – while his brother Jonathan is a successful director and the brains behind Westworld.

Christopher’s uncle John Nolan is an actor – who later starred in the Dark Knight films – while his brother Jonathan is a successful director and the brains behind Westworld (pictured together)

Go-to actors

Like many directors, both Gerwig and Nolan have a set of go-to actors they often collaborate with.

Nolan has most frequently collaborated with Michael Caine – who starred as beloved butler Alfred in the Dark Knight Trilogy.

He went on to also star in Prestige (2006), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017), and Tenet (2020), in fact Oppenheimer is the first film of Nolan’s Caine hasn’t starred in since 2005.

Cillian Murphy, the lead in Oppenheimer, is another frequent collaborator of Nolan’s.

The Peaky Blinders star was also in the Dark Knight Trilogy before starring in Inception and Dunkirk.

With Barbie only the fourth of Gerwig’s films as director, she perhaps has less ‘go-to’ stars. But she was been loyal to two stars in particular – Saoirse Ronan and Timothee Chalamet – who starred in both Little Women and Lady Bird. From left: Alexandre Desplat, Louis Garrel, Saoirse Ronan, Greta Gerwig, Florence Pugh and Timothee Chalamet attend the “Little Women” Premiere

Nolan has most frequently collaborated with Michael Caine – who starred as beloved butler Alfred in the Dark Knight Trilogy (pictured together)

Others including Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman have been in multiple Nolan films.

With Barbie only the fourth of Gerwig’s films as director, she perhaps has less ‘go-to’ stars.

But she was been loyal to two stars in particular – Saoirse Ronan and Timothee Chalamet – who starred in both Little Women and Lady Bird.

Gerwig actually revealed she reached out to both stars to have cameos in the Barbie movie.

Speaking to CinemaBlend, she revealed the pair were keen, but couldn’t fit it in their busy schedules.

‘It was always going to have to be a sort of smaller thing because (Ronan) was actually producing at the time.

‘I was also going to do a speciality cameo with Timmy, and both of them couldn’t do it and I was so annoyed. But I love them so much.’

Both Barbie and Oppenheimer have been hugely praised by early reviews. Critics praised director Greta Gerwig, 39, for achieving ‘a pleasing balance between the silly and the serious’ in Barbie. Margot is pictured in the film

So, what do the critics say?

Both Barbie and Oppenheimer have been hugely praised by early reviews.

Critics praised director Greta Gerwig, 39, for achieving ‘a pleasing balance between the silly and the serious’ in Barbie.

‘This is a truly original work – one of the smartest, funniest, sweetest, most insightful and just plain flat-out entertaining movies of the year,’ Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gushed.

Meanwhile Coleman Spilde from The Daily Beast was dazzled by the film.

‘In Gerwig’s capable hands, even a movie about the one of most popular toys of all time eludes expectations at every turn. Barbie is her mainstream masterpiece, a dazzling dream that will touch the souls of everyone who sees it.’

Chandler Levack of Globe and Mail called the film ‘both a master’s thesis on feminism and an Austin Powers-esque romp.’

‘The zaniness of Barbie, combined with Gerwig’s interest in skewering the patriarchy, sometimes makes the movie a baggy, tonally dissonant viewing experience. But for the most part, she achieves a pleasing balance between the silly and the serious,’ Ann Hornaday from the Washington Post wrote.

And critics have also been blown away by Oppenheimer.

The historical epic was almost universally praised for its chilling treatment of the development of the first nuclear bombs and for Cillian Murphy’s title performance.

Also getting plenty of praise were Nolan’s astounding ensemble cast of A-list actors — including Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Florence Pugh and Emily Blunt — in small supporting roles.

The film even received a perfect five stars from Daily Mail’s Brian Viner, who wrote that Nolan ‘magnificently’ balances thriller elements with ‘profound questions about the morality of laying Hiroshima and Nagasaki to nuclear waste.’

Oppenheimer has been the subject of ‘Barbenheimer’ memes for weeks, due to its shared opening weekend with Greta Gerwig’s equally anticipated Barbie film, though Nolan’s epic has slightly edged out the pink-coated comedy on Rotten Tomatoes.

What do the critics say about Oppenheimer?

DAILY MAIL

Rating:

Brian Viner writes: ‘Oppenheimer is a stunningly well-made film… Much of Oppenheimer unfolds like a thriller, while not swerving profound questions about the morality of laying Hiroshima and Nagasaki to nuclear waste.

‘I despair at the inordinate length of many films these days, yet even at three hours this one never seems unreasonably long. There is an awful lot of story to tell, and Nolan tells it magnificently.’

