Ayden King is one of more than 1,300 children and teens in the US killed by gunfire so far in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive. Firearms became the No. 1 killer of children and teens in America in 2020, surpassing motor vehicle accidents.
Not only did the one-two punch of Barbie and Oppenheimer, crowned by America as “Barbenheimer,” leave audiences enraptured this past weekend, but the double feature’s opening box office performance could have seriously challenged the movie might of superhero blockbusters.
As seen with the “Star Wars” to “The Lord of the Rings” trilogies, movies have long told multi-part stories. Yet 2023 has featured a noteworthy expansion of the “part one” approach to filmmaking, from “Fast X” to “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” to “Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning,” in what has become our “To be continued” summer.