Today marks the fifteen year anniversary of the original Barbenheimer rivalry: the release of both The Dark Knight and Mamma Mia!. Maybe they called it “The Dark Mia!“? Or perhaps “The Mamma Knight“? I’m not entirely sure about the events name, but this was the first time that Christopher Nolan went head to head with a film that’s the dead opposite of his genre and has a mass appeal to women.
The Dark Knight is a gritty superhero film with one of the most demented villains in cinema history. Mamma Mia! is jukebox musical romantic comedy. You couldn’t get to films that are more opposite of each other, until perhaps now with Barbie and Oppenheimer. For the anniversary of this original rivalry, I’m looking at the tale of the tape and deciding the winner of the Mamma Mia! – The Dark Knight war.
Tale Of The Tape
Casts
The reason that this film matchup was so large is probably due to the casts of the two films. Mamma Mia! starred 21-time Academy Award nominee Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård, Amanda Seyfried, and Julie Walters. That’s an unreal cast. You have Academy Award winner like Streep and Firth along with household names like Pierce Brosnan who built a fanbase playing James Bond. While that cast is great, I think The Dark Knight was better.
Nolan’s sixth feature film starred Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Morgan Freeman, and William Fichtner. Again, we see Academy Award winners and then actors who became household names after this film with Bale being the biggest. He became “my Batman” for a generation of film fans that were teens or young adults at the time this came out. I know I’m probably biased because I adore The Dark Knight, but I think they had the superior cast.
In addition, I don’t think people look at Mamma Mia! as the peak performance or role for Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan, or Stellan Skarsgård. For The Dark Knight, this was Heath Ledger’s magnum opus. And you could even argue that it’s the best performance from Maggie Gyllenhaal and Christian Bale. I personally wouldn’t (Gyllenhaal was better in Donnie Darko and Bale was better in American Psycho and The Fighter), but people have argued that.
Run Time
An important aspect of films is the runtime. This is something that’s going to play a factor in the Barbenheimer experience. Barbie has a runtime of 1 hour and 54 minutes while Oppenheimer‘s runtime is 3 hours.
The runtime for Mamma Mia! was 1 hour and 49 minutes, while The Dark Knight was 2 hours and 32 minutes. If you don’t have the patience to sit in a theater for a long period of time, then Mamma Mia! was the film for you. But Nolan does a tremendous job spreading out the plot and entertainment of a 2 hour or longer film. Nolan has directed seven films that are over 2 hours long and garnered an average Letterboxd score of 4.02 stars out of 5. When people see that he’s doing an abnormally long movie, they don’t shy away from it. They embrace it.
Box Office
In the opening weekend of both films, The Dark Knight went full on Edward Norton in American History X and curb stomped Mamma Mia!. The Dark Knight made $158.4 million while Mamma Mia! made $27.7 million. Budget wise, Nolan had $185 million to make The Dark Knight and Phyllida Lloyd had $52 million to make Mamma Mia!. Both did a great job at chipping away at the budget, but The Dark Knight shot to the moon with its success.
In the whole theatrical run of both films, The Dark Knight prevailed by a large margin. The Dark Knight made $1.006 billion dollars at the box office, whilst Mamma Mia! made $611 million. When you’re speaking of how much each film netted, The Dark Knight netted $821 million and Mamma Mia! netted $559 million. At the end of the day, one film did really good and the other did outstanding.
Critical Reception
At the 81st Academy Awards, The Dark Knight received eight nominations. It was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects. It would go onto win Best Sound Editing and Heath Ledger would posthumously win Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the Joker.
As for Mamma Mia!, they received no Academy Award Nominations. The film did get a Golden Raspberry nomination and win as Pierce Brosnan won Worst Supporting Actor. Yikes.
On IMDB, Mamma Mia! has a 6.5 out of 10 rating while The Dark Knight has a 9 out of 10 rating. The Dark Knight is actually the number three film on IMDBs Top 100. On Letterboxd, Mamma Mia! has a rating of 3.7 out of 5 and The Dark Knight has a 4.5 out of 5.
It’s safe to say that Christopher Nolan won his first bout in a battle of opposite films. The real question is, can he do it again? Both Oppenheimer and Barbie release nationwide on Thursday, July 20th.