THE GUARDIAN

Rating:

Peter Bradshaw writes: ‘This is the big bang, and no one could have made it bigger or more overwhelming than Nolan.

‘He does this without simply turning it into an action stunt – although this movie, for all its audacity and ambition, never quite solves the problem of its own obtuseness: filling the drama at such length with the torment of genius-functionary Oppenheimer at the expense of showing the Japanese experience and the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.’

DIGITAL SPY

Rating:

Ian Sandwell writes: ‘Oppenheimer is absolutely a movie that you’ll want to discuss and chew over for days after first viewing.

‘It’s an absorbing and spectacular watch first and foremost, but also one that provokes you to think about the big, weighty topics that arose from Oppenheimer changing the world.

‘Christopher Nolan certainly won’t give you the answers, but in Oppenheimer, he has given you a theatrical experience like no other filmmaker can.’

BBC

Rating:

Caryn James writes: ‘At times circles race across empty darkness or wiry orange strands of light appear, depicting the fears and the science occupying Oppenheimer’s mind.

‘Those artful images are sporadic in a film that never loses its sense of story and drama, but they reveal how boldly imaginative and sure-footed the film is.

‘Oppenheimer is Nolan’s most mature work, combining the explosive, commercially-enticing action of The Dark Knight trilogy with the cerebral underpinnings that go back more than 20 years to Memento and run through Inception and Tenet’.

INDEPENDENT

Rating:

Clarisse Loughrey writes: ‘Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s best and most revealing work. It’s a profoundly unnerving story told with a traditionalist’s eye towards craftsmanship and muscular, cinematic imagination.

‘Here, Nolan treats one of the most contested legacies of the 20th century – that of J Robert Oppenheimer (played by Cillian Murphy), the “father of the atomic bomb” – as a mathematical puzzle to be solved.’

FINANCIAL TIMES

Rating:

Danny Leigh writes: ‘Nolan taps the full sensory potential of moviemaking, pushing picture and sound to meet the scale of the story: clever lines dot the script; the whole project is admirably willing to wrestle with matters of great weight through cinema.

‘For all the hint of Hollywood in Los Alamos, Christopher Nolan isn’t Robert Oppenheimer. Nor is he Stanley Kubrick, who gave us that deathless nuclear comedy, Dr Strangelove. Kubrick was brilliant; Nolan is proficient.

‘You may still find that his new film stays with you for days, turning itself over in your mind. And if that owes as much to Oppenheimer as Oppenheimer, the pair do have much in common: each as bold as they are flawed, two contradictory equations.’

EMPIRE

Rating:

Ben Jolin writes: ‘A masterfully constructed character study from a great director operating on a whole new level. A film that you don’t merely watch, but must reckon with.’

As Barbie hits cinemas… here’s what the critics are saying

Margot Robbie’s highly-anticipated Barbie movie is released July 21 after a whirlwind press tour, and already it has earned many rave reviews.

The film stars Robbie as the iconic Mattel doll and Ryan Gosling as Ken alongside an A-list ensemble cast that includes America Ferrera, Dua Lipa, Simu Liu, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae and Will Ferrell.

Here, DailyMail.com takes a look at what the critics are saying…

‘Dazzling’: Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosliing, is a hit with critics

‘My main criticism, actually, has nothing to do with the subject matter. Barbie or no Barbie, it’s not intrinsically that good a film. It’s uneven, disjointed, the plot makes no real sense — and the dead hand of corporate America weighs heavily upon it.’ – Sarah Vine, Daily Mail

‘Yes, Barbie is fun. Yes, it will make you laugh and might make you think. But […] it won’t change your life, probably not your summer, maybe not even your week.’ – Brian Viner, Daily Mail

‘This is a truly original work – one of the smartest, funniest, sweetest, most insightful and just plain flat-out entertaining movies of the year’ – Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times

Both a master’s thesis on feminism and an Austin Powers-esque romp’ – Chandler Levack, Globe And Mail

‘Barbed statement wrapped in a visually sumptuous & sublimely silly cinematic confection’ – Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service

‘A soulful film underneath all the persistent fuchsia. One that has heart and ambition as well as abundant beauty, inside and out’ – Tomris Laffly, TheWrap

‘What really makes this comedy click are the stellar performances, from the lead role on down. This is the funniest cast I’ve seen in some time’ – Peter Howell, Toronto Star

‘This is a wonderfully fun watch that somehow manages to simultaneously celebrate and satirise the Barbie brand, its feminism and girliness pairing like gorpcore sandals with a floaty pink skirt’ – Alice Saville, Time Out

‘Robbie takes an archetype long dismissed as an airheaded caricature and, moment by deeply felt moment, teases and fleshes her out’ – Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

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