It’s no surprise that Oppenheimer came out on top at the 81st Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, January 7.
The film received 5 awards throughout the night, including the biggest honor of the evening: Best Motion Picture — Drama. Oppenheimer’s director Christopher Nolan was awarded Best Director with Cillian Murphy winning Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama for his title role as J. Robert Oppenheimer. Robert Downey Jr. also took the stage when he was awarded Best Supporting Performance in a Motion Picture for his role as Lewis Strauss. Ludwig Göransson took home a Golden Globe when he accepted the Best Original Score award.
The first of the 2024 awards shows took place at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills on Sunday night and was a star-studded affair. After a year of highly talked about movies — and months of anticipation — Hollywood’s finest found out which film would come out victorious among all the rest.
When the Golden Globe nominees were announced in December 2023, Barbie was on top with nine nominations — the most this year. Along with Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling being up for acting accolades after playing Barbie and Ken, respectively, the movie had three songs in the Best Original Song category. Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For” (which won), Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night” and Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” were all nominated for that award. The film’s director Greta Gerwig and her husband, Noah Baumbach, were also nominated together in the Best Screenplay category.
Going head-to-head with Barbie was Oppenheimer with eight nominations. This, of course, is rather reminiscent of the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon that took over the internet in July 2023. Both movies were released on the same day last year, and internet users made memes of the films’ vastly different aesthetics.
“I think it happened because both movies were good,” Cillian Murphy, who played J. Robert Oppenheimer in the biographical film, told Barbie’s Robbie during Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series in December 2023. “In fact, that summer, there was a huge diversity of stuff in the cinema, and I think it just connected in a way that you or I or the studios or anybody could never have predicted.”
Aside from the movie’s five wins, Emily Blunt was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer. Director Nolan got a Best Screenplay nod, as well. The film overall was also up for Best Motion Picture — Drama and Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, which Barbie ultimately won.
Trailing Oppenheimer was Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things, both with seven nominations. Celine Song’s Past Lives had five nominations, including Best Director.
Anatomy of a Fall, Maestro and May December all had four nominations. The latter of the three put Charles Melton on the map following his Riverdale fame. This marked the actor’s first-ever Golden Globe nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category. “I am so happy,” Melton told Deadline last month about the acting achievement.
