Can we make pop culture great again?
Wicked and Gladiator II are signs that the relationship between art and commerce isn’t working as it should.
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Side-by-side posters for historical Roman epic Gladiator II and musical movie Wicked on their opening day at the AMC Lincoln Square 13 theatre in Manhattan on Nov 22.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
Ross Douthat
When the movies Wicked and Gladiator II debuted together late last month, there was a painful attempt to call their shared box office success “Glicked” – a reference to the portmanteau of “Barbenheimer” that described the joint cultural triumph of Barbie and Oppenheimer in the summer of 2023.
It was painful because the Barbenheimer phenomenon was a genuine old-fashioned Hollywood success story: Two unusual and vivid and original stories (based, yes, on real history and a famous doll, but no less creative for all that) from directors working near the peak of their powers that managed to be culturally relevant and open for interpretive debate.
