I’m surprised that you say that there was a lot of hype when it was released. I remember seeing a lot of hype before it came out, but all of the discussion I saw when it was released was just complaints about the audio mixing and lack of character development.

For the record I like the movie as an action movie. I feel like it’s at a similar quality to most of his Batman movies and Inception in that sense. I just don’t think it was ever intended to be profound or particularly deep (outside of the standard complexity that comes with a time travel story)

It’s just a meme, since they’re both highly anticipated movies with very different vibes releasing on the same day. I don’t think most people are actually expecting them to compete (if anything, most of the jokes I see are about watching a Barbie/Oppenheimer double feature). It’s the same as the Doom Eternal/Animal Crossing jokes a few years back