Assuming that the "barbenheimer" effect is what made people shy away seems to miss the occam's razor possibility: It's really not a great movie. Okay, maybe th

Assuming that the "barbenheimer" effect is what made people shy away seems to miss the occam's razor possibility: It's really not a great movie. Okay, maybe that was just my opinion. Let's back that up. The Barbie movie is incredibly dependent on cultural tropes, and targets both the nostalgia bone with its Barbie references and the cultural feelings of American women of a certain age. Yes, the movie was very popular here. Because it targeted a very specific, yet very large, audience. It seems incredibly likely to me that the simple explanation for it's low acceptance in Japan is simply that the very specific audience it appeals to is quite small in Japan. An n=1 sample of "stayed away due to oppenheimer marketing" makes this an entirely useless article.